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Breaking barriers?
Not really -- girls in wrestling are more of a distraction, coaches say

Picture this: Julie Tucker, Pleasant Hill`s uncommonly good wrestler, fights her way through Saturday`s district competition.

Next week, she finds a way to get through sectionals and, before we know it, Missouri has its first girl in the state wrestling championships.

This could be the biggest thing to happen in wrestling in years. And some coaches just don`t like it.

I`ll tell you straight up that I really don`t care much for it. Girls wrestling is one thing, but girls wrestling guys doesn`t prove a thing and is not helpful for the sport.

I can already hear the movement, though.

True, Tucker has great skills. I`ve seen her wrestle and she is good on her feet and seems to sense things the way a good wrestler does. But how many other high school sports do we ask girls to compete against guys.

Volleyball? No way. What high school would let guys try out for volleyball. Wait, some boys teams began last year, right? Well, the same ought to be done for girls.

They wrestle other girls, or they don`t at all.

For old pros Bob Glasgow and Chuck Sears, it`s an issue that they`ve only recently had to deal with.

"I have no problem with equal opportunity, but there is some situations where the opportunity is not equal," said Sears, head coach at St. Mary`s. "It`s just not fair for a freshman boy, who`s already embarrassed to even talk to a girl, to have to wrestle a girl. Maybe I`m a little old-fashioned, but girls and wrestling do not go together."

Sears said he has a no-wrestle policy against girls, unless it is in districts or sectionals, where a wrestler`s season would end if they did not wrestle.

Glasgow also said that, as a policy, but not a hard rule, Oak Grove wrestlers will not tangle with girls unless advancement in the postseason depends on it. He has had some matches with Tucker and Odessa`s Tonya Evinger, but those were in crucial conference occasions.

And again this weekend, Glasgow will run into girls from Pembroke Hill, Wentworth Military Academy and Odessa.

"Hey, I think those four girls should get together and have their own little tournament," Glasgow said. "There is no way a boy wins in this situation. It just opens the door for other girls to compete at the high school level against boys.

"Julie is talented, no question about it, but that doesn`t make it right. She is the Amelia Earheart of wrestling. But it`s not a coed sport and should not be."

"It would be nice to have a girls league at this level, but we don`t," Blue Springs coach Mike Hagerty said. "When this becomes a girl getting attention because she`s a girl, I don`t like that. But my thoughts are that I don`t have a problem with it. If they`re good enough to make the team, I say let them."

The Fort Osage wrestling program had a girl at the junior varsity level this season, but she quit. "To me, it is just a distraction," Luke said. "Sometimes it`s an uncomfortable situation in this sport. I`m not going to treat girls any different, but I don`t like to see it."

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Knox's first woman wrestler has great prospects

Vive la difference! Janelle Curtis has spent her brief but precedent- setting high school and collegiate wrestling career taking on guys bigger and stronger than she is -- and losing every tournament match.

In the end, however, all her struggles with "la difference" made her one of the toughest female wrestlers in the country, when she finished second at the University Nationals, a women's tournament held this spring at Northwestern University in Evanston. Wrestling at 51 kilos (112 pounds), she defeated every opponent except for one. It was the first time Curtis had wrestled freestyle and the first time she had participated in a women-only tournament.

"Guys are so solid," Curtis says. And the women are, well, soft. "The women are strong," she says, "but it's not like wrestling a solid hunk of muscle."

Training and competing against men in the 118-pound divison "helped immensely," says Curtis, who weighs 112 pounds and stands five-feet tall. "The minute I tied a girl up in the first match, I knew there was a strength difference. There was no comparison. Actually, I think I smiled when we first tied up."

"Janelle is a terrific athlete and compared to other women her size she is just as strong and just as fast," says Knox head wrestling coach Frank McAndrew. "She has all the skills. She's just never had a chance at wrestling freestyle and wrestling women." Collegiate style wrestling--used at Knox--puts a premium on strength and positioning. Freestyle wrestling--used at the University Nationals--emphasizes quickness.

Curtis has noticed other differences -- ones that have probably occurred to everyone at one time or another. "When we were weighing in at Evanston, there was a lot of cameraderie and we started sharing stories. When guys weigh in, they usually try to stay far away from each other." She also has found that "all the guys have been extremely aggressive." Some male opponents, McAndrew suggests, were more aggressive because they were "worried about getting beaten by a girl." At the tournament, Curtis says "it was the first time I've ever had the upper hand."

Curtis got her start in wrestling as a junior at Shullsburg High School in Wisconsin. "I loved lifting weights and running," said Curtis, who came to wrestling after trying volleyball.

"There's a rule in my household that studies come first, so we could only do one sport per year." Curtis and her two sisters, both track athletes, live on a farm; their parents are veterinarians. Curtis plans to major in biology and chose Knox because she wanted to do pre-medical studies at a school with a strong liberal arts focus.

She raised a few eyebrows initially, but was eventually accepted by her high school teammates. "I had some friends on the team. Still, there was a little bit of friction at first." At Knox, both McAndrew and the other wrestlers encouraged her to join the team. At the tournament, she found some women had been wrestling for as long as five years, although she was the only one who had competed on an all-male team in college.

It won't get any easier for Knox's first woman wrestler. Starting next year, the NCAA has raised the lowest men's weight class to 125 pounds, which will put her twelve pounds--instead of just six pounds--lighter than her regular-season opponents. But, as her career proves, Curtis is not one to back away from a challenge.

Photography and design by Peter Bailley
Copyright © 1998 Knox College

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Female athletes in a league of their own

By Wei-Ying Wang

Posted Wednesday, February 17

The phrase "you play like a girl!" doesn't hold any negative connotations to juniors Anne Mabasa and Catherine Tweedie and sophomore Michelle Ng. As female athletes playing in male-dominated sports, they are forging a path for girls in sports everywhere.

A Level Playing Field

Mabasa and Ng are the only two female baseball players currently on the Lowell baseball team. Mabasa, who joined in her freshman year and now plays second base on the varsity team, is the first female baseball player in AAA history.

Teammate Isaac Zones, who has known Mabasa since they played together in Little League, said: "It [Mabasa joining the team] wasn't a big surprise. I thought it was ironic that Anne is the first girl to play baseball in like a hundred years of AAA history, and the next year Michelle joins the team."

Both Mabasa and Ng have been playing baseball since they were young. Ng, the second base shortstop for the JV baseball team, practices most Sundays with her father and younger brothers. Likewise, Mabasa practices with her brother, who plays for George Washington High School, and his friends. Their baseball backgrounds led them to try out for the baseball team, not the softball team.

"I've never played softball before," Mabasa said. "I don't particularly like softball. I don't like the fact that they [softball team members] wear shorts. How can you slide? And I don't like the ribbons they wear. I just don't like ribbons."

Ng never even considered playing softball for Lowell. "Baseball is something I've always been doing," she said. "I didn't want to switch."

On tryout day, Ng said, "Some of the guys were like, 'I think softball tryouts are over there.' But other than that, no one gives me a hard time."

Mabasa agreed the team adjusted well to her presence. "They [the guys on the team] cut out the vulgar remarks, the guy talk," she said.

Zones said, "Everybody's supportive. It was a little awkward, but we treated her like just another player."

Varsity baseball coach John Donohue said that the team respects Mabasa because of her skill. "She is not on the team because she's female; it's because she's a good player," he said.

Unfortunately, according to Mabasa, other teams are not as tolerant. "A lot of other teams think, 'It's a girl, bring the outfielders in [when Mabasa is up to bat],'" she said. "Once a coach of another team said something like, 'We'll never let the pitcher live it down' after I hit a home run. A lot of people don't have respect for me as a ballplayer."

Despite their lack of support from other teams, Mabasa and Ng receive encouragement from the audience. "Sometimes the guys' moms cheer us on," Ng said.

Zones agrees, "The parents are supportive. Moms admire her [Mabasa] for her courage. My mom in particular. She is tougher than most other guys on the team. She works as hard as everybody else, and people respect her for that. The thing that works against her is her size because she's small."

Despite whatever physical disadvantages Mabasa may have compared to her male teammates, Mabasa believes girls should get involved in sports. "I would encourage girls playing for the team, not because it's cool, but because they love the sport," she said.

Her advice to girls interested in playing so-called boys' sports? "Stay strong. Don't be discouraged if you don't get things; it takes time to develop skills. Don't give up."

Guys fear junior Catherine Tweedie. And they have good reason to: She has the distinction of being the first female in San Francisco to pin a male wrestler.

Although she isn't afraid of facing her male counterparts, Tweedie says that some of the male wrestlers are intimidated by her. "When they [male opponents] are faced with the possibility that they might be beaten by a girl, they'll try their hardest," Tweedie said.

Although she may be the only girl hitting the wrestling mats at Lowell, Tweedie doesn't feel alienated. "It's like having 20 brothers," she said. "A lot of people think the guys give me trouble, but I get a lot of support."

Fellow wrestler junior Colin Ikeda admitted that he felt some uneasiness when Tweedie first joined the team. "There was some awkwardness, but now she's just another member," he said.

Ikeda also feels that Tweedie is a good addition to the team. "She is very good; she has very good techniques," he said. "She always boosts morale."

Tweedie did not have previous wrestling experience before she joined the team. She said that she learns wrestling techniques as she goes along.

Although it is a relatively new experience for her, Tweedie doesn't feel strange about wrestling boys.

"It's not a big deal," she said. "It's a sport and when you're wrestling, you don't think 'oh, it's a guy!' You think, 'I've got to win.'"

Tweedie has not wrestled against female opponents until recently, when she went to an all-girls tournament. "Wrestling them [girls] was not that much different from wrestling guys," she said. "There were some amazing girls there [at the tournament]."

She encourages other females to join the wrestling team. "I wouldn't say I'm a feminist," Tweedie said. "If you're in good shape, then you should join the wrestling team."

Aside from wrestling, Tweedie has participated in many sports, including track, softball, swimming, tennis, basketball, soccer, gymnastics, and tai kwon do since an early age. "They [sports] give me a physical outlet for releasing stress," she said. "Wrestling seems to do this better than anything else I've tried so far."