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GWEN KNAPP

The San Francisco
Examiner

October 7, 1999, Thursday;

LEE ALLEN tells a great story about the still-unresolved Battle of the
Sexes in sports. He is a two-time U.S. Olympian in wrestling and the coach
of Peninsula
Grapplers, a small but growing Bay Area club that trains women wrestlers.

Allen's two young daughters, Sara and Katherine, are wrestlers who compete
primarily against boys, because there are few available female opponents.
Last year,
Katherine, then 10, was beating a boy handily in a tournament. During the
break, the boy's coach looked dubiously at the score, as if he couldn't
believe that
Katherine was winning. He said as much to Allen.

The match ended, and Katherine had a victory. Her father remembers the final
score as 9-6. The referee, who had scored the match, went over to the table
at the
end and started playing with the numbers. Allen was stunned by what the ref
did next.

"He went back on to the mat and held up the boy's hand," Allen said. "He
declared him the winner."

ALLEN protested and finally persuaded tournament officials to relent. But
they didn't give Katherine the win she deserved. They made her and the boy
replay the
second period. Then she won.

"I swear, sometimes referees
get blind," Allen said. "They can't believe that a girl can beat a guy, so
they didn't really see it."

Allen has a simple solution, an obvious one. Create girls' wrestling
programs, in schools, in athletic clubs. As it is, females usually have to
compete against males.
Right now, there aren't enough opponents of their own sex available.

So what happens? If you believe the Neanderthal element, the boys are
getting a raw deal. Taught, quite properly, that it is wrong to hurt or grab
girls' bodies, they
don't always know how to react when put on a mat with a member of the
opposite sex. Worse yet, if they win, their victory will be dismissed; if
they lose, they risk
terrible taunting from their friends.

This is exactly what Loi Chow, a male fighter, faces this weekend in
Seattle, where he will take on Margaret MacGregor, in the first officially
sanctioned boxing
match between a man and a woman. The promotion of the fight has caused
controversy and uproar, the vital ingredients for a cheap publicity stunt.

Chow is in a lose-lose situation. And whose fault is that? Don't look at the
easy targets, at the women who want to box, or at feminism, the usual fall
girl. They aren't
responsible for the silly myths that keep these co-ed battles going.

Myth No. 1: Women shouldn't play certain sports because they're really not
interested. Truth: They must be extraordinarily interested if they're
willing to get into a
ring, or down on a mat, with a man. The number of high school girl wrestlers
has tripled in the last three years. It has gone up 2,300 percent since
1990. This has
happened despite the fact that many of the girls have only limited success
against the boys. ( Internationally, women compete against each other, and
the U.S.
women just won their first team title, aided by a gold medal from Sandra
Bacher of San Jose.)

Myth No. 2: Women's sports are a joke because none of them can dunk like
Michael Jordan, run as fast as Michael Johnson, and so on . . . Truth: In
high schools,
even though the girls win less, they do win. Allen's daughter, Sara,
finished first in her 100-pound weight class in a middle- school tournament
last year. When that
happens, the Neanderthals become hypocrites. Some of them behave like that
referee and insist that what happened wasn't real. Others, after finally
seeing the
superior female athlete they always claimed didn't exist, can say only this:
"We shouldn't allow our boys to be humiliated by a girl."

IN OTHER WORDS, they need to protect the boys from what is supposed to be
the weaker sex. A "20 / 20" television segment on female wrestlers focused
heavily on that theme. The correspondent sympathized with the boys, never
once suggesting the most obvious solution: Establish separate women's
programs and
treat them with respect. Otherwise, the girls have no choice but to try to
beat up on the boys.

Allen understands this, all too well. As a coach, he has encountered many
enlightened boys, or seen them evolve into enlightened boys after training
with dedicated
female wrestlers. But some of his coaching colleagues, or friends from his
days as an Olympian in 1956 and 1960, practically accuse him of upending the
social
order.

"One friend, he went on this tirade about, who knows why? , women's
basketball," Allen said. "He went on and on about how the best professional
women's
basketball team couldn't beat an average boys' high school team. . . . I've
never understood why people think that way. To me, the measure of a woman's
success or
failure shouldn't need to be judged by how she competes against a man."

In the long run, men could benefit enormously from the creation of women's
wrestling teams. At the college level, lazy administrators have axed
wrestling to
accommodate Title IX, the federal law that prohibits gender discrimination
in colleges. Roughly half the college programs in this country have
disappeared in the last
15 years. If the men's wrestling team had a female counterpart, it would be
less vulnerable to the cuts.

But the NCAA has resisted the idea pretty thoroughly. Only three schools in
the country, all NAIA affiliates, sponsor women's wrestling. Meanwhile, the
NCAA has
identified fencing as an emerging sport for women, and, catering to all
those "National Velvet" dreamers, equestrian made the list, too.

GARY ABBOTT, a spokesman for USA Wrestling, points out that far more high
school girls wrestled last year than fenced or jumped with their ponies.
There were
2,361 female wrestlers, 651 fencers and 281 equestrian riders.

How can this be? Wrestling is inexpensive, open to participants of all
weights and appealing to many different ethnic groups. Equestrian is elitist
and ridiculously
expensive. You can just imagine a school arguing that it has enough female
athletes because all of its horses are mares.

Logic says that wrestling should be considered a women's sport, because it
already is. Logic also says that the Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean King tennis
match of 1973
should have settled the issue of where women belong athletically. Instead,
26 years later, we're repeating ourselves, still answering the same
questions, with
gimmickry subbing for real progress.

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One of the boys

Hampton wrestler earns place on Talbots' squad

By Matt Townsend

02/07/1999

Earlier this season Lisa Bisers proved that she belongs with the boys.

The Hampton sophomore wrestler took third place at the South Fayette
tournament on Dec. 18. Bisers lost early, but gained revenge against the
same
wrestler in the match for third place.

"I think more people are starting to think of her as a wrestler and not
just a girl in wrestling," said six-year Hampton coach Joe Bursick. "She's
having a
good year and she's only a sophomore."

Even after Wednesday loss, Bisers is 11-7 this season compared a 3-19
mark during her freshman campaign.

"I'm a little bit stronger," Bisers said. "And now I have some
experience."

Bisers accomplished one of her season goals Monday when she won her
eighth real victory of the season against three forfeits. She had two
forfeits last
season.

"I'd like them to wrestle, but if they don't oh well," Bisers said of
opponents who choose not to wrestle her.

Last season Bisers' wrestling caused ripples for some, who opposed her
playing a traditional male sport. There were cat calls at visiting gyms, and
some
opponents took her for granted. But, Title IX allows for equal
opportunity in athletics for both sexes, and since Hampton doesn't have a
girls team Bisers
is allowed to be on the mat.

"There's not as much of that this year," Bisers said. "I'm getting a
lot more recognition from coaches and wrestlers."

Just like the encouraging words she received from Fox Chapel coach Ron
Frank after Wednesday's match, which Hampton lost.

Last season wrestlers forfeited their matches, because they didn't want
to wrestle Bisers because she was a girl. Bursick predicts Bisers may get
more
forfeit victories in the future, but for a different reason.

"I told her the better you get the more that (a forfeit) might happen,"
Bursick said. "Because they don't want to lose to a girl."

Whether that happens is to be seen, but Bisers is a much improved
wrestler despite the reasons her opponents do or do not wrestle her.

"Her offense has really improved," Bursick said. "That's what is
causing her wins."

Bisers is a technically sound wrestler and has matured nicely under the
tutelage of her older brother Dave, who is a captain for Hampton at 140
pounds.

"I still get yelled at a lot," Bisers said of her wrestling
relationship with Dave, who she sometimes wrestles with in practice. "But,
it's a lot less than last
year."

Bisers, who began wrestling in fourth grade, wants to wrestle for a
girls team in college. There are just a handful in the country, but this
summer Bisers met
New York University's coach at a wrestling tournament in Michigan and
Bisers toured the campus while on vacation this summer.

"They want me to wrestle for them," Bisers said.

NYU doesn't have athletic scholarships, but Bisers said that with her
grades, a near 4.0 average, she would be able to get a scholarship.

Bisers likes the idea of girls wrestling teams in college, but not in
high school.

"I don't want to see that because there would be a lack of
competition," Bisers said.

Bisers will get a first-hand look at how much competition there is in
Pennsylvania when she travels to McCaskey High School (Lancaster) Feb. 14
for the
first girls state wrestling championships.

"I really don't know what to expect," Bisers said. "If they don't have
enough girls I think they might group close weight classes together."

Bisers endures all the pains a wrestler goes through, including losing
weight. She lost a few pounds to get to the 119-pound weight class early in
the
season, and then dropped a few more to wrestle where she does now at
112.

"I think she realized if she dropped weight it would be a little
easier," Bursick said.

This season has been a little bit easier than last and Bisers is
changing some minds.

"I think people realize I'm here to stay," Bisers said.

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