News Page
By ED ODEVEN
Sun Sports Staff
01/25/2004
Greg Bryan/Arizona Daily Sun From left, Marca Whitehair, Stacy Naaktgeboren, Whitney Roberts and Katie Carl pose in the Flagstaff High School wrestling room Thursday. the foursome are the first females ever to wrestle at Flag High. To order this photo, go to http://photos.azdailysun.com |
It's a typical Tuesday afternoon at Flagstaff High School. Basketballs are bouncing off the hardwood in the main gymnasium. Girls are giggling as they talk about their plans for the weekend. Automobile engines are revving up as students and teachers head home after another long day.
And you hear Eagles wrestling coaches Chris Giannola and Brady Black barking out instructions and offering pointers to their boys and girls.
Wait a minute. Girls?
Yes, indeed. FHS is one of a growing number of Arizona schools that now have girls participating in the rough-and-tumble sport of wrestling. Senior Whitney Roberts (114-pound weight class), juniors Stacy Naaktgeboren (145) and Marca Whitehair (114) and freshman Katie Carl (125) are the first females to wrestle at Flag High.
Oh, and by the way, they are loving every minute of it.
"It's been awesome," Carl said before Tuesday's practice.
"If they had it two years ago, I probably would have (joined)," Roberts chimed in. "But I'll take what I can get."
Other area females feel the same way. Five girls are on Tuba City's team. Twins Angela and Andrea Clizzie and Rachelle Smith grapple for the Page Sand Devils. Coconino's XXX is in her first year on the squad.
The Arizona Interscholastic Association does not officially sanction girls wrestling teams. Therefore, those who want to compete must join boys teams.
This year, 19 girls showed up at Flag High's mandatory information meeting before the start of the season. The aforementioned foursome are the only ones to stick with it the entire season.
"It's one of the fastest growing sports in the United States right now," said Black, the Eagles' assistant coach for two years who previously spent five years coaching for the Sinagua High School wrestling squad. "That's not due to us (coaches). ... We've seen a lot of interest over the last year. ... We had no idea there'd be that many."
MOTIVATIONAL FACTOR
Eagles junior Chris Mitchell, who competes in the 114-pound division, said the male grapplers have welcomed their female classmates onto the team without reservation.
"I don't know what to say. It's fun having them on the team," he said.
Usually, the four girls wrestle against one another at practice. But there are times -- if one of them cannot attend practice, for instance -- when guys wrestle girls.
Is it a big deal? Hardly, the girls concluded.
"They treat you just like one of the members of team," said Roberts, who has also earned varsity letters on the Eagles' swimming and track and field teams. "They don't go, 'Oh, she's a girl, so we treat her differently.' It's, 'You're a wrestler, you're on the wrestling team, we are going to treat you like a wrestler.'
"Here we'll wrestle with the guys, and we haven't really had a problem. It gets harder when it gets up to the higher weight classes, like for Stacy because they get a lot stronger. The body-fat ratio of the guys at her weight (145) is just solid muscle and that's hard. At the lower weight classes, they are more equal."
Which doesn't mean Mitchell or his teammates can give a ho-hum 75 percent and still expect to dominate.
"She's definitely improved above and beyond most of the guys that are wrestling in here," Mitchell said of Roberts.
Has she beaten you?
"Yes, in certain situations," he admitted, without blushing. "Yeah, she's beaten me. She goes after each move, 'bam, bam, bam.'
"Other guys have wrestled her, too, and they know exactly what she's about. She's definitely a good wrestler."
By all accounts, Roberts has the determination and talent to hold her own against quality foes, boys or girls.
"When you face a guy, you're motivated because you're just like, 'I can beat this guy,'" Roberts said. "When you do beat the guy they get ragged on, they get picked on by their team, but it feels great to know that your hard work has paid off."
While showcasing their tough-natured personas day in and day out at practice, the four Eagle girls are bringing attention to the program, letting other girls know they can join, too.
"Just from talking to people, they'll be like, 'What are you doing?' If you tell them, I'm a wrestler, they're like, 'Women's wrestling? You're a wrestler?' " Roberts said, recalling the gist of several conversations. "A lot of them think that you're a mat maid at first, like a statistician for the team. But when they find out you are wrestling with the guys, they think it's pretty cool."
Her teammates share those sentiments.
"I've gotten a lot of positive responses ... from friends and family," said Carl, whose interest in wrestling was ignited by watching her sister's fiancé, ex-Coco wrestler Ricky Herrera, compete. "But I've also heard stuff like, 'Oh, they shouldn't be with the guys. They should have their own practice and their own coaches and they shouldn't be allowed to wrestle guys.'"
Which is precisely why the FHS coaches understood how important it was to flat-out tell the team their thoughts on the matter before the season began.
"Day One we said that anyone who steps through that door is a wrestler. ... Period," Black said, retelling his instructions of the preseason. "You treat every wrestler with respect and pride. Leave society's gender issues outside the room."
Apparently, that speech was exactly what the Eagles needed to hear.
" As coaches we were kind of wondering how it'd affect the dynamic of the room. It's done nothing but good," Black said of having the girls on the squad. "It's made everyone step it up in the room. They are the hardest working people in the room."
BEATING A GUY
Earlier this season, the Eagles went to a tournament at Round Valley High School in Eagar.
Roberts was ready to wrestle. No girls from other teams showed up. So she suited up for Flag High and participated in a varsity match against a boy, and it turned out to be one of the day's feature attractions. That's at least how Black remembers it.
"In the first-ever match, you could kind of feel everyone's (thoughts), 'Oh, wait, there's a girl down there wrestling," he said. "She was doing really good. She lost; it was a close match. Both of them were wiped out at the end. And she had another match. By her second match at Round Valley, the stands were crazy. É It was a varsity tournament."
(In most matches this year, the Eagle girls have competed as unattached or junior varsity wrestlers against other girls.)
Overall, the Eagle girls have had success this season. During the Christmas break, they participated in four one-day tournaments in the Valley. Carl and Roberts returned with smiles and a combined total of four medals -- three gold and a silver. The FHS foursome will compete at the girls state championship on Feb. 24 at Deer Valley High School in Glendale. Last year, around 70 girls competed. It's excepted to attract over 100 female participants this year.
"That's probably when it pays off the most, when you get a reward, and you get to stand up on the podium and get your picture taken. That's rewarding," said Roberts, who was contacted by two national powerhouse women's programs last weekend -- Cumberland College of Williamsburg, Ky., and Missouri Valley College of Marshall, Mo.
The returning Eagles -- Carl, Naaktgeboren and Whitehair -- said they'd like to continue wrestling next season.
Certainly, budgetary issues could be a major factor if and when Flagstaff's three high school decide to field separate wrestling teams.
Black said having a girls team would be a better option in the long run because "then it makes it easier for everybody, going to tournaments and ... right now we have special rules because it's so new. We don't want any misunderstandings or any of that."
Understand this: Gone are the days when girls had no interest in wrestling. Or as Giannola said bluntly: "I guarantee you if we said, 'Let's make it a varsity sport (in Arizona),' you'd have 10 girls participating at every school."
And, judging how well things have turned out at Flagstaff High School, that'd be a good thing.
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Local wrestler going global
Buydens on Canadian team for international meet in France
Darren Zary 1/24/04
The StarPhoenix; The Canadian Press
(Megan) Buydens |
Canada gets a glimpse at its wrestling future when Megan Buydens competes in an international meet in Europe next week.
Buydens has been identified by the Canada Amateur Wrestling Association (CAWA) as a prospect for the 2008 Olympic Games.
She is one of 10 wrestlers named to a developmental squad for the Gilbert Schaub international meet in France.
Buydens is a member of the University of Saskatchewan Huskies. Until recently, she had been undefeated in the Canadian Interuniversity Sport ranks.
"It's a nice honour to be recognized by CAWA," said Todd Hinds, coach of the U of S wrestling squad.
"They started this program to develop the next impact athlete on the international scene."
Buydens is the Huskies' team captain.
"She's a fantastic kid," said Hinds. "Good things are happening to our program and she's leading the way. She's got tons of potential."
Buydens joins former Huskie wrestler Viola Yanik on the international scene. Yanik has already qualified for the 2004 Olympics in Greece and won a match Friday in Athens at a competition to prepare the venue for the Games.
Hinds says that Buydens and Yanik are two entirely different athletes, personality-wise.
"Megan is very positive and light-hearted; Viola is quite serious," noted Hinds.
"Megan takes things as they come. She understands the process."
Buydens leaves today for France.
There is no guarantee women's wrestling will stay in Olympic competition at the 2008 Games in Beijing because the International Olympic Committee is under pressure to reduce the number of sports.
So the three-day women's test event this weekend in Athens is being closely watched.
The facility is located about 19 kilometres north of central Athens. The silver disc shaped venue seats 9,300 people.
U.S. coach Terry Steiner called the venue "spectacular."
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Canadians win women's wrestling bronze in Olympic Games tuneup
Canadian Press
Saturday, January 24, 2004
ATHENS (CP) - Lyndsay Belisle of Burnaby, B.C., and Tonya Verbeek of Beamville,Ont., each won bronze medals in an Olympic women's wrestling test event on Saturday.
Belisle upset 2002 world champion Brigitte Wagner of Germany in the 48-kilogram category after losing to eventual champion Chiharu Icho in the semifinals.
Verbeek dominated Germany's Christina Oertli to take third in the 55-kg weight class.
Women's wrestling will be an Olympic event for the first time in Athens.
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KingCo 3A wrestling: MI lightweights do heavy lifting
By Matt Massey 1.23.04
Special to The Seattle Times
MERCER ISLAND — The little people produced big results for the Mercer Island wrestling team. That meant the early matches swung the Islanders' way.
Junior Jean Laschever,only the third female wrestler in Mercer Island history, scored a close win at 112 pounds and freshman Greg Jones broke out of a funk at 119 as the host Islanders topped Liberty 39-27 last night in a match that likely decided the KingCo 3A regular-season championship.
The Islanders improved to 7-0 in league and probably sealed their first KingCo 3A regular-season crown since 1998.
"That's what we figured, that this was for all the marbles," said Mercer Island's Paul Jackson, the school's 27th-year coach. "I didn't have to tell them anything. The learning curve is pretty good here."
Having already beaten all three of its top threats, Mercer Island finishes the regular season at Newport next Wednesday and at Bellevue next Thursday.
After Liberty (5-1) forfeited the first match, Mercer Island took a 9-0 lead when Laschever — the team's only girl — scored a two-point reversal with three seconds left for a 9-7 win over Daniel Hanks at 112.
The Islanders' lead grew to 12-0 when Jones, who weighed in at 109 for the 119 class, outlasted Liberty's Hayes Diemert, 18-16. It was just the second victory of the season for Jones.
"I kept telling him he was going to win a meaningful match for us sometime," Jackson said.
The Patriots didn't win until the sixth bout of the night as Bj Ward, the defending Class 3A state champion at 140, pinned Kyle Agnew in 5:45. The Patriots senior stayed unbeaten at 21-0.
The team outcome was mathematically clinched when John Dixon got an 18-6 major decision at 171 over Liberty's Tyler Hart.
Laschever hadn't practiced since injuring her left calf Saturday at the Island Invitational at Bainbridge. She improved to 13-7 overall by beating Hanks, who finished fourth at the KingCo 3A tournament last season.
"Winning is always fun, but it's a million times better when you know you contributed and get other people fired up," said Laschever, who aspires to wrestle in college. "I knew this was going to be an important match for me, so I was nervous about it.
"There's nothing better than hanging out with these guys. It's great."