An unblushing California schoolgirl handles groping boys with takedowns, not putdowns.

Hutchinson Public Library
People Weekly, March 10, 1986

(America Morris) Ron Arias.

Gleaming with sweat from her pre- match warm-up exercises,
16-yeai-old America Morris of San Diego, Calif. paces the
perimeter of the wrestling mat, psyching herself into a state of
controlled fury. As she and her opponent square off, she is
oblivio is to every distraction. All that matters now for the
Claireniont High School sophomore is contact, the collision of
bodies, the straining of limbs, move and countermove. For
Morris, exhilaration comes only with victory, which she
achieved earlier this season by pinning Madison High School's
Russell Cain, 15, for the mandatory two-second count. Thus did
America Morris -- affectionately dubbed "studdette" by her
boyfriend -- become, in all likelihood, the first girl in
Califoriia, if not the entire U.S., ever to pin a boy in a high
school varsity match.

"I jumped up real high," she recalls. "Everyone crowded around
and shook my hand. Even people on the Madison team were
cheering. Then Russell came over and I just gave him a hug. I
kind of felt bad, not because I pinned him but because of the
aftermath, like his getting teased." Cain, who has since had to
endure an excess of static from those of his acquaintance who
were not pinned by a girl, says he "froze" when the referee blew
the whistle to start the match. "I mistakenly touched her breast,"
he says. "I didn't know what to do. I was in dream time. After
that I was really embarrassed.... But I'm not self-conscious
now. I Learned my lesson."

Morris' coach Jerry Knuppel maintains, reasonably, that
touching is part of the sport and shouldn't disturb a wrestler's
concentration. "Her breast," he says, "is part of her chest, and a
chest hoId is appropriate." America's boyfriend, Derek
Magdalik, 18, considers Cain's alleged reluctance to grope
nothing more than "a well-played excuse for losing." Morris
herself admits with a giggle that in the heat of a match it would
be perfectly acceptable to grab a guy between the legs. "I'm not

going to do it intentionally," she says. "I don't think about it, al-
though I know they think about it. Before they wrestle, you can
hear them whisper, 'Grab her here and there, do this, do that.'
But I don't want to wrestle a guy with that kind of intention be-
cause then it's not wrestling, it's not a sport."

Coach Knuppel believes Morris is in a no-win situation. "If she
loses," he says, "it's because she's a girl. If she wins, it's
assumed she's wrestled a weaker, underskilled wrestler." But at
5 ft. 5 in. and 107 pounds, Morris outweighed Cain by only two
pounds and was ahead on points, 9-4, when she pinned him.
Admittedly the trim, blond first-year varsity wrestler has so far
won only this once when the other team has been able to field a
boy in her weight class. Still, she is nobody's idea of a
pushover. Teammate Joseph Da mirjian, the school's top
wrestler in the 175-pound class, notes, "America learns fast.
She's a tough girl."

More than the bruises, the grueling daily practices and the
snickering gawkers, Morris'toughest challenge may have been
coping with the loss of her long hair, which had to be lopped off
befor.- she could wrestle. At her first match she had it tied back
with a rubber band. "Right there on the spot," she says, "they got
out the surgical scissors and cut a good three inches." Now her
mother, Delia, a beautician who is divorced from America's
father, a dentist, gives her designer cuts more to her liking.

Morris says she started wrestling last November after getting to
know some other wrestlers in a conditioning class. Her previous
experience of hand-to-hand combat was confined to familial
struggles with three older half brothers, her mother's sons by a
first marriage. Today, while professing a love of high heels and
expensive dresses, she continues her living room workouts with
her 6- foot, 170-pound boyfriend. "I'm like a guinea pig," Mag
dalik says. "She'll try to put moves on me, but she can never pin
me." "No?" challenges Morris. "What did you call that last
night""