FEMALE WRESTLERS

[gumbi1031]

To give you guys a feel for how a real female athlete in our sport can compete...

Caitlyn McCracken at Northwest High is in her second year on the team. She has been wrestling 119, 125, and 130 due to the weight management system. She can't break the line-up at 119 or 125, but offered to wrestle up to fill a gap at 130. That's tough. None of our other "little guys" wanted the challenge. On the 29th she will be allowed to be down at 112. She has been cutting weight all season to get there. When she does, I'm betting that she will win her spot in the starting line-up...in front of two males. She doesn't win half of her matches, but she has beaten some guys, and always gives the "average" fellows fits. I don't think girls should be denied the right to have a separate female division, but Caitlyn's not complaining.

 

Just working harder than the next guy.

[rigger101]

To give you guys a feel for how a real female athlete in our sport can compete...

Caitlyn McCracken at Northwest High is in her second year on the team.  She has been wrestling 119, 125, and 130 due to the weight management system.  She can't break the line-up at 119 or 125, but offered to wrestle up to fill a gap at 130.  That's tough.  None of our other "little guys" wanted the challenge.  On the 29th she will be allowed to be down at 112.  She has been cutting weight all season to get there.  When she does, I'm betting that she will win her spot in the starting line-up...in front of two males.  She doesn't win half of her matches, but she has beaten some guys, and always gives the "average" fellows fits.  I don't think girls should be denied the right to have a separate female division, but Caitlyn's not complaining.

 

Just working harder than the next guy.

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So she is giving up 15+ lbs per match? Wow, that's tuff! I don't think Tex would want any of his guys to give up that much and get on the mat.

She must have some really big ba##s. No , that dosn't apply it must be heart!

Will she have the opportunity to face Hope Proctor from Cookeville? Sounds like it would be a good match.

Edited December 22, 2004 by rigger101

[texas23]

So she is giving up 15+ lbs per match?  Wow, that's tuff!  I don't think Tex would want any of his guys to give up that much and get on the mat.

She must have some really big ba##s.  No , that dosn't apply it must be heart!

Will she have the opportunity to face Hope Proctor from Cookeville?  Sounds like it would be a good match.

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I don't have any guys under me, but she seems to be willing to help her team any way she can. I like that.

[rigger101]

I don't have any guys under me, but she seems to be willing to help her team any way she can.  I like that.

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Good Post!

[COMEGETSOME07]

Northeast also has a 215 Lb. girl 3rd year.  I feel that after 119 lb. the young ladies are at a serious disadvantage against the young men.  The unfortunate thing is this young lady and the one from Cumberland Co. cannot even compete outside of High school wrestling because there is no weight class for them after they their senior year.  from my research only one class 16-18 yr. old has that division. Not college nor international.  Unfortunate since this female would probably do very well against other women.  (She would do weel against other chics too)

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The girls name is Laura Brant (I think). I wrestled at Northeast Last year with her and she's really into wrestling and is really commited to it.

[gumbi1031]

I doubt that McCracken will see Proctor this season. I don't think our schedule ever crosses Cookeville's, but it would be fun to watch. To me, a competitor is a competitor, regardless of sex. That is what sport is all about.

[FES]

You should check out the 215/275 and 135 at Houston. Some good lookin girls at that too.

[usfjim]

You should check out the 215/275 and 135 at Houston. Some good lookin girls at that too.

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so fes, are you saying the mustang ranch houses some fine fillies?

[tofer_1]

The girls name is Laura Brant (I think). I wrestled at Northeast Last year with her and she's really into wrestling and is really commited to it.

825495179[/snapback]

yes thats her, comegetsome what weight did you wrestle @ NEHS or at least do you know the *$&(%*eagle?

[Sommers]

I doubt that McCracken will see Proctor this season.  I don't think our schedule ever crosses Cookeville's, but it would be fun to watch.  To me, a competitor is a competitor, regardless of sex.  That is what sport is all about.

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Here's something that may help with perspective...

 

When You Turn 14, No Wrestling With Boys

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Sorry, Tara, When You Turn 14, No Wrestling With Boys By NED MARTEL New York Times, December 14, 2004

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Teenage boys' pinning down teenage girls is considered unsportsmanlike conduct, and vice versa. Or so they say in Texas, where the prohibition of coed wrestling at the high school level has inspired "Girl Wrestler." It will be shown tonight on most PBS stations.

 

As it follows the headstrong, body-conscious Tara Neal through the advent of her adolescence in 2001, this cluttered but heartfelt documentary almost misses its most salient point about adults guiding teenagers through gender identification.

 

While the boys carefully say they fear hurting a female opponent, their moves in such matches suggest otherwise. Tara endures fat lips, scrapes and even hair pulling.

 

The actual unspoken issue seems to be fear of arousal. Why else would the prohibition begin at age 14, when just before puberty, coed wrestling is deemed legit? (Texas and Hawaii are the only states that prohibit girls from wrestling with boys at the high school level.)

 

These boys have more sexual energy than outlets, and they form a tight, affectionate cabal when barring Tara from their ranks. When the boys are just being boys, they subject one another to straddling maneuvers that they call "the Honeymooner" or worse. The film captures a few Bruce Weber-worthy rubdowns and some strangely suggestive talk among the boys. "I start thinking that it's more than wrestling," Tara observes, perplexed by the hostility she encounters in the all-male subculture.

 

That's not to say that particular subculture is necessarily based on homosexual impulses. Instead, while hormones addle young minds, such sports impose a strict system of reinforced gender roles and rankings within them - a point the film suggests but doesn't quite nail down. A girl in the male hierarchy apparently messes with the delicate order. "If you lose to a girl, you walk out of the gym, you walk out of the stadium," one boy testifies. "You don't come back either."

 

Tara herself is not in the game for the body contact, although she does turn gleeful when one boy asks her out. Instead she is building corporal agility and mental sharpness in competitions long open only to boys. Plus she's assembling her own sense of how females should compete, since she has so few role models in her sport. "I try to make myself angry, so I can get aggressive, because I always want to be nice. I don't want to hurt anyone," she says. "It makes me feel like I control something."

 

Her parents' divorce has agitated her young mind, and emotional hurt is clearly a motivator. So too are the taunts of her dad, who is super-devoted as a chauffeur-cheerleader-coach but then derides her during one tense weigh-in. "I'm the son my dad never had because my brother isn't really into sports," Tara explains with obvious pride.

 

When not stuck in fluorescent-lighted gyms, the documentary records Tara prowling the mall, discussing diets with other girls and engaging in hair experimentation. It is not clear whether the filmmaker or Tara herself is making the effort to prove her girly bona fides. Still, you will believe Tara when she hopes aloud that sportswear companies will one day issue a pink singlet.

 

Like MTV's gripping "True Life" documentaries, the camera captures genuine moments just by showing up. The young girl waits in an autograph line to meet her Olympic hero, only to get some face-to-face discouragement about the future of boy-girl wrestling. Tara adjusts her outlook: "O.K., so I don't look up to him as much as I used to now."

 

The filmmaker, Diane Zander, could have spent more time on the confusing arousal issue, although she does find one father of another girl wrestler who suggests that the ban on teenage coed wrestling is silly considering how backseat grappling on Lovers Lane gets condoned. There's an intermittent, sometimes contradictory discussion of Title IX, and that federal mandate to increase spending on women's sports in public schools may have led some administrators to abandon less revenue-generating teams altogether. Thus Tara and others like her are scapegoats to some and pioneers to others.

 

Ultimately, the film is more adept at documenting Tara's complexities than her sport's. In one small sequence Tara is heard in voice-over discussing her frustrations with her dad, while the camera shows her, in an all-girl chorus, practicing a glum rendition of "You Don't Own Me."

 

'Independent Lens: Girl Wrestler' will be broadcast nationwide on the PBS series INDEPENDENT LENS --check local listings...www.pbs.org/independentlens/girlwrestler/

 

Diane Zander, producer, director and cinematographer; Joanna Rabiger, editor; Janet Staiger, Ellen Spiro and Paul Stekler, advisers; Susan Sarandon, host.

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Edited by: tennwrestling at: 12/13/04 10:15 pm

 

tennwrestling

administrator

(12/13/04 10:12 pm)

Reply Gitls wrestling....It's not a recent phenomenon

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NPT -

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Even though women wrestling may seem like a recent phenomenon, girls and women have actually been wrestling since ancient times. Early inscriptions suggest that Spartan girls wrestled during Roman and Byzantine rule. In African tribes, girls often wrestled as part of their ritual initiation into womanhood. Among the Yala of Nigeria and the Njabi of Congo, men and women wrestled one another. In the Diola tribe of Gambia, adolescent boys and girls wrestled, but not against one another. The male champion often married the female champion.

 

In the thirteenth century, Tahitian priests introduced the huna religion in Hawaii, which involved various ritual martial art practices. Working class men and women participated in hand-to-hand combat such as boxing and wrestling in games known as mokomoko.

 

In the middle and late nineteenth century, Parisian artists sketched local women wrestlers and photographed them in their costumes. In the early twentieth century, American women wrestled against one another in public demonstrations and bouts for entertainment. These displays were the predecessors of modern-day televised “entertainment wrestling” such as WOW (Women of Wrestling) and GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling)—franchises that have given women’s wrestling an undeservedly bad reputation as a circus-like spectacle full of mud and Jello.

 

THE FACTS -

 

There now are about 3,500 girls who compete in wrestling nationally on the high school level, compared to about 250,000 boys.

 

Texas leads the nation in the number of girls who compete in high school wrestling. 941 girls are wrestling at Texas high schools, while 121 schools in the state have girls’ wrestling teams.

 

In 1987, only nine nations participated in the first Women’s World Wresting Championships. In 2003, 41 countries participated.

 

Wrestlers from 54 nations attended the women’s qualification events for the 2004 Summer Olympics, with 21 nations qualifying.

[Sommers]

As some may conclude from reading all of this, perhaps TN could consider promoting Female vs. Female competitions, at least when possible. Sort of like, JV matches. We actually had a full JV match against Clarksville and several matches at the Tullahoma duals. If this JV approach was also promoted and offered for girls only at several schools, our great female athletes could have plenty of opportunities to wrestle each other.

 

I wonder if Legman has an opinion on this? Why not your girls? Why not Gables? B-ball enough? Is it the wife's idea or more dad's? We've never discussed previously. I let my girls help with team affairs and they are fine with that, so no issue here.

 

soms

Edited December 28, 2004 by Sommers

[rigger101]

As some may conclude from reading all of this, perhaps TN could consider promoting Female vs. Female competitions, at least when possible.  Sort of like, JV matches.  We actually had a full JV match against Clarksville and several matches at the Tullahoma duals.  If this JV approach was also promoted and offered for girls only at several schools, our great female athletes could have plenty of opportunities to wrestle each other.

 

I wonder if Legman has an opinion on this?  Why not your girls?  Why not Gables? B-ball enough? Is it the wife's idea or more dad's?  We've never discussed previously.  I let my girls help with team affairs and they are fine with that, so no issue here.

 

soms

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I thought I read on a prior post that all your wrestlers were girls.

Just having fun!