I enjoy the online version of the Deseret News, particularly the Comment Sections. It gives us readers a chance to voice our opinions on the news of the day.
I couldn't wait to see what would be said about the girl wrestler in Iowa who won her first match at the state meet by forfeit, as the boy wrestler refused to compete citing moral grounds. Of course, there was great debate whether girls should be wrestling, but what I found more interesting was just how uninformed many of the commenters were.
One such comment that caught my eye immediately was "Shame on Iowa for letting this happen..." It sort of suggested that here in Utah this would never happen. I figure the allusion the commenter was making was this would never happen in Utah as we have higher moral standards than Iowa.
Well, for those opponents of allowing females to compete in wrestling, Utah doesn't have any moral high ground on the Hawkeye state. We've had girls competing in wrestling since the early 1990's, and I should know. I was an assistant coach at West HS when we had the first female wrestler to compete in a high school wrestling match. The next year we had two girls on our team. Then while at Provo High School as the head coach, I coached two more girls. And yes, there was controversy inside and outside of our wrestling program about it all. And yes, a few of their opponents did forfeit to them.
Other comments about "what kind of girls would wrestle?" also had me chuckling a bit. Well, the four I personally coached grew up just fine. All of them are solid citizens. All of them got married and from all accounts doing very well in life. Two of them attended BYU, one on a Presidential scholarship. This young lady even wrote in her scholarship application how wrestling changed her life. She never won a match, scored maybe one point the entire season, got plenty of derision from a lot of people, but in the end I think what she went through made her a successful person. At least she thought so. From what I have gathered following this particular story in Iowa, it sounds like this young woman is a well grounded young woman.
I did ask them all why they wanted to wrestle even when a good share of their teammates gave them a difficult time. One told me that she just wanted to be an athlete and represent our school. She couldn't swim, she wasn't good enough to make the basketball team, so she came out for wrestling because she heard that there were no cuts unless you broke team rules. Interestingly enough, I can't ever remember any of these girls missing practice, certainly not without a good reason. And I also admit only one of the four I personally coached ever won a match.
Now the most successful girl in Utah prep wrestling history is Candace Workman. Workman wrestled 103 pounds for Uintah and took second in state in 2008. Predictably, she got a great deal of media attention, most of it positive touting her accomplishments.
However, the media attention given to this subject is sometimes quite annoying as a coach. When we had our first girl wrestler at West HS, we also had an All-American wrestler on the team and our team took second in state that year placing ten wrestlers in the state tournament. Understandably, many were resentful that in most cases when the media covered West HS wrestling it was to do a story on our female wrestlers rather than on any of our other accomplished wrestlers or the team in general. But that is the nature of the media--they love to celebrate the sensational. It was hard sometimes with all the media swirling about to concentrate on our larger team goals. By the time I became a head coach at Provo HS, girls wrestling on high school teams wasn't all that unique and the media circus was tempered a bit.
Workman changed that (for a while) because she was so accomplished. She was indeed a pioneer for girls in the sport, not just in Utah but nationally. This year Kailsy Hatch placed third in state for Altamont High School, also at 103 pounds. Probably because of Workman's ability to break this barrier (of placing in state), there wasn't as much media attention.
So what makes this story in Iowa unique? Perhaps two things.
It was the first time girls had qualified for the Iowa state wrestling tournament. I say girls (plural) because actually two qualified for state. But the second part of the story was that a male competitor chose to forfeit to one of them. And the boy in the story by all accounts would have easily won the match and was a serious contender for the state title in his weight. But he gave all that up to stand on moral principle.
I actually don't have any problem with that actually. When the girls came out for the team I felt as a coach I couldn't force others to wrestle with them. I will admit that it wasn't the easiest thing to deal with as a coach. I won't pretend that I handled the challenges of it all perfectly. It was a learning process for all involved in the program. I think over time the girls earned the respect of even their harshest of critics, which most often was their own teammates.
To be honest, I wish female wrestlers had their own teams and competitions. Texas and Hawaii actually have viable wrestling programs and state sanctioned competitions for girls. But as in Utah, Iowa does not have enough female participants to make this a viable alternative. Perhaps this will change over time.
My intention with this article is to give some historical backdrop and perspective to the subject and what has actually happened right here in Utah. It is indeed a controversial and emotional issue. But for those to profess that this hasn't happened in Utah (because of some perceived moral high ground that forbids it), well as you can see, female wrestlers have been taking the mats for quite some time.
Preece taught and coached wrestling at West HS from 1989-1994 and was the head coach at Provo HS from 1994-2006. He was the 2005-06 National Wrestling Coaches Association Coach of the Year in 2005-06 for Utah and currently is a freelance prep writer.