Forging Our Path in a Sport Where Women Were an Afterthought
When I was young, it wasn’t common to see a girl in wrestling shoes, not forced into them by an older brother or a dad with no sons, but rather encouraged to try them on by her mother. My mom was one of three girls who wrestled in Connecticut when she was in high school. I didn’t realize when I was young how fortunate I am to have grown up with her in my corner. As I’ve gotten older, my mom’s influence has prompted my passion, not just for the sport itself, but for promoting its growth as well.
Part of this growth is carving out spaces just for women and girls. It has been proven time and time again that when girls have the coaches, the mat space, tournaments, events, gear, and training specified for them, they can flourish. My mom helped me believe I can take up space in this sport and, more importantly, carve out spaces for the girls who come after me. This will be the cornerstone of allowing women’s wrestling to grow beyond what was once believed possible.
Early Wrestling Years
Growing up, I struggled to form my own identity on the mat. Being in the gender minority, I stuck out like a sore thumb. I realized early on that people viewed me differently after finding out I wrestled. It made me unique; more unique than the boys who laced up the same Matflexes as I every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday night, and more unique than the other girls on my soccer team (a phase which did not stand the test of time). I wasn’t prepared to stand out like this. I felt such a strong connection to the sport and was eager to belong; I thought of wrestlers as the toughest breed on the planet, and I wanted that to be me. But no matter how much I wanted it, and as accepting as most people were toward me, I never fit in with my male teammates.
People began attributing wrestling to part of my identity while I was still feeling like an outsider on the mat. I began to feel pressure to live up to the title “wrestler,” which I hadn’t yet felt I’d earned. I tried to mold myself into what I thought a wrestler was meant to be. The only authority figures I had (other than my mom) were men: the greatest success I witnessed belonged to male wrestlers, every idol my teammates presented me with in the sport was a man, and every program they dreamt of didn’t have a place for women. I was conditioned to believe that wrestling and masculinity were inextricable from one another, and thus subconsciously began neglecting anything feminine out of fear that it’d make me less of a wrestler. I believed that my femininity would hold me back from achieving success in the sport.
Disparity
I can’t say there was a singular moment when I realized that girls aren’t equal in wrestling, just like there wasn’t one moment when I realized being a woman in this world meant I often wouldn’t be heard or respected or believed. It was more of a culmination of events, conversations, experiences, and revelations.
My mom and I spent a lot of time alone in the car together, driving to and from practices, tournaments, and clinics, once all around the state, now around the country. One of these car rides, I told her, “Mom, I wish I were born a boy.” As a middle schooler, I didn’t understand the weight that statement carried. But I vividly remember how quickly it brought my mother to near tears. I often think about how hard it must be as a mother to watch your daughter face the same sort of adversity and lack of equality as you once did.
The number of times we (being girls) were pushed aside, ignored, and disregarded on the mat is painfully unsurprising now. But as a wide-eyed girl who still believed in a universal and dominant goodness of people, I struggled to understand why my accomplishments were never as important, why my mats were in the corner, and why my tournaments were in a suckier venue. For so long, I didn’t think my awards were worth anything if they were from a girls' bracket, a difficult belief to hold as the playing field became exponentially uneven once puberty hit.
I’ve wrestled with reconfiguring my own identity; deciphering which parts of myself are me and which parts were curated based on a misconstrued idea of a wrestler. I began making an effort to understand the landscape of women's wrestling. I came to the conclusion that I wanted to fight for equality on the mat, but I didn’t even know what that was supposed to look like.
Carving out our Space
I’ve traveled out to Fargo, North Dakota, for the Marine Corps Cadet and Junior Nationals four times. In my third year, when it was announced we’d separate from the boys in our travel and competition, I was hesitant. I’d only ever known competition being side by side with the boys, not just at Fargo, but through nearly all my wrestling experience. I was afraid the women’s national tournament would be taken less seriously on its own.
The result of the change was better than I’d ever imagined. It was my first time experiencing undivided attention from our coaches and the audience. Walking into the Fargo Dome that year felt like the first time. I’d never felt like the mats belonged to me before. The scales, the scoreboards, the CT makeshift conference room-turned-wrestling room, the Texas Roadhouse down the way, hell, for the first time, I felt like the sport of wrestling belonged to us. If we wanted to hook up Just Dance to sweat off the last couple of pounds, we could, and we did. We were uncoordinated and unorganized, but our hectic dancing was colored with giggles and laughs. Uninterrupted by our male teammates, we were able to make wrestling something feminine, something that molded itself to us rather than the other way around.
Conclusion
I could go on and on about how women’s and men’s wrestling can complement and uplift each other, and that greater growth for both will come through collaboration. I believe I’m a better wrestler thanks to over a decade of wrestling coed for so many reasons, but the time of shoving girls in the corner is over. I’ve watched girls' wrestling evolve; we're not just fighting to step on a mat, we’re fighting for the mat. I wrestle in the center circle of every wrestling mat at coed practices, whether it’s my first time on that mat or if it's the one I wrestle on five times a week. It’s important to physically take up space too. Growing up, I only ever saw boys in that center spot, and I constantly found myself and other girls in the corner or on the edge.
Representation matters. The girls who come after me shouldn’t believe that wrestling has to be masculine. Femininity and fierceness don’t contradict, and success in wrestling isn’t inextricable with masculinity. Girls should grow up knowing this. It isn’t something that should have to be discovered. Our sport is big enough now that girls can and will take up space when it’s provided. Wrestling can be anything you want it to be. It molds itself to us. By lacing your shoes and stepping on the mat, you are a wrestler, regardless of anything else: girl or boy, a hundred pounds or a hundred kilograms, seven years old or seventy. You define what a wrestler is, as do we all.
