First of all I am not tring to add fuel to the fire. I have been hesitant to even comment on here. But, I feel the need to defend my child that just happens to be a girl that wrestles. What has happened is not ANY of the kids' fault. They are stuck in the middle with no control. I know they all wanted to wrestle. They're wrestlers. Here I go with my support of my daughter...

She also has worked her butt off since she started wrestling at 5 in the Olathe Youth Wrestling program. Just like the boys have. That has never been mentioned.

She is wrestling for scholarship opportunities as well for women's wrestling. Which are expensive, private church schools.

While living in California, she wrestled boys and girls. As an 8th grader she won Northern Cal USGWA State tourney. She took 2nd at Cal State tourney. She went on to USA Nationals in OKC and placed 2nd. Behind none other than Cassandra
Herkelman(Iowa).

Her freshman year we moved back to Kansas and was welcomed to the Mill Valley team. She practiced with the varsity but wrestled JV tourneys. She went to the USGWA Kansas State tourney and took first. Beat a junior and a senior both from the Kansas Crusaders girls club. She hurt her shoulder there but went on to USA Nationals OKC and took 8th.

She tore her rotator cuff and spent 9 months rehab. Yes she has dealt with injuries as well just like the boys do. Her rehab kept her out of wrestling her sophmore year up until the last couple of JV tourneys. She didn't do well. Her shoulder strength was not what is was. It also took her out of her pitching position in softball.

That brings us to this year. She has once again battled in practice and worked her butt off to win the varsity spot before any of this happened. Now she is going to State which has been a dream for her just as any other wrestler out there. Some say she doesn't deserve it, some do. I'm not here to argue any opinions. All I know is that she was there ready to wrestle as where the boys. It was unfortunate that they weren't allowed to. I guess we will never know how the outcome might have been. Thats why they wrestle the matches.

Until Kansas gets girl's wrestling like many other states, this is what we have to deal with.

I respect the schools involved, Catholic Church and it's beliefs and values. But please don't sell my daughter short of any hard work and dedication to this awesome sport.

Great comment. Your daughter did nothing wrong and good luck at State. But through the exercise of her right to wrestle, plus the Catholics right to refuse to wrestle a girl, the boy from SMS had his rights taken away (the right to a tounament with a methodoloy of ranking and bracketing the wrestlers based on a set of experiences, physical, training, etc.) Bad situation all around.

KSHSAA needs to seriously address this problem. Expectations of Kansas (State Government funding, local school funding, etc) starting a new girls statewide wrestling program are pretty slim. So, KSHSAA, wrestling community, religious spokesmen: What is the solution?

seems eazy to me.Girls wrestling need to be started.I have an 8 year old girl and see lots of them coming up though the clubs.It gets very hard for them in high school.Streath changes in ladys and men.But the skill time put on the mat dose not.We need to give the ladys the light they are working for.I will bet cash that way more girls will stay in the sport at high school if we do this.

Charles Bradford

I agree Charles.

Oh and by the way...She beat the 4th place qualifier at 106 from SMS 3 weeks ago.

Good post mr. gracy. you did an excellent job of defending your kid which is what a parent should do, you also did it without disparaging anyone else.

this was an unfortunate situation. i, too, think that girls wrestling would be the answer. i also think that's a long shot of happening anytime soon. the whole situation is very unfortunate. i don't agree with the viewpoint that didn't allow the catholic boys to wrestle. i also respect the right of them to have that view point. i don't believe such things should be taken into account when ranking the bracket. i understand a kid from SMS got hosed in a lot of people's minds. this was a tough situation that i don't see a great way out of. hopefully we don't run into this situation again. i'm all for brainstorming about how to solve it if we do--i personally don't see a good solution.

Gracy,

I say congratulations to your daughter. Its obvious she has worked extremely hard and has had to endure a lot of obstacles to get where she is at. She is a great advocate for our sport and great student athlete role model. The more participation wrestling gets the better it is, and I understand how people try to discourage participation in this sport.

My hope is she doesn't let any of this crap (quasi discrimination) bother her and she puts her best effort on the mat next weekend.

Wrestling is the best sport to teach the lessons of life, and provides wrestlers skills later in life to help them succeed albeit a boy or girl. I have no doubt your daughter will be succesful no matter what she does in her life.

Congrats to your daughter she has probably worked as hard as anyone. We need to keep the church and politicians out of sports. Good luck this week at state.

A girl's league is one viable option if there were enough girls to field a proper team.

Another option is to allow the private schools to participate in their own league.

To me putting private schools in there own leage would fix O.The same still remains.Lots of girls stop wrestling when they hit HS.This is the thing that needs fixed.If there is a road people will traval on it. At this piont we have no road.
Look at how many schools have very little teams in wrestling.They do not just say no, they are trying to get bigger.This is the same way for girls.Start small.All in one class.No A6 A5 crap. How many people would love to see tha best in the state wrestle.But the classes stop alot of this.

All you folks with lots of money send it to KSHSAA or your local school district with a note saying you want it used only to to start a state sanctioned girls wrestling program---you are about the only source of revenue for such a program.

I am not sure where it will cost so much more.The girls already are on the mat at the same time.The mats are set up for dules every weeks.Just add 30 mins in the middle for girls.Do it in a round robben.
I just think the world trys to make every thig seem hard and costly.It would not be a new sport.More like an added class.I know some of the smaller schools have been doing a little kids club in breakes at duels.[WHAT A GREAT IDEA] keeps the action moving and gets kids wrestling in there schools be for MS.
Not trying to be a but to you at all WillyM Just dont want the schools to have an eazy way out.

Charles Bradford

I am a little confused here (Trackwrestling has evidently closed down so can not look at the results or brackets. I thought the 3rd and 4th place finishers were from either STA or STA (who took the I.D route), and that the SMS wrestler was eliminated in the backside semifinal match--by a higher ranked/bracketed STA or SJA wrestler---in a match that should have paired you daughter and the 18-16 SMS wrestler.


Whats done is done. Good luck to your daughter at State.

Nuff said. My last comment on this subject.

Bill Mason

I have 5 daughters, and luckily for some of the boys in this state, I did not, nor would I let them, wrestle. I don't like the idea of them being groped (whether it be in a bad way, or a wrestling way) for 2 hours every practice, plus at the tourneys. I also don't like the idea of how many boys quit the sport because they don't want to hear "you got beat by a girl!!!!!!" from their classmates anymore. Not that any of my boys would have the option of quitting, but sadly some kids are allowed to quit. And the sad thing is, if the boy stayed out for wrestling, by the time High School came around, 99.999% of the time, the boy would whip the girls' tail. But by then, it was already too late.

Not all of the time, but some of the time, I see coaches that get overexcited and emphatic when their girl beats the boy. Which makes it that much worse for the boy.

I'm sure I'll get pounced on by some of the women's lib folks for this, but women have plenty of opportunities, and sadly, at the expense of some men. I will tell you for a fact: if a girl wants to get some or all of her school paid for, she can do it. Volleyball, softball, basketball, rowing, gymnastics,bowling, golf, etc etc. YOu do not have to be a superb athlete to find a school that will help you with your college costs, in exchange for particpating in a sport. I'm not saying D1 necessarily, but I have seen countless numbers of girls go on to college scholarships, who were not tremendous athletes or who were not tremendous at the sport they went to college with....This is what Title IX has done for women, and I think it has done a fine job of it. Also keeping in mind, that no matter what a kid or parent tells you, most of the money for college scholarships comes from the ACADEMIC side of it. Do the math, colleges are allowed so many athletic scholarships, and there are always way more kids than there are scholarships. Hence they split the scholarships up amongst the athletes, and use the academic, or grants, or whatever, to fill in the gap.

So if anyone is using the excuse of "I want my girl (or boy) to wrestle so she/he can go to college", try "I want my daughter (or son)to get good grades and a good ACT score, so she/he can go to college". It will get you much farther. But a lot of parents are too egotistical to tell the truth, because saying "my kid got a full ride to wrestle/play football/etc at Joe BLow University" sounds way cooler than saying "my kid is combining his academic money, a Pell Grant, the Sedgwick County Electric cooperative scholarship, his athletic scholarship, and a student loan, to attend Joe BLow university"

But I do totally disagree with the KC Archbishop telling a boy that he can't wrestle a girl, who freely accepted the challenge. It's not like the match is taking place at the motel 6 behind a locked door.......


That is my position on it, and you can have yours.

Thanks
Doug
ps I do understand that there are some kids, like Jarod Jonsohn, whose only hope for college is an athletic scholarship, with a 24/7 tutor, etc......

pss Coach Edison, Lance Engel, and the Ogden boys, don't be mad at me!!!

Doug747,

I'm assuming you wrestled or had a son wrestle. Did it bother you being groped for two hours every practice and at tourneys, or would it bother you to have your son being groped for two hours every day.

If a kid quit because he couldn't handle getting teased for being beat by a girl, I think the kid was going to quit anyway and would use this as an excuse. Quitters are always looking for good excuses.

The SMS kid she beat 3 weeks ago at 113 is the 106 4th place qualifier at regional.

In California they held the boys and girls tournaments together during the season. They had different brackets and shared the mats. No extra cost there. Maybe a little time. They all practiced together with the same coach. The only difference was when it came to sectionals and state. The girls had their own and the boys had their own at different locations. Granted California is a big state with a lot of girls. They didn't have a girls California High School Sanctioned state tourney until 2011 I believe. But like the comment earlier, there was a road paved for them to get that done.

I would love to see Kansas adopt 4 or 5 girl only weight classes. I think we would get much more participation from females if they knew they would be competing against other girls. It takes a special kind of female to battle with the boys knowing the challenges they will face.

I definitely believe that young women can benefit from the life lessons our sport provides just as well as the young men, and we should encourage them to pursue it for no other reason than more people will understand and respect what our sport has to offer.

As the high school coach of Ms. Revelle, I can tell you in practice if you didn't bring your A game, you were going to take a beating!

Shawn Dolezilek
Jefferson West

I 100% agree... You could hold the state championships at the same time on 1 or 2 mats from the beginning and go from there. Use the olympic weights as a starting point.

I was thinking about this the other day as well and thought that it would be awesome! It would alleviate the stress from everybody but mostly the female participants!

Ms. Revelle was a beast... we have a history of tough girls from our state. One of the originals being Cheryl Meyers (Now Bergman).

I would back any proposal for that!

You didn't read the whole post. I said "sadly, some kids are given the option of quitting". My kids don't have that option, nor did I.

And no, I don't mind my sons being groped. But I don't want my daughters groped. Your head is in the sand if you think it is the same thing.........I've made my daughter go back in the house and change when she wore something too revealing.

Did I not say this was my opinion, and that you could have yours?