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Girls Who Want to Join the Team Find a Welcome Mat
A pair of Bethesda-Chevy Chase sophomores, Judy Bokingo, in black, and Patty Romaine are among the five girls on the team this year. "It's not a big deal anymore," said Kent Bailo, the director of the United States Girls' Wrestling Association. But some coaches have doubts about having girls on the boys' team.
(Photos By Toni L. Sandys -- The Washington Post)
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Mount Hebron senior Cindy Heiser came out for the team to stay in shape for lacrosse. Bethesda-Chevy Chase sophomore Brenda Lopez originally just wanted to find something to relieve her stress.
Her coach, Bob Bunting, told Lopez to watch a wrestling tournament featuring Maroulis before coming out for the team. From that day on, Lopez set a goal of dropping enough weight to get to Maroulis's class.
"I don't want to seem like a stalker," Lopez said, "but she is amazing."
Maroulis placed sixth in the 112-pound division at the state tournament last season as a freshman. Magruder Coach Max Sartoph said young girls ask Maroulis for autographs after her matches. Woody's mother, Mary, told her daughter at age 11 that she would have to start to be a role model. Last summer, Woody became the first American wrestler, male or female, to win a junior world championship.
Gassman became the first girl to qualify for the Virginia Group AAA meet.
While Maroulis and Woody have impressed the wrestling community, when it comes to the swarm of girls who have been inspired by them, coaches' reactions are more tempered.
Wheaton Coach Dave Moquim, whose 40-year tenure at the school makes him one of the area's deans of high school wrestling, has two girls on his junior varsity team. Both are seniors, and he said both work extremely hard but aren't helping him build a program.
"It's like having a kid in AP classes who is not qualified to be in there and doesn't do well on the tests," Moquim said. "They're challenging themselves, but they are taking away from our teaching abilities."
As with every other coach and wrestler, a girl who works hard every day in practice earns Moquim's respect. So what if they all work hard but still can't make varsity?
"Well, then, maybe they should form girls' teams and have girls' coaches," Moquim said.
That's an option that might not be too far away. Bailo, who oversees about 5,000 girls wrestling in tournaments in 35 states, said he feels that every state will have girls' high school wrestling teams in 10 years. Three states (Hawaii, Texas and Washington) have high school girls' wrestling teams and championships, and four colleges (the University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky, Pacific University in Oregon, Missouri Valley College in Missouri and Menlo College in California) fund women's wrestling. Women's wrestling also debuted at the 2004 Athens Olympics, a fact that several coaches and administrators said fueled interest in the sport.
But Jim Mehan, who has been on the Maryland state wrestling committee since the mid-1980s, said adding girls' wrestling teams is "way down on the list," mainly because there aren't enough girls participating yet and they aren't competitive enough to take boys' roster spots.
