Girls hit the mats: while more girls are taking up wrestling, in many high schools they must practice with--and compete against--boys.Jessica Bennett Jessica Bennett1 is a fictional character on NBC's daytime drama Passions. Jessica has been played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead (July 5, 1999 - March 15, 2000), Jade Harlow (March 16, 2000 - July 8, 2003) and Danica Stewart (July 10, 2003 - present). , a sophomore at Montville High School Montville High School may be:
Wrestling has helped build her confidence, she says, challenging both her body and her mind. Gifts like Bennett are slowly moving into the mainstream. Nationwide, about 5,000 high school gifts wrestled last year (compared with 250,000 boys)--nearly five times as many as a decade ago. But in many schools, gifts who want to wrestle must practice with, and compete against, boys. It's a Catch-22 situation: Without enough girls, there can't be gifts' teams, and without gifts' teams, wrestling can't attract that many gifts. The legal status of coed wrestling is not entirely clear, but in a few scattered cases, courts have ruled that if there is no gifts' team for them, gifts should be able to join boys' teams. Some athletic directors, however, have found ways to prevent girls from joining their teams. FORFEITS Critics say that for boys, coed wrestling is disconcerting dis·con·cert tr.v. dis·con·cert·ed, dis·con·cert·ing, dis·con·certs 1. To upset the self-possession of; ruffle. See Synonyms at embarrass. 2. . "If he beats her, he was supposed to," says Roger Shaw, women's director for USA Wrestling USA Wrestling (formerly known as the United States Wrestling Federation and as the United States Wrestling Association) is the organization that currently governs freestyle wrestling and Greco-Roman wrestling in the United States. Connecticut. "And if he doesn't, he's dead meat." Occasionally, boys forfeit rather than wrestle a girl, as happened at an exhibition match this season at Dobbs Ferry Dobbs Ferry, village (1990 pop. 9,940), Westchester co., SE N.Y., on the Hudson River, a suburb of New York City; inc. 1873. It is mostly residential but has light industries and research facilities. High School in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , leaving Sophia Veiras, a sophomore, with no one to wrestle. "It's always a little intimidating for the boys at first," says Jamie Block, Dobbs Ferry's wrestling coach. "They're raised not to do this to a girl." There is also parental resistance. Mothers of gift wrestlers say they worry about the cauliflower ears, broken noses, and concussions. Advocates say girls' wrestling is poised to take off, now that women's wrestling is an Olympic sport and, on some campuses, a college sport. To Nick Perry, a Montville senior who often wrestles Jessica Bennett at practice, her gender isn't an issue. "She's good," he says. "She's the one on the team who makes the most kids cry." Tamar Lewin covers education for The Times; additional reporting by Elizabeth Mayer Elizabeth Mayer (1884 - 1970), German-born American translator and editor, closely associated with W. H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, and other writers and musicians. In the 1940s her homes in Long Island and New York served as an artistic salon for many emigré writers. . |
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