SPORTS Brother and Sister Wrestlers on West High Team Mattie Neilsen & Ian Nielsen.
Girls Wrestling Boys Progressive wrestling goes to the mat
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s a West High School wrestling coach, I coached female wrestlers on its mostly male teams for decades. Early on, I concluded that there were really no concerns about mixing the sexes on the mat. Wrestling was wrestling, and all participants wanted to gain something from the toughest high school sport in America. In my first article ever published, titled “Girls Wrestling the Boys”, I attempted to promote female wrestlers joining male teams, especially here in conservative Utah. It was published on a then-new Internet. My rationale was that if enough girls could join pri-
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marily boys’ teams, they could finally spin off to form their own all-female high school teams to compete in their own state championships. Progressive California and conservative Texas had already done so. After graduating from West as a wrestler, I joined the Utah State University Wrestling Team for four years. This helped fund my college education through a small athletic scholarship. Shortly after graduating, the federal Title Nine act mandated equality between men’s and women’s sports. This devastated longtime male wrestling programs in most of America’s univer-
PHOTOS BY DAN POTTS
By Dan Potts
