“Aye, There’s the Rub!”

There was a point in time where telling somebody that they wrestle like a girl would be considered a put-down. 

Once upon a time, in pre-Title IX days, all young women could aspire to was to be a cheerleader or play intramural sports in many parts of my country. As time went on, it became clear that young women also wanted to do physical, contact-sports like martial arts, boxing, rugby…and wrestling. Many young women are not content with sports like swimming or cross-country. I am sure that is somebody can figure out a way to do fast pitch softball with hand grenades, there are going to be some women game to try that sport out, too.

History was made in the past week when a high school sophomore named Elissa Reinsma became the first young woman to qualify for the Minnesota State Wrestling Tournament in Saint Paul. 

This is a story that I had meant to write about earlier in the week, but my schedule has been so insane, I have not had a chance to blog in a few days. Thanks to being home sick today, I was able to give it some thought. 

In a perfect world, it would be great if young women would be able to wrestle other young women-but we do not live in a perfect athletic world. There are not enough numbers of young women who want to wrestle for there to be separate women’s teams at American high schools. What this means that if a young woman really wants to wrestle, they have to go out for the team and wrestle boys. I know there are a lot of opinions on the subject. There are concerns because of the physical and up-close nature of the sport, that some of the holds would be considered indecent. There are people who worry about the psyche of boys who get beat by a girl or a young woman. I think there is some validity to the concerns, but at the end of the day, I don’t think it is right to prevent young women or girls from wrestling. 

 I think boys-and their dads- better get used to the idea that they are going to have to compete for jobs and leadership roles against women. Women also are branching out into jobs that once upon a time were considered “Men’s jobs”, like in construction, engineering and medicine.(In fact, for the last several years, the majority of students at the University of Minnesota Medical school have been women)

I think with me being a man who is also a nurse (Do NOT call me a “Male Nurse”-my Minnesota State Nursing License and my Nursing School diploma make no mention of my gender) in a profession that is dominated by women gives me a little more perspective compared to the average person in terms of gender roles and stereotypes-I still run into people who think men have NO place in bedside nursing, and that has come from women in my profession, so I have  a pretty good idea what miss Reinsma has had to contend with.  I also wrestled in high school and have a brother who was 4th in the State of Minnesota Class AA tournament back in 1978. So believe me, I have heard some very heated words about this.

The young woman from Fulda, Minnesota has created a watershed moment in the sport of wrestling in my home state. She ended up losing her two matches at the State tournament. But by qualifying on her own hard work, grit and sweat-she did not qualify because of political correctness, or quotas. This young woman did it the hard way AND the correct way: She EARNED it. I don’t know how you can begrudge this young woman her success.