It's awesome that we're seeing such a large turnout of girls at the high school level, but I still see comparatively small numbers at the junior high and USA tournament levels.

The general skill level of the girls at state is still lower than the general skill levels of the boys... but that's to be expected right now. Girls wrestling is still very young and you won't start seeing equivalent general skill until we have more that start at a young age.

For example, I refereed for a match at Einstein Middle School last Thursday, and three girls competed, gaining two wins. Most of the kids there were brand new, so when you gave equivalent experience, the playing field was actually pretty level.

Don, you and I have discussed the different techniques when wrestling against girls over e-mail, and we both know that while many aspects are similar, there are a lot of differences, too. Imagine if B-E could start preparing girls to face other girls at a younger age (say, junior high). They'd be downright dominant at state! I'm personally rooting for that to eventually happen.

There's a girl named Sabrina (can't remember the last name) who's going to go to Eastlake next year, and she gave our 103 pounder (who went to state) a good match at a WWKWL exhibition. I think our boy won by 1 or 2, but still, it goes to show what a girl with several years of experience can do, and she's hasn't had a year of high school experience yet.

Just for fun, let's pretend that the rules for girls and boys volleyball were equal (they're not, notably due to net height). I remember doing volleyball in PE, and the volleyball girls were kicking @$$ and taking names. If you were to field an all-boys team (assuming almost none started before high school) and being allowed to enter the girls' draw, what would the odds of them winning state be? What would be the odds of them qualifying for state?

Honestly, not that good on either count. As of right now, there are going to be some examples where some girls qualify for state mostly because the numbers in their region and weight class do not yet support thinning out the weaker wrestlers. However, that's what the first two rounds of state are for

What's happening now is the foundations are being laid for future success of the sport.

Now, for the potential cons.

A long time ago (a year or two, maybe?), I argued with TRV on the other board about girls wrestling and he did make a good point about the risk of lawsuits over sexual harassment. I initially thought that he was being silly, but after more thought, he did raise a good point.

Keep in mind, this was based on the concept of boys and girls wrestling each other during the main season, both on the mat and in the practice room. However, I've seen boys messing around (playing grabass or something) and thought "if they did that to a girl teammate, we'd be hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit so fast..."

When I was in junior high school, we had a girl wrestler on the team. One team actually forfeited the weight class because the boy didn't believe in wrestling against girls. While unfortunate, we're still going to see some of that here and there. I can't help but think that it'd take just one crafty lawyer to sue the pants off the coach and school.

In my opinion (which, combined with 75 cents, is worth a bag of chips from a vending machine), B-E is doing things the right way by separating the girls and boys during official team practices. As you mentioned earlier, it makes it tough for girls like your daughter to compete against girls like Jomae (who get to wrestle the boys), but I think it's going to become more and more common as more girls sign up to wrestle.

It sucks that we have to deal with idiot trolls in the meantime, but they'll slowly fade out with time.

We need to remember that as more girls wrestle and improve, more and more girls will be looking to continue past high school and wrestle at the collegiate and even international level. We parents, coaches, etc. should challenge ourselves to facilitate this progression in our wrestlers. I don't think the arbitrary rule of "girls wrestle only girls" is the way to accomplish these goals.

My daughter is a sophomore wrestler at a Metro school. She has done pretty well so far for an athletic kid with no experience before the 9th grade. However, she has decided that this sport is something important to her and she wants to take it as far as she possibly can. So my job is to make sure she gets the best possible coaching and appropriate practice partners.

My position is that the best partners are determined by ability and weight, not gender. As such, I had no problem with her practicing with the boys on her school's coed team. Same thing for wrestling with the coaches. She likes to wrestle hard and when the other kids are on a rest break, she grabs a coach to get in extra mat time because she wants the challenge. Her teammates and coaches must concur as she was just voted to be the team captain next year.

I've seen Victoria Anthony (Jr World Champ) up at Simon Frasier and Clarissa Chun (2008 World Champ, 5th at Beijing) wrestle in person and I guarantee that they would not be where they are today if they had been limited to same gender practices.

YMMV...