You’re not going to do it, it’s just not going to happen
Why is anything that goes against the status quo automatically wrong? It’s strange how people have the right to be wrong as long as they are wrong in numbers. Greater numbers defines what is right and wrong I guess, and one person doesn’t count as a minority.
So today I had a good practice. I hit a Granby roll off a guy and we got to our feet, my escape. I walked back with a big smile on my face and Sean started laughing. We had to beat our time for the school loop again today too. I found out it’s about 1.7 miles, and I ran it in 12:11, an improvement from 12:24. That’s respectable I guess, about a 13 minute 2 mile, somewhere around there. I guess it’s not like I’m slow, but it’s not like I’ll be making the track team anytime soon.
So it turns out a lot of the first year guys are copping out and deciding to redshirt instead of compete. Even Sean is redshirting. Seeing as my whole justification for going out for the team was if Sean had a right to get his ass kicked I had a right to get my ass kicked too, should I be redshirting aswell? I talked to Coach Garriot and asked him for his advice. He pretty much said he wasn’t a big fan of redshirting but that it depended on what my goals were. He told me how I could get a scholarship to a college with a woman’s team, and when I told him I didn’t care about women’s teams, he told me something I had to just take and walk away…
“Well you’re not going to get a sholarship to a men’s team, no matter what you do that’s just not going to happen.”
I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut and take it when people say these sort of things, but there’s no way to just brush these sort of things off, they don’t just brush off that easily. They stay like salt in a wound that doesn’t wash out with water.
Why do people do that? Put limitations on people that they really have no right to give. He might be a great coach and a great wrestler and he might not have meant it exactly the way it sounded, but he still can’t predict the future, and even though I could care less about a scholarship, he still has no right to tell me what I am and am not capable of. It doesn’t matter how unlikely something is, you just don’t kill it before it starts growing. Jeez!
I’ve gotten very tired of that, of walking around and finding only people who just can’t go that far with their beliefs. They look at me and they just can’t picture me suceeding in what I’m doing. A girl, on a men’s wrestling team, hitting it up with men and hanging. I understand it’s not like I’m Chyna and bench 300lbs, but why can’t people just be brave and believe in me? It’s only making it harder for me if people keep telling me “my money’s not on you.” I just don’t understand.
It hurts. I have to admit it really hurts. I doubt myself whenever I hear someone say, as if it were common knowledge, “well I mean you’ll never be as strong as a guy.” And it also doesn’t matter how many guys I beat, it will always be that THEY sucked (on that day or in general), not that I’m actually any good. I start to doubt myself so much because all I’m hearing is negative feedback. My confidence shakes and I become weak. How do you just brush it off when people say “you’re going to fail?”
Supposedly what Coach meant was that it’s not that I’m not capable of getting good enough to take a guy’s spot at the University level (dreams someday), it’s that other people would get in my way. Other teams would forfeit to me which would hurt my team, little problems like no open lockerroom and other people just flat out insisting that girls shouldn’t wrestle would get in my way.
Firstly, I think that if I’m good enough, coaches will be begging me to be on their team. Sarah Mcmann, the Olympic Silver Medalist, got a full ride scholarship out of high school to Lehigh University to start on their men’s varsity team. As long as I beat the guy in my weight class I don’t see a problem. I don’t understand why the rest of the world does.
People have told me that they don’t understand why this sport means so much to me. Their assumption is that I know I don’t belong here and that I’m doing it because I have something to prove. I don’t have anything to prove to anyone, I do this because I love to wrestle and I want to win. I don’t want to be a “girl wrestler,” I want to be a wrestler, against guys. It’s harder, and I do belong here. There’s no one that can say I don’t belong here, they don’t have the right to say that!
But they do anyway, and who am I to stop them from saying what they want. This wonderful country gives us the freedom of speech, and I wouldn’t take someone’s right to speak freely away from them if it would solve all of my problems…but sometimes I’d like to take away their right to their opinions.
It’s not like I haven’t found anything harder than wrestling either. I started out in football, went to wrestling because it was harder and got hooked. If there were a Lacrosse team at Cerritos, I’d probably go out for that too. The reason I’m not a boxer is because ironically women’s boxing is more prevelant than women’s wrestling. I can still fight guys in this sport. I can’t do judo because no one will train me, and jiu jitsu is too expensive to do if you’re not part of a club or a team (all of the BJJ gyms are expensive as hell, that’s why it takes 8 years to get your black belt).
It just hurts. Whenever anyone states the “obvious” of a girl will never beat a guy. I do it all the time, and yet it means shit. In my mind when I think I’ve achieved equality status, some other idiot comes along and pushes me down again.
I belong here, I’m no different than any other guy on that team, physically, mentally, whatever. If I suck it’s because I’m a lousy wrestler, not because I’m a girl. I wish I could find someone else who agree’s with that.
