As the winter sports season begins, teams are starting to form, practice and compete. One sport in particular is the Bonita Vista High (BVH) coed wrestling team, which has received a very little amount of female wrestlers until this year.
This season, there are nine girls on the team, seven of them being completely new to the sport. Although the number may seem low, it is a record high for BVH’s wrestling team.
Senior Tiana Alanis has been wrestling for the team since her freshman year in 2020. She has stood witness to the struggles that the team has faced overtime, especially the girls department which has historically had very few wrestlers. Alanis also experienced troubles in losing members of the team as a result of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic during her freshman year.
“We only started wrestling in April [2023] and normally we wrestled in the winter, so that was really rough just going straight into it and only having a couple months of wrestling practice before going to California Interscholastic Federation. It was a lot of pressure and stress on everyone,” Alanis said.
Alanis watched as many of her fellow wrestlers quit the sport, making her feel more isolated as an athlete. Wrestling is mainly seen as a male sport, and by watching a number of other female wrestlers quit, Alanis felt as if she was alone and unseen. Even after sophomore wrestler Ella Edvalson joined the team and accompanied Alanis last year, the girls side of the wrestling mat was near barren and empty.
“[Last year] there was not much of a girl environment compared to the amount of girls now. It was really hard practicing with male wrestlers [due to not having many girls to practice with]. That made it really hard to break into the community,” Edvalson said.
Edvalson’s experience as one out of the two girls’ wrestlers last year was extremely challenging when it came to practice, especially since her and Alanis did not share the same weight class. Wrestling weight class divisions are created to ensure fair competition between athletes. Meaning that if Edvalson and Alanis were to practice together then they would not be properly prepared for competition.
“I always had to practice with the guys. Sometimes they did not want to practice with girls, [and even if they did not mean to] it felt as if they would look at the girls as if we were less capable,” Edvalson said.
Both Edvalson and Alanis understand the feeling of being doubted by others as a female in a sport. Which is a factor in why female wrestlers often leave the sport after trying out, the feeling of being underestimated can bring down an athlete’s view on a sport.
“I have been doubting it before, but I do not feel like it is any different than any female being doubted in any sport. I feel like all women go through having people doubting them because they’re a female playing a sport,” Alanis said.
As both Edvalson and Alanis had to practice with the boys on the team, they noticed some different aspects between male and female wrestlers. This made it harder for both as they developed their own concept of the sport. If they were wrestling with fellow girls, it would allow them to expand their wrestling style more accurately for matches.
“Guys naturally are going to be stronger, whereas girls are a lot more technical and flexible. Now that I am wrestling more girls [than last year] I have been able to develop a very different style of wrestling because of the differences,” Edvalson said.
Throughout the challenging years, some positives began to show early in the season as more girls found an interest in wrestling. The influx of female wrestlers made it easier for all of them to practice and compete. Junior Gabrielle Nebres, one of the aforementioned new wrestlers, started competing because she felt like being a part of something new.
“I just feel unique that I am able to do this, especially since you don’t really hear about [many] female wrestlers,” Nebres said.
Due to lack of recognition in the community of girls wrestling, it is harder to connect with teammates. As the team begins to grow, women in the wrestling community at BVH will start to feel understood by others that share the same mindset.
“When we have our matches we have more of the lineup filled up so we don’t have as many forfeits, and when we go to tournaments, we have a higher chance of winning first place as a team [because we have more girls to put on the mat and wrestle],” Alanis expresses.
Though the collective has faced many struggles, the growth of the team has produced a number of benefits that will only continue as the season progresses. This sport has been described as a perfect opportunity for ambitious female athletes to experience something new and to pioneer a journey into such a male dominated sport.
“I truly love what I have seen. It’s not just a sport, the people on the team are not just my teammates, but they’re also my family and some of my best friends,” Alanis said.
