Already Competing With the Boys, Girls Get Their Own Wrestling League

Julie Glassberg for The New York Times Rosemary Flores, 17, a wrestler for Curtis High School, pinned an opponent during a tournament in January in Harlem. With more young women interested in wrestling, the Public School Athletic League is starting a new city league for girls.

The Taft Educational Complex, in the South Bronx, started a boys’ wrestling team in November, and along with the dozens of boys who attended a season-opening meeting, there was one girl, Samantha Torres, 16.

The coach, Josh Lee, asked the restlers what motivated them to join, and soon all eyes turned to Ms. Torres.

“I said, ‘I want to show everyone that girls aren’t weaklings, and that just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t wrestle,’” she recalled.

After a silent pause, the room erupted in applause. Once practices and matches began, however, some teammates were uncomfortable working out with Ms. Torres, and some opponents declined to compete for fear of losing to a girl, she said.

“When we first started practicing, some of the boys found it weird and really didn’t know what to do,” said Ms. Torres, adding that whatever qualms there were have abated now that she has begun beating some of the boys and has become “just another wrestler on the team.”

But the awkwardness she encountered is often a deterrent for girls seeking to join boys’ teams, even though there are no rules barring them. So the city’s Public School Athletic League has decided to gi! ve the girls a league of their own and is inaugurating a girls’ wrestling program with 16 teams in 12 weight classes that officials estimate will include about 300 girls.

The new league will draw from all five boroughs, including Bathgate High School in the Bronx, Hunter High School in Manhattan, Flushing High School in Queens, Canarsie High School in Brooklyn, and New Dorp High School on Staten Island.

It will be the first league of its kind in New York State, league officials said. The season will begin in March, culminating in a citywide tournament in May, said Eric Goldstein, chief executive of the Education Department’s Office of School Support Services.

Officials identified 15 schools with a core group of female wrestlers already competing on the boys’ squads, or where coaches and school officials believed there was enough interest from female students to give wrestling a try, Mr. Goldstein said. The 16th team, he said, will be a citywide “catch all” team for girls at schoos without programs.

“We had a growing demand for girls’ wrestling for the last few years,” Mr. Goldstein said. “We were really surprised at the response we got from the girls wanting to wrestle.”

Spring sports tend to be played outdoors, leaving more indoor athletic space available for wrestling, said Donald Douglas, the executive director of the P.S.A.L.

Female wrestling advocates said that starting teams in schools would attract girls who never considered that they could participate in organized wrestling.

“Nothing gets girls to join like seeing a girl throw another girl,” said Cheryl Wong, director of women’s wrestling at Beat the Streets, a nonprofit that promotes wrestling and that worked with the P.S.A.L. to start the new league.

Ms. Wong, an accomplished freestyle wrestler, has encouraged scores of girls to attend the clinics and practices that Beat the Streets runs as part of its mission to create and! strength! en school wrestling teams in the city.

There are 72 girls wrestling on boys’ teams in New York City public high schools, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. That number far outpaces the number of girl wrestlers in the rest of the state, but is far less than the numbers in states that already have separate girl wrestling programs, like Texas (2,416), California (2,008), Washington (1,071) and Hawaii (456).

Beat the Streets, which has helped reinvigorate school wrestling in New York City, will provide mats, uniforms, shoes and headgear to the new girls’ teams.

Rather than use collegiate rules that the boys’ league uses, the girls’ league will follow the freestyle rules used in Olympic wrestling. (The International Olympic Committee recently announced that it was dropping wrestling from the Summer Games). The style places more emphasis on westling on one’s feet instead of grappling on the mat.

One of the new teams will be Curtis High School on Staten Island, which already has a dozen girls on its boys’ team. At the Mayor’s Cup championships, a citywide competition held last month at the Harlem Armory that had a separate girls’ division, the Curtis girls won the girls’ team championship. One if its stars, Rosemary Flores, 17, who wrestles in the 126-pound class, won an individual championship.

For Ms. Flores, it was her third Mayor’s Cup title in a row. She is widely considered the best female wrestler in the city and one of the best in the nation at her weight classification.

Although Ms. Flores said she would rather wrestle boys than girls, she is looking forward to the girls’ program because “it’s great for female wrestling, and I can always use more matches.”

Kimberly Cardenas, 18, a senior from Petrides High School on Staten Island who won the girls’ 99-pound title at the Harlem tourna! ment, sai! d she was excited that Petrides would field a girls’ team.

Ms. Cardenas, who has more than 100 high school victories, against boys and girls, said that when she began as a freshman, “I was the only girl on the team and I got beat up pretty bad.”

“Some boys forfeited the match rather than wrestle me,” she said. “You could tell they were scared. They didn’t want to hurt me. Some boys were like, ‘Why does she have to be allowed on the team’ They were uncomfortable because they didn’t know how to practice with a girl.”

Ms. Torres, from Taft, also said that once she showed her mettle on the mat, male opponents began backing out of matches.

“One boy told his coach, ‘I can’t wrestle her because my friends are all here, and I can’t lose to a girl,’” said Ms. Torres, who took fourth in the girls’ division of the Mayor’s Cup tournament.

Her coach, Mr. Lee, said, “She’s, without a doubt, the toughest person on the team, and you can ask any boy on he team that.”