Tracy Press

The sport is changing, but gender equality is not yet a reality. By Christopher H. Roberts

Enrique Gutierrez/Tracy Press - Do it like this:Tracy High’s Danielle Rond gets some instructions from her father and coach, Daryl, during a practice in the Tracy gym.

Grenada High wrestler Joey Potts was ready for his match.

Visiting Tracy High for a preseason dual in December, Potts had made weight, practiced his moves, and put himself in the proper mindset to face his opponent, whomever he would be.

Turns out he planned for everything — except that “he” bit.

When Potts stepped into the ring, his opponent looked a little different from most wrestlers — OK, make that all the wrestlers — he’d faced. For starters, his opponent was wearing a neon green head wrap and sports bra underneath the ringlet. Sports bra His opponent was — a girl

“I didn’t see the schedule (of matches),” said Potts, moments after wrestling Tracy High’s Xiomara Fonseca, one of four young women joining the scores of boys on the local wrestling teams. “So, when I came out I was like, ‘Coach, this is a chick I’m going to wrestle!’”

For Potts — and for many wrestlers and wrestling fans in Tracy and beyond — seeing Fonseca, teammate Danielle Rond and West High’s Amanda Banuelos and Esmeralda Magana take to the mat and wrestle boys is still a rarity, even though both teams have featured girls on the roster from time to time since the 1980s.

Having members of both sexes on a team poses logistical problems in any sport, but, if it’s possible, it’s even tougher with wrestling. Weigh-ins are different. Ringlets aren’t designed with the female form in mind. The odd boyfriend is apt to get jealous. Coaches and wrestlers alike are mindful of where they put their hands — and some don’t hide their lack of expectations.

“People were going, ‘You’re not going to last a week,’” Banuelos said. “I said, ‘Now I’m definitely going to do this, to prove I can wrestle.’

“And I’m still here.”

“It takes a special kind of girl to wrestle,” West coach Ed Carlos said. “Someone who knows she’s going to get beat up every day and get hurt every day.”

And while having four girls between the two teams is an all-time high for Tracy and is a sign of the changing times — then-Tracy coach Pete Mullen can remember parents vocally opposing coed participation in the mid-1980s — it’s still not easy for the girls or the boys they wrestle.

Just ask West’s Grant Severietti. Up against a Stagg wrestler in the first dual meet of the season, he maneuvered himself on top of his opponent in a position called “the ride.” Very typical — but with the Stagg wrestler a female, the result was a situation that brought peals of laughter from the crowd, something that would never happen if it were a male.

“It was kind of awkward — she was kind of hot,” Severietti said. “But once you get in there (the ring), you don’t think about that.”

While that’s the mindset that will bring true equity, the day where it’s universal is still a long way off. West assistant coach Rudy Carranza can recall grapplers leaving a tournament crying after losing to a girl. And while girls have a state tournament of their very own to attend as well as girl-only weekend tournaments, Carlos said the ultimate goal for most female wrestlers is to eventually win a match over a male opponent — something that most assuredly does not go both ways.

“It’s something that some guys just won’t ever get over,” said Tracy alum Shareese Mulholland, who now wrestles at Menlo College. “It just depends what team you’re on.”

Mulholland said she was lucky — her teammates were nothing but supportive. And that’s been the experience for Fonseca, Rond, Banuelos and Magana. And good thing, too — without it, Mulholland says she’d be a totally different person.

“It helped me get through high school,” she said. “I wasn’t popular or anything, it just gave me something to look forward to at the end of the day. Wrestling really changed my life — I was lucky.”

“People need to become more mature and understand it’s just wrestling,” she added. “Guys would have to put their head in my chest and they wouldn’t do it. I’d have to yell at them and say, ‘Forget I’m a girl! Just do it.’”

To reach Sports Editor Christopher H. Roberts, call 830-4267 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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