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Blogs by Heidi Macomber
Emily's Wrestling 1/15/2004 1:06:34 PM
With two big brothers who are heavy into sports it seems only natural that my daughter Emily would want to wrestle. Emily plays hockey, basketball, soccer, and lacrosse. Two years ago when she was 5 she tried wrestling and the boys had such a negative reaction to it that we stopped taking her. She was young and beginning other sports so it really wasn't that big a deal. This past Monday she went with me to pick up Ryan her oldest brother at the High School. He was late finishing up and we wandered down the hall and noticed all the youth wrestlers arriving for practice. Wouldn't you know there were 2 girls in singlets putting on their wrestling shoes. Emily wanted to sign-up on the spot. By the time Ryan was ready to go plans were in the works to officially sign-up Wednesday night. The news did not go over well at home.
Emily's brothers have been wrestling for 6 years. We've been going to wrestling tournaments year round since she was a baby. Ryan and Cas are very good wrestlers and have won some very big tournaments. We love wrestling so much that I volunteer my time and manage the www.canandaiguawrestling.com website. Yes other sports are mixed in and come and go with the season changes but wrestling is always there with a tournament or camp no matter what month it is.
So what's the problem then? The problem is the fact that at one time or another every boy wrestler has to face a girl. From our experience it has never been a pleasant situation. Our boys have even lost a match or two along the way to a girl. The feeling from those matches must have settled pretty deep as they told Emily that wrestling is not a sport for girls. What's a mother to do?
This mother has decided it's time to let Emily do what she likes regardless of the boys. On Wednesday night Emily signed up, made it in time for pictures and had a great practice. Yes there were a few little boys that didn't want to practice with her because she was a girl. But, once the full speed wrestling started all those years of cheering for her brothers kicked in and she was wrestling like she'd been doing it since birth. I called out, "sprawl Emily, sprawl" and she knew exactly what to do. Emily walked out of her first practice with a smile on her face and couldn't wait to get home and tell the boys about her debut. The first thing she asked them was, "How do you put the half on?"and they both cracked up. The boys are dealing with it and oddly enough a little excited to coach their little sister in her first tournament on Sunday. Go get ém Emily!
