Female Wrestling

For the first time in history last week at Iowa's state wrestling meet, two girls qualified for the tournament. In the 91 years that the Iowa has had its state meet, this is the first time that any female has been eligible to compete on the mats. But when Cassy Herkelman was matched up against Joel Northrup, he refused to wrestle her and forfeited his match. One would ask why would one of the best wrestlers of his weight class refuse to wrestle just because his opponent was a girl? Northrup felt that wrestling Herkelman was against his religion, thus forfeiting the match was his best option. Herkelman worked her way up to the state wrestling meet just like any other boy with a record of 20 wins and 13 losses, but according to the views of the Northrup family, women should not be participating in a combat sport like wrestling, and used this as a support system for why the 16 year old would not be wrestling his opponent. Even in different era's of sport as we talked in class, there are some activities that women were not allowed to participate in do the type of activity or combat that the sport entailed, wrestling for instance would never be permitted. But what Northrup pleads goes against everything that Title IX stands for or has been working to achieve. Many different posts dealt with this topic and whether or not Title IX is to blame, and after reading the "Title IX Media Helper" it made it a little more clear on whether or not this issue was classified under the issue of sex discrimination that Title IX strives so hard to prevent. I think that it was honestly the concept that in his religion women should be treated with respect and in a sport like wrestling, that would not happen, but I feel Northrup took it to the extremes and needs to realize and see that this is a sport and there is no women's wrestling team at any school, so they should be freely allowed to participate without any sexual discrimination bestowed upon them. But according to him, being a female and in a sport such as wrestling is seen as not acceptable, which I find completely unfair. Luckily though Title IX has made it possible so that Herkelman was even able to compete in the state tournament, as she may not have been able to when Title IX first began. Al lot of progress has been made, but there are still things that need to be resolved in some areas as we have experienced at the 2011 Iowa state wrestling meet.