One Of The Girls
“I believe we owe it to ourselves to remain true and not dim ourselves because of who we are surrounded by. It wasn’t always easy to be in the spaces I was in, but you have to be willing to take up space, to be loud in a quiet room.”
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I remember the first time I felt it. That sinking feeling of wondering if you deserve to be there. Questioning if my accomplishments were equal to my male counterparts.
In my freshman year of high school (previously all-men’s catholic school that had fused with the women’s school 8 years prior) I joined the wrestling team. The team had never had a girl, until I joined. Each day I went to practice with a room full of teenage boys and got my booty handed to
me. Day after day I was being slammed to the mat, wondering why I was doing this to myself. We attended meets against other schools in our area where, sometimes, there wasn’t even a single girl for me to wrestle with. Other times, there were schools with girls teams outnumbering our boys team.
It was during the first duel of my freshman year (against the woman powerhouse of our region) when I first realized the battle I had taken on. I stood there alone, in a boy's JV singlet with a black shirt for extra coverage and a hair cap to keep back my long hair. Their full roster of 10 girls, one at each weight class and even some two deep, stood across the mat from me. The boys on my team sat behind me on metal folding chairs snickering to themselves on how silly I looked. I realized then, that I was fighting this battle on my own. Each of their girls came forward claiming their free 6 points, merely for the fact we didn’t have a girl for them to wrestle.
When it came to my weight class, the one and only match-up took place. I pinned her.
As the season continued, I spent my weekends going to girls tournaments where I was winning matches—sometimes even winning the whole tournament. I was on a high from my successes and the support I gained from girls from other schools.
All of this only to come back to my wrestling room on Monday, and be the only girl in the room.
“You only won because it’s against girls” my male teammates constantly said. Even after I would fight my way to the podium every weekend, a feat they didn’t achieve.
What did being a girl have to do with it?
Each day I was beaten down, both mentally and physically. There were many days I cried in the car ride home with my dad, wondering when things would get easier.
However, with every girls tournament I attended, it became more clear to me that I deserved to be in the room. I received overwhelming support from other girls, even though we weren’t
representing the same team. With time, I grew to love wrestling; this love outcompeted the pressure and exclusion from the boys.
I became my own self-advocate and more importantly, felt inspired to advocate for other girls in wrestling.
Wrestling wasn’t the only male-dominated space I found myself in. Around the same time I started wrestling, I joined the fire cadet program at my local fire department. In this program, I had weekly training and events where I would be surrounded by a dozen high school boys. Being the only female comes with a complicated feeling. I didn’t want to be treated differently, I wanted to just be “one of the guys.” Simultaneously, I felt the inner desire to hold onto my femininity and girlhood.
Expressing femininity and emotions in male dominated spaces can be difficult because often women are discredited or belittled for it. This can compress girls into a box, forcing them to blend in to avoid being seen as different.
Sometimes it can be easier to stay in the shadows, where fewer people can criticize you. At the same time, I believe we owe it to ourselves to remain true and not dim ourselves because of who we are surrounded by. It wasn’t always easy to be in the spaces I was in, but you have to be willing to take up space, to be loud in a quiet room.
Every day, when I walk into my wrestling room here at Northern, I look around and I see a room full of young powerful women. A space that didn’t exist for us a mere 5 years ago. I feel a weight of privilege on my shoulders that I get to take up this space; that some little girl can see that she too can wrestle at the collegiate level. If you had told 7th grade Ruby who joined the wrestling team that she would become a college wrestler, she would’ve laughed.
Now when I return home, I get to train the next generation of female wrestlers. When I see the look on their faces when I tell them I am a collegiate wrestler it makes all those years that I struggled worth it; all the negativity I received seems like a far-off memory.