Support women's sports and SHARE this story with your friends!

Image: Mike Fender/Indy Star

By:  Kyle Neddenriep – Indy Star

CULVER, Ind. — When Kayla Miracle emerges from the tunnel Friday night at Bankers Life Fieldhouse to take a lap around the floor with 223 other competitors at the high school wrestling state finals, eyes will follow her.

Some will be filled with tears, like those of her father Lee. He will remember the 4-year-old girl who, on the way home from a fishing trip, begged her dad for a chance to wrestle like the boys. He pushed her, tried to make her quit, but she always came back a little stronger than before.

Brooke Burns will watch with pride. The 17-year-old from Mooresville started wrestling as an eighth grader and didn't win a single match as a freshman. She endured the negative comments, even from teammates who questioned her motives. A girl wrestler? Yes, a girl wrestler.

Then there's Sarah Hildebrandt. A year ago, she came up two wins short of making it to state herself. She still hasn't allowed herself to completely let it go. Hildebrandt will be there tonight, invited by Miracle to walk by her side for the Parade of Champions and as a warm-up partner for her first-round match.

"Just by making it," said Hildebrandt, "she's accomplished something that's never been done before. I'm so proud of her."

Miracle, a Bloomington native and sophomore at Culver Academies who wrestles in the 106-pound class, is the first female to compete in the wrestling state finals in the 74-year history of the event.

She didn't set out to be a pioneer. This is just a step along the way to what she hopes is a spot on the 2016 women's Olympic wrestling team.

"I know there are going to be little girls watching me and looking up to me," Miracle said. "If I just go out there and wrestle my hardest and put everything on the line, that will be the most important thing. I've already accomplished what I wanted to accomplish this year. Everything else is just a bonus."

Getting into wrestling

Miracle was practically born into the sport. Her father, Lee Miracle, wrestled for a year at Heidelberg College in Ohio and later with the all-Navy wrestling team. Lee had been coaching his oldest son, Shawn, for years when Kayla first expressed an interest in competing.

"I tried to run her out of the room," Lee said with a laugh. "But she loved it."

Kayla, who was living with her family in Washington at the time, was a four-time state champion in her age group by the time she moved to Bloomington in fifth grade. She learned at an early age that technique and thinking one or two steps ahead of her opponent allowed her to overcome some of the physical disadvantages of wrestling stronger boys.

She's also fearless. While in Washington, Kayla played running back and linebacker in pee-wee football despite being the smallest player on the team.

"The coach told me once that he knew he could give her the ball at the 5-yard line and she'd find a way to score somehow," Lee said.

Kayla enrolled at Culver Academies, a private boarding school in the quaint Northern Indiana town of Culver, prior to her freshman year. It didn't take long before she had integrated herself into a team full of boys.

"It was apparent pretty quickly how hard she works," said Anthony McHugh, a junior and Culver's other state qualifier in the 132-pound class. "That made it really easy to root for her."

Still, there's a stigma attached to losing to a girl. After she defeated one opponent as a freshman, her opponent was teased so badly by his teammates that he quit the team. Though it might sound cold-blooded, Kayla said it's not her problem to worry about how others react to losing to her.

"You have to have the mindset that you are going out to crush dreams," she said.

She did, most of her freshman year. She finished with a 48-2 record, though she fell short of earning a spot in the state finals.

Last summer, Kayla got her first taste of women's wrestling. She dominated her age group at tournaments in Oklahoma City and Fargo, N.D., and took eighth in the world championships in Hungary.

Her success there has narrowed her focus on the 2016 Olympics.

"The zenith of women's wrestling isn't beating a guy, it's winning a world championship or competing nationally," said Culver Academies head of schools John Buxton, who coached high school wrestling for 30 years.

Women's wrestling

Girls wrestling against boys isn't much of a novelty anymore. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, there were 7,351 girls who participated in wrestling during the 2010-11 school year, up 19.8 percent from the previous year. Those numbers are undoubtedly higher as not all states report girls numbers.

Why is the number of girls on the rise? The addition of women's wrestling as an Olympic sport and the opportunity for college scholarships play a factor. Though some girls may start out in the sport for the publicity or shock value, coaches discount that motivation because of the work required to compete at the varsity level. Most females wrestlers are athletes who have competed in other sports previously -- or still do -- said Terry Steiner, a former champion at Iowa and the USA Wrestling national women's coach.

"Wrestling truly is a sport for everyone," Steiner said. "That's what our attitude needs to be as coaches."

Some states -- California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, among them -- have added separate state tournaments for girls. Girls in Iowa and Ohio and have reached the state tournament the past two years against boys competition. In Alaska, two girls have won state championships.

Still there are skeptics. Steiner was among them before he got involved with the national team in 2002, two years before women's wrestling became an Olympic sport.

"If you would have asked me 12 or 13 years ago if women belonged in the sport I would have laughed in your face," Steiner said. "No way."

Steiner said he's seen a change in the way women's wrestling is perceived in the last 10 years, but there remains a long way to go. Significant change will come with more states offering the sport as its own entity, he said.

"One thing my wife brought to my attention was that when she was a girl in the 1970s, people would ridicule and boo at a girls' sport," he said. "That was basketball. So you have to expect some negative things when you are in such a male-dominated sport. You're under a microscope so you don't want to give them reasons not to support you."

Several schools in the area have female wrestlers. Perry Meridian coach Jim Tonte has had two girls wrestle in the past seven years, including Taylor Stevens this season.

"It's a credit to our team that they've made her just another kid on the team," Tonte said. "They make it tough on her every workout."

Burns, the junior from Mooresville, looked into wrestling as a third sport to sandwich between cross country in the fall and track in the spring. She struggled mightily as a freshman, but has persevered to make the varsity as a junior.

Like Miracle, Burns said her technique must be impeccable to overcome the strength advantage of boys.

"Even if they don't know what they are doing, they can overwhelm you," Burns said. "Girls don't build muscle like guys, no matter how much I work out. I just have to rep my shots in practice until they are perfect to give myself a chance."

There are a number of colleges that now offer scholarships for women's wrestling. Hildebrandt, who went to Penn High School in Northern Indiana, is a freshman at King College in Tennessee, which is ranked No. 2 nationally in the Women's College Wrestling Association.

"It's not a well-known sport but there are more opportunities out there now," Hildebrandt said. "Stories like Kayla's will help to get the word out even more."

Sticking it out

Kayla makes a seamless transition from a terror on the mat to a 15-year-old girl who likes Disney movies and has a boyfriend on the lacrosse team.

"It's pretty crazy," said her brother, Shawn, a freshman on the wrestling team at Army. "She can go out hunting and fishing and then put on a dress and look beautiful."

Despite her 42-5 record, this season has hardly been a breeze for Kayla. She's come to the point where she's considered quitting several times, most of the time because it's been so difficult for her to cut weight. Before the weigh-in at the Merrillville semi-state last week, she had her dad chop off her hair to save as many ounces as possible.

She weighed in right at the limit.

"It's been overwhelming at times this year," Kayla said. "It's been really hard to stay at 106. Some weeks it's harder than others. But every time I've thought about quitting, I thought about this chance to make history."

Kayla won two matches, 10-0 over Lake Central's Brandon Truver and 17-0 over Lafayette Harrison's Daniel Davis last week to punch her state ticket. After defeating Davis she pointed to the sky, then ran to hug her coaches, Matt Behling and Darrell Knowlton, then found her dad and mom, Jeannette Ishibashi, who were both in tears.

The crowd at Merrillville continued to buzz for several minutes.

"There was definitely a feeling in the stadium that history had been made," Behling said. "You could feel that roar, that everyone was backing her at that point. That was something really neat to be a part of."

Those close to her believe Kayla can win tonight. A victory over Garrett sophomore Hayden Lee (39-2) would guarantee her a top-eight finish. But that would be gravy.

Earlier this week, sensing Kayla was feeling some unnecessary pressure, Behling sat her down and told her that the story has already been written. When Kayla Miracle takes her lap tonight, with all those eyes watching, she'll know that she belongs.

"She broke the glass ceiling," McHugh said. "Nobody can ever take that away from her."

Filed under: Wrestling

Support women's sports and SHARE this story with your friends!

Filed Under:  

• Wrestling
• Sports
• SportsPLUS
• High School
• Student-Athlete

View Original Post at wombatsports.wordpress.com

View MarQFPR's Full Profile