BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Sarah Van Skaik learned an important lesson early. Life is like a party.
Sometimes you have to wait to be invited. Sometimes you have to knock on the door. And sometimes, you can walk right in.
Five years ago, as a seventh-grader at St. Bernard-Elmwood Place Junior-Senior High School, she knew the morning announcement for wrestling team tryouts was not meant for her. She was a girl. Girls didn't wrestle.
But Sarah Van Skaik wanted to wrestle. There was something about the sport she liked. It took guts and endurance. It took physical strength.
So Sarah, who wasn't invited to the meeting, went anyway. She didn't expect an overly warm reception. She didn't expect to be kicked out either, but just in case she carried a petition signed by dozens of classmates, supporting her right to participate. It was her mother's idea.
"I didn't even have to hold it up," she says with a grin. "I walked in and said I wanted to wrestle and the coach said OK."
Good move.
Nail polish optional
Five years later, St. Bernard-Elmwood Place boasts the fourth-best female high school wrestler in the nation. Sarah earned the title earlier this spring at the first national girls' high school wrestling tournament in Ann Arbor, Mich.
On May 30, she plans to compete in the Saunders Cup international wrestling meet in Lansing, Mich.
This red-haired, 160-pound athlete doesn't really think of herself as a pioneer, but she is. Like other girls and women across the nation, she is opening doors that never should have been closed to her. She loves a sport that never should have been off limits. Girls got sick and tired of watching from the sidelines a long time ago. Only recently have they learned the rules of the playground.
Don't ask. Just play.
Learn to take your licks.
Which is perfectly acceptable to Sarah Van Skaik.
She wrestles in the same hot practice room for the same two grueling hours as her teammates. She wears the same Spandex singlet and the same head gear. She lifts the same weights, runs the same laps, learns the same holds. She abides by the same hair regulations and takes off her earrings just like the guys.
She was, however, the first wrestler on her team to find out that nail polish is not illegal.
Forfeit? Never!
It was one of a number of lessons Sarah learned about her sport, herself, and her opponents.
She found out some boys would rather forfeit than wrestle girls. She found out that some girls would rather die than wrestle.
And she discovered that, personally, she would rather die than forfeit.
Her worst experience: "There's this guy from another school, and the whole time we're wrestling, he had a smile on his face. He knew he was going to beat me, and I knew he was going to beat me. In the middle of the match, he looks over at his coach and smiles."
Her best experience: "The first match I won, in eighth grade, I beat this guy, and he starts crying. That was one of my best moments." Sarah Van Skaik is the first to admit there have not been as many of those moments as she'd like. She says, in sheer physical terms, most guys are stronger. "Sometimes if I see a guy and he's real big, my mouth drops open," she says. Every season, she has considered quitting.
But Sarah Van Skaik has held on. Through sore muscles and sweaty matches. Through opponents who smirked, and admirers who wondered. Through sprains, spins, pins and Spandex.
Some people think Sarah will find out what a champion is two weeks from now, in Lansing, Mich.
Others think she already knows.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at the Enquirer, 312 Elm St. Cincinnati 45202.
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