Wrestler her own toughest competition

Jeanie Bayliss tries to keep her focus as she wrestles a team mate during practice. Bayliss said more girls should go out for wrestling "as long as they're not big whiners." (Lorri Sughroue/McCook Daily Gazette) [Click to enlarge]

McCook Daily Gazette

Jeanie Bayliss, a senior at Southwest High School in Indianola, said competing on the high school wrestling team is challenging mentally as well as physically. The only thing she doesn't like, she said, is what the head gear does to her hair.

"I'm picky about my hair, " she said, "but that's about as girly as I get."

As the only female at her school to play the sport, Bayliss joins a handful of other Nebraska high school girls who are taking to the mats in growing numbers. And they're not alone: nationwide, more than 4,000 girls in the 2003-04 season competed in high school wrestling, according to statistics from the National Federation of High School Associations, the 15th straight year that the numbers have increased.

With the debut of women's wrestling at the 2004 summer Olympics, the sport appears to be gaining in popularity with girls, said Bayliss' coach, Jay Helberg, who said his team has no problem with Bayliss wrestling.

"There's been enough of them wrestling girls from other teams for them to get used to it," he said. "She's just one of the team."

Most of her teammates have grown up knowing her since kindergarten, she said.

"I was playing tag football with them at recess, instead of swinging on the swings with the rest of the girls," she said.

Bayliss first wrestled last year as a junior as a way to stay in shape for track. During that year, she said she had to endure some heavy handed ridicule from a teammate who made it known he didn't like having a girl on the team. But ultimately the harassment had the opposite effect on her, she said, as it made her more determined not to quit and to finish the season.

"I thought I could do everything my brother did," Bayliss said, who grew up substituting as a "practice dummy" when no one else was available, or watching her older brother wrestle.

"I never got the concept that this is a 'boy thing,' or this is 'a girl thing.'"

This year, Bayliss holds a 7 - 7 record but admitted "I'm not really that good -- I get more credit than I deserve because I'm a girl."

Still, she enjoys wrestling because "I'm competing against myself. I let my self down if I lose, instead of the whole team."

And wrestling is not just brute strength, said her coach.

"A lot of wrestling is from the heart," Helberg said. "You may not be the strongest wrestler, but if you can still win matches if you are mentally prepared."

Her opponents usually react to her in one of two ways, Bayliss said: either they wrestle harder than usual, or go easy on her.

"I know what's involved," Bayliss said. " Just 'cause I'm a girl, don't go easy on me." And if she finds herself in an particularly embarrassing position, "I work even harder to get out of it," she said.

"I'm thinking how to get out of a move and to just keep moving," she explained. "I'm not thinking about anything else."

Bayliss said her boyfriend has no problem with her wrestling, as he wrestled in high school and sees it purely as a sport. Plus, "he's not the over-protective type," she said.

Ranked first in her class academically, Bayliss has been offered a Regent Scholarship and would like to study health medicine at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. But for now, she'll finish her second season of wrestling and hope other girls will follow next year.

"It's a Catch-22," she said. "Girls won't try out unless there's a team, but you have to have some girls try out before you have a team," she said.