Wrestling team creates unity

Sam Klein
Print/Podcast Editor

Wrestling is a sport traditionally participated in by men, but the women’s wrestling team is on the rise with eight members total and seven of them being underclassmen.

Senior Issy DuVall is leads the team this year, being the only senior on the team. She’s been on the team since her freshman year, partially because of a family tradition of wrestling.

“My uncles and my dad wrestled in high school, and then my brother wrestled in high school and college, so they kind of forced me to do it,” DuVall said.

“After I started doing it I really liked it, so I kept doing it,” DuVall added.

While in the wrestling program men and women wrestle separately, the teams practice together and support each other throughout the season.

Training with the men’s team and being in the same environment can be intimidating at first, according to DuVall.

“When you first start out wrestling, it’s kind of really weird and like you don’t really feel like you fit in, but as you get to know the team, you kind of just feel like another wrestler. When you’re in the room, it doesn’t really feel like girls and boys. It’s kind of just like wrestlers,” DuVall said.

The head coach of the wrestling team is history teacher James LeMay. He’s been coaching at Webster since 2009 and has been coaching wrestling since 1999.

“For me I coach all wrestlers as wrestlers. Their gender doesn’t play a role to me in the methodology of how I teach,” LeMay said. “When it comes to experience levels and comfort zones, there are some things that I will address because they are necessary [because] not everybody’s used to participating in a sport in a co-ed way.”

The team, while not technically co-ed, is led in a co-ed way. Because of weight classes and technicalities, oftentimes at practice the men’s and women’s teams wrestle against each other to train. In matches it’s women’s teams wrestle against other women’s teams.

“I hold everyone to the same standards and try to treat everyone as equally as possible,” LeMay said.

To create this LeMay makes sure to set benchmarks of strength and skill that are attainable and fair for everyone in the program. For LeMay this benchmark is who can wrestle hard and put in effort the whole time.

“I have really solid relationships with all of my coaches. They’re all very nice, and I think they put a little more work into the girls’ team, just because our team is so small. They want to keep our numbers up,” DuVall said.

Because of the physicality of the sport it creates this idea that the girls who wrestle are tough, according to DuVall. “I think that [favorite part of being on the team] is people think that I’m like tough and cool because I’m one of the only girl wrestlers, but other than that probably the family aspect.”

“We bleed together; we cry together; we sweat together. Wrestling is really, really hard, and without a tight knit team that feels like a family, I don’t think that I would be able to wrestle,” DuVall added to what she likes about being on the team.

“The goal for me is to make the team feel like family. So even when, if you think about your family, you might have a brother or a sister you can’t stand, but you love them,” LeMay said. “So even though they might not be your favorite person in the whole world, you’re willing to work with them on this team together.”