Watching a bloodied and shaken eighth-grader continue to fight after sustaining a broken nose, Coach Donnie Stephens was impressed.
What he heard later sealed his admiration. Instead of sitting out the rest of the season while the break mended, the kid kept going -- knowing it would have to be re-broken later in order to set properly.
Stephens said he knew then "we had a real wrestler" coming into his program at West Covina High. Only in this case, it was a 90-pound, 13-year-old girl.
Her name is Norine Cruz, now a 98-pound, 17-year-old senior and the top-ranked female wrestler in California in her weight class.
Cruz is one of nearly 5,000 girls wrestling this season nationwide, according to the U.S. Girls Wrestling Assn. That's up from 3,700 last year and marks a more than threefold increase in the last five years.
Looking back, Cruz considers the decision about her nose as "a no-brainer." Missing matches, she said, is never a serious consideration.
Today, she will be among more than 100 girls from schools across the state competing at Thousand Oaks High School in the fifth annual Williams Cup, one of the nation's largest and longest-running girls-only wrestling tournaments.
The event is a welcome departure for many participants, because the girls spend most of the rest of the season competing against boys. There are no girls' teams in California.
Today's tournament is one of about a dozen such events statewide, a reflection of the rapid rise in the sport's popularity among girls.
In 1997, the first year the USGWA held a national championship, 116 girls participated. The next year, 272 competed. Last year, there were 604.
Opportunities at the college level are also rising. Seven U.S. colleges and universities and more than 20 in Canada offer women's wrestling. Ten years ago, there were none.
And this summer, for the first time, women's wrestling will be a medal sport in the Olympics, which is expected to result in participation soaring again.
"I could guarantee that NBC is going to put it on in prime time," said Doug Reese, the women's coach at the University of Minnesota at Morris, the first U.S. college to offer the sport. "It's going to sell beer ads. Who doesn't want to see women in singlets doing battle? But the novelty will wear off and people will see it's a great sport. A lot of girls are going to want to try it."
