Jenna Burkert a shining example of expanded opportunities for women in wrestling

 

Jenna Burkert was six years old when she picked up a wrestling flier and heard the words that would fuel the rest of her life.

 

“Jenna, you can’t do that. You’re a girl,” a boy in her class said.

 

Burkert’s response, then and since, was, Watch me.

 

The now 24-year-old national champion has been at the vanguard of women breaking into a long-time male-dominated sport, sparking a national conversation about wrestling’s changing face--a transformation that’s necessary if it’s to survive.

 

“How did we get the right to vote?” asked Burkert, a soldier-athlete in the U.S. Army’s World Class Athlete Program. “We demanded the right to vote. How do we get the right to wrestle? We demand the right to wrestle. It takes some courageous women with leadership abilities who go out there and don’t take crap from people.”

 

Still, despite the progressive push for gender equality, the women’s wrestling movement has been anything but linear, fraught with obstacles and opposition that hinder attempts to revitalize the mat, putting the oldest form of combat at stake.

 

“I’m asking college coaches to rethink--why don’t we start adding women’s programs to start solidifying men’s wrestling?,” said Terry Steiner, USA Wrestling’s Women’s National Team Coach. “Because as long as we don’t have a women’s side of the sport, it will always be in jeopardy.”

 

Wrestling has taken some hard hits recent years, not the least of which was the threat of being nixed starting in the 2020 Olympics. And since 1988, the men’s sport with the greatest net loss of teams is wrestling, according to the NCAA Sports Sponsorship and Participation Rates Report through 2016. 

 

Yet as the sport grapples with its own relevance, women’s wrestling has grown rapidly across the country, up to 13,496 high school girls in 2016 from 6,134 in 2010, while high school boys’ numbers dwindled during the same period.

 

“It’s just thrilling to see the emergence of women’s wrestling,” said Mike Moyer, executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association. “Girl’s wrestling is one of the fastest growing high school sports in America.”

 

When Burkert (pronounced burr-KET) was in high school, she was invited to train at the U.S. Olympic Education Program at Northern Michigan University alongside the top female wrestlers in the country. 

 

“I knew that if I wanted to be an Olympic and World champion, this was the sacrifice,” Burkert said of leaving her family and home on Long Island at age 15.

 

The sacrifices have paid off for Burkert, who has been named a three-time U.S. National Team Member, a World Team Member in 2014, and the 2016 National Champion at 60 kg.

 

Burkert found her calling before women’s wrestling was first added to Olympics in 2004. Burkert’s mother, Rosanne, remembers that day when her daughter’s journey began.

 

“She came home and she was yelling, ‘Can I join, can I join?’” Rosanne said. “I said, ‘Jenna, are you crazy? You’ll be the only girl.’ And she said, ‘Is that a problem?’”

 

For some, it was.

 

When the family traveled for tournaments, Burkert said, “We definitely ran into people who were like, ‘You can’t wrestle, you’re a girl,” looking at my parents like they were crazy.”

 

“Most of the time it’s the parents who are uncomfortable,” said Darren Jacobs, a firefighter from Staten Island, N.Y., whose children Kyle, 11, and Sara, 7, both wrestle. “You hear the parents talking about it on the sidelines, especially at the pubescent level when boys start getting testosterone and girls start developing.”

 

Jacobs even said he “tried very hard to discourage” his daughter from wrestling. 

 

“At this age it’s no big deal, but if she happens to fall in love with it, it could be a little awkward in the developmental years,” Jacobs said. “But there’s no stopping it now,” he added.

 

Thankfully, Burkert said, her family always supported her passion for the sport.

 

“I come from a family where we wouldn’t just let people say what they want to say or look at us funny,” Burkert said. “We bark back, basically. That’s why I did wrestling. I’d bark back, and I’d win, and that would shut them up. And even if it didn’t, I’d still do it because it’s what I love.”

 

But the resistance Burkert faced from those who deem the sport unfit for girls still persists.

 

“It’s one thing teaching athletes,” Steiner said. “It’s another thing bringing people along and bringing coaches along into the idea of women being in the wrestling room.”

 

Wrestling was always a man’s world, so “the better I did the more I became a threat to the establishment, basically,” Burkert said.

 

The wrestling community saw a huge threat in Title IX, the gender equity in education law passed in 1972. 

 

The reaction from sports world included an “amazing backlash,” said Amy Wilson, Director of Inclusion at the NCAA. “There was a lot of worry bringing women in would be the end of men’s sports and mess up whole structure of society.”

 

Title IX was intended to create equity in a space dominated by one gender, Wilson said. However, the implementation was detrimental as universities tried to reach proportionality quotas by cutting men’s programs rather than adding women’s. Ten years after Title IX, there were 363 NCAA wrestling teams. Today, there are 232.

 

Title IX is one reason for the “tremendous growth” in terms of female participation in sports and some level of cultural acceptance, Cheryl Cooky, a sports and gender studies researcher and an associate professor at Purdue University said. Yet in other areas or segments, she added, progress has stalled, provoking backlash or even regression.

 

“Instead of thinking, ‘Hmm, how can change and use this to our advantage and start adding women’s?’—that just didn’t happen,” Steiner said of men’s wrestling leadership. “We just fought it, fought it, fought it.”

 

“A lot of it comes from stigma and societal constructions about male and female,” Wilson said. “I think it’s gonna take more examples of women participating, more visibility and role models that girls and women can do this.”

 

Burkert, a practical joker whose competitiveness applies even to Wii tennis, is one such woman tackling the traditional gender boundaries in an aggressive sport.

 

 “I was this girl in a boy’s world, and I did get made fun of and I was kind of different,” Burkert said. “But I’m so stubborn at wanting to proving people wrong.”

 

“A lot of women feel like they have a little more to prove,” said Burkert’s coach, Army Staff Sgt. Aaron Sieracki, who has trained both male and female wrestlers. “It’s good. They’re always willing to do what it takes to get to that next level.”

 

To establish credibility, women’s wrestling is striving for NCAA emerging sports status. The process is intricate, Wilson said, so it could take two years or so before women’s wrestling joins the ranks of women’s rugby as an officially recognized up-and-coming sport.

 

“The irony is, if wrestling put proposal in, and down the road, women’s wrestling does make it, the great irony could be that women save men’s wrestling,” Wilson said.

 

Editor’s note: A proposal for Emerging Sports Status for women’s wrestling will be submitted to the NCAA this summer. 

 

While women’s wrestling opportunities are increasing, acceptance moves at a slower pace since most people don’t know much about the sport.

 

“If you picture female wrestler, it’s this unnattractive Helga, an oddball of a human, when really it’s any other girl you see walk down the street who wants to participate in a sport,” said Sally Roberts, two-time World Bronze medalist and founder of Wrestle Like A Girl, an organization working to give girls nationwide the opportunity to wrestle. “To get the fans in the stands, that’s going to be a culture shift.”

 

There are some fans who already recognize the value.

 

“It’s so exciting,” said Rosanne Burkert, who said she was screaming at the screen watching a live stream of her daughter’s matches at the World Team Trials this past April. “I love everything about it--the throws, leg laces.”

 

Jacobs said his wife, Jenny, is often screaming at their kids’ matches as well, and sees major benefits to the sport.

 

“Wrestlers are more successful in life,” Jacobs said, adding that his son and daughter are young but practice three nights a week for an hour or more. “They’re trained to put a lot of work into what they want regardless of a lot or a little reward at the end.”

 

Sometimes the result means a heartbreaking loss, like Burkert’s semifinal match at the 2017 World Trials. But Burkert is already looking towards the next competition.

 

“It doesn’t just happen in sports. You don’t just get lucky,” Burkert said. “If you want something, you’ve got a right to fight for it, so might as well do it.”