Blog Post #3 : Casey Reinard

For this blog entry, I decided to talk about a rare occurrence in the world of sports. When I think of sports, some of the first things that come to mind are competition, physical exhaustion, and winning. 

On February 17, 2011, a high school wrestler from Iowa, Sophomore Joel Northrup, defaulted (decided not to participate in) before his first-round state tournament wrestling match. You may wonder why a young man who was projected to be one of the top placers a state tournament would chose to forfeit a match without so much as a few seconds on the mat. He chose to do this because his opponent was one Cassy Herkleman, a female wrestler. When I first heard this, my mind rushed directly to the conclusion that Joel was acting "high-and-mighty", refusing to wrestle a girl because wrestling is predominately a male sport, and a rather violent one at that. However, this was not the case for Joel. In a later statement by Joel, he wrote, "As a matter of conscience and my faith, I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner."

Joel's decision to not wrestle a girl, even if founded by his conscience and faith, brings up an interesting question: Does there exist an element of gender and sexuality within the realm of sports that creates a double-standard between the participation of men and women? For example, if there were two men wresting one another, and then there were two women wrestling one another. Would a person not expect the match between the men to be more rough and the match between the women to be less, shall we say, athletic? This, however, would be a completely wrong assumption. Of course there is the vast history of sport participation that can show how men tend to be better at certain, more physical sports, while women are better at sports that may not include such a physical component, such as track and field. By no means, though, should this history of sports serve as a foundation for who should or should not participate in certain sports.