Female youth wrestlers set for national meet
When she was 5 years old, Kayla Kehr asked her father to either buy her a pony or let her wrestle.
She didn't get the pony. The Spring Grove eighth-grader joined the sport that her two older brothers — Marcus and Jonny — succeeded in and used to push her around.
This weekend, Kayla Kehr will be one of four female wrestlers from York and Adams counties competing at the Body Bar Women's National Championships in Irving, Texas. Kehr, West York eighth-grader Carly Gross, Kennard-Dale seventh-grader Tiffani McNelis and Gettysburg seventh-grader Montana Delawder are all members of a group of more than a dozen female wrestlers from the state traveling to tournaments around the country as "Team PA."
They all have different stories of how they got into the sport. McNelis started in second grade after her older brother, Brody Baublitz, took up the sport and started to push her around. Delawder also started in second grade, asking her parents to sign her up after she'd heard about the sport while watching UFC, and she then received a flyer at school. Gross started about a year ago after years of encouragement from her father Brian, the head coach at West York High School.
Although seeing a female wrestler is still an unusual sight to many spectators, all four wrestlers say their coaches instilled in them that they're just wrestlers, not female wrestlers. They all compete against and train with male counterparts throughout the middle school season, but the club season does give them the opportunity to compete at national female-only tournaments.
“I never realized how many tournaments there are for girls out there," Brian Gross said. "I’ve coached high school wrestling for 16 years, but I’ve never really had a girl that was that interested. Now that my daughter’s into it, it’s something totally new and different.”
McNelis and Delawder have traveled to more than six different states, as well as Canada, to compete in tournaments. They will add Texas to that list this weekend. They and Kehr competed at the Gotham City Open earlier this month in New York City, and all finished in the top four in their weight classes.
This weekend, the four wrestlers will compete in freestyle wrestling, a slightly different variation of the sport from the folkstyle they're accustomed to, against some of the best competition in the country. Kehr, the oldest of the group, will wrestle in the United World Wrestling Cadet (born 1999-2001) 101-pound weight class. A top-three finish could earn her a spot on the UWW Cadet national team.
McNelis will compete in the schoolgirl (born 2002-03) 120-pound weight class, Delawder will compete in the schoolgirl 89-pound weight class, and Gross will compete in the schoolgirl 105-pound weight class. There is no national team for the schoolgirl age group.
Their flight departs Thursday. They weigh in on Friday and compete on Saturday. All four set goals of earning a medal this weekend.
They have plenty more goals as well, including competing at the Cadet/Junior National Championships, held annually in Fargo, North Dakota, which Kehr is old enough to do this season. The other three will be old enough to do so in the next couple years. They're also looking forward to high school, when they'll have a chance to represent their schools and try to reach the state tournament.
Asked if they'd like to see girls wrestling recognized as a separate sport in Pennsylvania, all four had the same quick reaction: "No way."
They're wrestlers not girl wrestlers, and they want to keep it that way. But first they're hoping to assert themselves as the best female wrestlers in the country this weekend in Texas.
