Sugar? Spice? Everything nice? Pat and Bob Higginbotham knew their little girl, Dawn, didn`t quite have that makeup.
But they never expected Dawn, at 14, to try out for the boys wrestling team at Ft. Zumwalt North High-and make it.
”In a way, she took me by surprise when she said she wanted to do this,” Bob Higginbotham said. ”I wasn`t happy with it to start with. Wrestling is more or less a contact sport, and I didn`t like the idea of her being involved in a contact sport with boys.
”But ballet is a contact sport, too, I guess. I finally decided she is only young once and can do what she wants. I just told her that if she goes out for something, she has to stick with it.”
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Dawn Higginbotham is a freshman but she has wrestled, for the most part, with the junior varsity at 135 pounds.
”She has impressed me in the aspect that she has stayed with it,” Bob said. ”She never planned to do anything else. She didn`t try out for the team to make a point.”
”I`m not some woman`s libber or anything,” Dawn said. ”I`m just someone who wants to wrestle. I came out to watch all the wrestling matches last year and really liked it. When I came out, I found out I didn`t know a few things about it that I thought I knew. I`m learning something every day.
”But I have no regrets. This is what I want to do all four years.”
Dawn said she`s always been athletic and often the only girl on an otherwise all-boys team, including soccer and cross country teams.
”We had another girl three years ago who tried out for wrestling as a freshman,” said Dave Primeau, athletic director and football coach. ”That girl couldn`t make it through a practice. Dawn is different, because she really is an athlete. She came out to be a wrestler.”
That`s fine, but . . .
”My parents were totally against it. My dad finally stuck up for it, but it took my mom a while.”
Pat Higginbotham said: ”We fought tooth and nail. There was a lot of door-slamming and yelling. She threatened to sue me and the school if they didn`t let her do it. She`s something else.
”What else does she do besides sports? Drives me nuts, that`s what. I`m just so afraid she`s going to get hurt, but I root for her. And I`ve noticed that parents and grandparents from the teams we wrestle against have been rooting for her. I`m proud of her.”
Bob Higginbotham is proud of the way his daughter has withstood the considerable grief she has heard from schoolmates.
”There have been plenty of rumors going around school about me because of this,” Dawn said. ”I don`t like that, but I try not to pay attention to them.”
”My brother, Mike, might have had as many problems as me. He`s a junior on the team and at the beginning, all the guys were saying, `Mike, get your sister off the team.` He`s getting used to it now, I think. He was totally against it at first, too. He`d say: `You`re a girl. You`re supposed to wear skirts and dresses and stuff, not wrestle.` But we`re pretty close, so I think that helps.”
Dawn`s opponents might have the most trouble with her.
”Before my first match, I was really nervous. Not anymore. Now, the guy I`m wrestling is usually more nervous than me. I haven`t noticed them not using certain moves on me because I`m a girl. Actually, some have made some pretty ignorant moves and no one has said anything.”
Higginbotham hasn`t won a match. But she has won over supporters. Coach Jon Gibbs has said Dawn tries harder than the boys on the team.
”Now she said she wants to go out for football,” Pat said. ”I said,
`Nope.` I think she`s just trying to see how far she can push. If she wants to wrestle for four years, I`ll just keep hoping she doesn`t get hurt and keep rooting for her to win.”
”You know what I hope? I hope enough girls who want to wrestle come out for the team and maybe they can start girls wrestling,” said Bob
Higginbotham. ”Boys wrestling is still a sport that girls shouldn`t be in.”