Female Student Wins Her Fight to Wrestle Boys

Katherine Celli grew up wrestling with her father and brother. It was just play-wrestling, she says, but now Celli thinks she’s ready for the real thing.

Next fall, she’ll get the chance. And if she’s good enough, the 15-year-old Birmingham High student will become the Valley’s first female high school wrestler and the first to compete in the City Section.

Celli had to fight for her right to wrestle, making an impassioned plea to the Los Angeles school board. This week, the school board informed Birmingham that it must permit Celli to try out for next year’s wrestling team.

All the 5-9, 140-pound blonde has to worry about is the competition. She says she won’t mind grappling with the opposite sex, having tussled as a child with family members.

“It was just play-wrestling, but it got rough,” she said.

Birmingham officials told Celli in January that she couldn’t wrestle because of a City Section rule barring females from contact sports. There had been such a rule, but it was rescinded in September, 1985.

School administrators said they hadn’t been notified of the rule change until the school board stepped in.

Celli won’t be California’s first female high school wrestler. There is one at Hawthorne High. In December, 1985, America Morris of Clairemont High in San Diego pinned her male opponent.

Since the City Section’s rule change, several girls have played football but none has wrestled, officials said.

Celli already has begun lifting weights and losing weight for her chance at being the first. The bespectacled ninth-grader, on this day wearing a brightly colored sweater and cotton skirt, is soft-spoken and given to occasional giggling.

“I don’t want to look like a wrestler, I just want to wrestle,” she said. “I’m going to devote myself entirely to this. I’m going to stick this out.”

Her friends think the whole thing’s a joke. And she’s not sure what kind of reputation she’ll get. Celli only knows that she loves the sport.

“I’m not surprised at anything my daughter does,” said Maureen O’Neill, her mother.

Last fall, Celli moved to live with her father in Gervais, Ore., where a similar bid to wrestle failed. She promptly moved back in with her mother in Van Nuys.

Peter Dhanes, Birmingham’s wrestling coach, said he will welcome Celli.

“I teach biology, so I can tell you reasons why women are not as strong,” Dhanes said. “But it’s a matter of determination. If she has the right attitude, she can win.”

Dhanes thinks Celli will fit in with an already diverse team.

“I’ve got guys from Yugoslavia and Iran and Korea,” Dhanes said. “You throw in a female . . . I’m all for it.”