Not All Sugar and Spice : Sports: High school senior Dana Ziegert, 17, is redefining what girls are made of, first by competing on the boys wrestling team and then being voted homecoming queen.

Dana Ziegert stuck with it as the only girl on the Newbury Park High School boys wrestling team long enough to be accepted as one of the guys, making the honor she won last year all the more striking.

“My principal said I’m the first wrestler to be voted homecoming queen,” the 17-year-old senior said. “I was really surprised to even be nominated.”

Ziegert started wrestling in ninth grade and is in the middle of her fourth year on the squad, she said. The plan was to try it for a week and drop out if it wasn’t fun. But she found she enjoyed the demands of the sport.

“When you’re done, you feel tired, hungry, thirsty, hot and sweaty, but it’s such a good feeling,” Ziegert said.

The fact that Ziegert kept coming back and working hard won her the respect of teammates and classmates who may have raised an eyebrow when she first went out for the squad, said wrestling coach Marty Maciel, a biology teacher at the school.

“It’s the toughest sport on campus, by far,” Maciel said. “It’s the most challenging and time-consuming.”

Ziegert’s resolve has been tested: She hasn’t won many of her matches, but she never gave up, Maciel said.

It has not always been easy for Ziegert to pursue such a physical sport. Peer pressure took its toll in the beginning.

“For the first couple of years, a lot of people teased her about it a lot, but now people look up to her because of it,” said Eric Masaki, a senior who started on the team the same year Ziegert did.

Another senior who joined the team as a freshman said he laughed it off when he saw a girl trying out.

“I thought: ‘She won’t make it.’ And here she is, senior year,” said Casey Waldron, 17. “She’s homecoming queen and she’s still wrestling, and I think it’s pretty rad. She has a lot of character.”

Ziegert said she was not trying to prove anything by joining the team. She just wanted to participate in sports.

“I know people thought I was really a women’s-libber,” she said. “I heard a lot about ‘Why is she doing this? Why would she want to?’ ”

The answer is simple, Ziegert said. At 5 feet, 2 inches, she is too short for basketball, never excelled at softball or swimming, and didn’t like running. Her friends understood, and now Ziegert knows that other students have come around too.

Like any homecoming queen, Ziegert said she was honored to win what is typically considered a beauty and popularity contest. But the victory meant more than the chance to wear a crown for the night.

“It made me feel really good that people know I’m still a girl and I like to wear dresses,” Ziegert said.

At a December meet in Camarillo, Ziegert marked another milestone: Wrestling at 130 pounds, she scored her first pin, beating a Ventura High School boy.

“It was the best feeling to know all this hard work paid off finally,” said Ziegert, who has wrestled for both the varsity and junior varsity.

Staying with wrestling taught her important lessons about life.

“I feel a lot more confident because of this,” she added. “I think if I can go through this, I can do anything.”

Wrestling may have made Ziegert a stronger person, but it made her mother a wreck--but not because Ziegert is a girl.

“I would feel the same way if my son were wrestling,” Luci Ziegert said. “It seems so physical. It makes me nervous.”