A Pennsylvania wrestling club says it has the only "intelligent, realistic and legally viable choice" in settling the dispute between the parents of a female teen wrestler and Line Mountain School District: establish a statewide female wrestling program.
Line Mountain can't make that happen. The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association can.
The Pennsylvania Wrestling Club filed a motion to intervene Wednesday in the federal lawsuit, asking that a judge add it as a plaintiff and the PIAA as a defendant.
Brian and Angie Beattie, of Herndon, parents of seventh-grader Audrianna, filed suit against the school district last month after their daughter was barred from the gender-specific wrestling program. (See other story, Page 1.)
The Beatties want the court to force Line Mountain to allow Audrianna an opportunity to make the middle school wrestling team. The Pennsylvania Wrestling Club seeks that too on the basis of "Title IX" and the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act. It also asks that the PIAA establish female wrestling programs in all state public school districts where male programs exist.
If a judge were to simply allow Audrianna to wrestle with males, she would be at increased risk of injury while she and her male competitors grow older and her competitors grow stronger, the motion states. Instead, a judge should order that PIAA establish programs for females.
Should a judge include the club and the PIAA in the suit and rule in the plaintiffs' favor, the club also asks that it be appointed to enforce the judgment.
Female wrestling programs are established in 26 other states including Hawaii, Texas and Oregon, according to the motion. It says the sport is the fastest growing for females over the past 20 years, from 804 to 8,727 participants.
Women began wrestling in the Olympics during the Athens games in 2004. Sara McMann, a Lock Haven alum, won a silver medal in Athens.
Audrianna Beattie moved with her parents in 2012 to Northumberland County from Iowa where she had been wrestling since the third grade. She wrestled last year along with boy's in Line Mountain's elementary program. The Pennsylvania Wrestling Club believes she has a "bona fide career in international and Olympic competition," according to the motion. Should the district prevent her from participating in the sport, it will derail her potential career and prevent the club from recruiting and training her when she turns 16 years old.
That Pennsylvania has a deep history with male wrestling but ignores the potential for females in the sport is a result of the "biases and prejudices deeply rooted historically and psychologically in the social mores and attitudes" of Central Pennsylvania, Doylestown attorney Lawrence Otter wrote in the motion on behalf of the club.
Central PA isn't alone in those biases, he argues, while providing some historical context in the club's lawsuit as to why he believes females have been dissuaded from wrestling. He says women had long participated and succeeded in the sport dating back to ancient times. That changed under Queen Victoria, the club's motion claims, who they say pushed the sport underground because of its carnal and physical nature, relegating men to compete in carnival sideshows and women during burlesque shows.