Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Hard-hitting women: Las Vegans thrive when given the chance to compete

Female Wrestlers at Match

L.E. Baskow

Arbor View’s Tristin Gallagher and Palo Verde’s Tatum Pine take to the mat during their 120lb varsity wrestling match on Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2017.

Female Wrestlers at Match

Arbor View's Isabela Luna dominates Palo Verde's Gaby Floratos down on the mat during their 120lb junior varsity wrestling match on Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2017. Launch slideshow »

Tatum Pine doesn’t view herself as different than other wrestlers in town. Aside from the obvious ­— she’s a female in a male-dominated sport — the Palo Verde High junior has the same intentions once the match begins.

“A win is a win,” she said. “Boys get upset when you beat them so that makes it more fun.”

Pine is one of six female wrestlers at Palo Verde and about 30 in Southern Nevada, all of whom compete in the boys’ high school league and on the Team Nevada club for girls. About 15,000 girls compete in high school wrestling nationally, and states such as Oregon, Hawaii and Tennessee sponsor a state tournament, according to the Women’s College Wrestling Association.

For Kevin Pine, Tatum’s dad and a former world champion, introducing his daughter to the sport had nothing to do with her following in his footsteps. Rather, it was about building a strong and confident daughter.

“The things wrestling teaches you is work ethic, goal setting and discipline,” said Pine, the Team Nevada coach. “There are male wrestlers and female wrestlers. But they are no different. Hopefully I don’t treat them different, because they don’t want to be treated different.

“They put in the time, they cut weight, they put in the miles. They do everything the boys do,” he said.

And they are getting similar chances.

The first all-girls high school wrestling tournament in Las Vegas featured just eight participants in 2012. That number has increased to 50, giving girls an opportunity to win a championship and earn a spot in the national tournament in North Dakota. For three locals, it’s led to full college scholarships to one of the about 30 universities with female programs, Pine said.

Pine’s mindset in fostering female athletes was simple: It’s all about creating equal opportunity.

“There’s a national movement with women’s wrestling, and we have kids right in the middle of that,” he said.

“A lot of girls don’t want to go out and compete against the boys, especially if you are a high school kid. That is somewhat uncomfortable for both. We are here to promote these girls and their hard work.”

At Arbor View, 106-pound division wrestler Peyton Prussin was the No. 1 seed in the Sunset Regional last season and was one of the best, regardless of gender, this season. At Palo Verde, Tatum Pine is the team Panthers’ captain.

Here are some other instances of female athletics thriving in Las Vegas:

Girls love football too

Girls Flag Football

Arbor View's Jasmine Gordon (2) battles through the Bonanza defense on a run during their varsity girls flag football game on Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2017. Launch slideshow »

This junior varsity girls’ flag football game sure produced some late-game excitement.

“I almost had a heart attack at the end of the game last night because the quarterback didn’t spike the ball (to stop the clock) at the end of the game,” Bonanza coach Dion Lee said. “But it was great fun. These games are always exciting.”

Lee is one of the founding fathers of female football in Las Vegas. In 2006, he started the Las Vegas Showgirlz adult team, which over 10 years gave about 400 women a chance to experience tackle football recreationally. In 2012, he helped girls’ flag football launch in the Clark County School District.

Lee is the coach for both of Bonanza’s varsity football teams.

“Gender has no issue,” he said. “With my son, I don’t say I have a boy athlete. With my daughter, I don’t say I have a girl athlete. These girls at Bonanza, they know they are on equal footing.”

Flag football has become so popular in Las Vegas that it went from being offered as strictly a varsity sport to all three levels. At Bonanza, there are 75 girls in the program and 80 boys.

Clark County was one of the first districts nationally to offer the sport. Its success has been observed by other states and duplicated.

“I love advocating for these girls and giving them an opportunity,” Lee said.

That’s apparent by what many of his peers would have considered an unconventional hire. The wide receivers coach for the boys’ Bonanza tackle team is one of Lee’s former Showgirlz players, Carrie Walters. He had no reservations about putting a woman in charge of boys, and they quickly learned to respect Walters’ knowledge.

“It wasn’t an issue. And by the end of the season they were all gung-ho to have me as coach,” Walters said.

Click to enlarge photo

UNLV product Sequoia Holmes (standing) is pictured during the 2010 WNBA playoffs with the Phoenix Mercury along with, from left, Candice Dupree, Diana Taurasi and Penny Taylor. Holmes is on the roster with San Antonio, which is relocating to Las Vegas after being purchased by MGM Resorts International.

MGM bringing WNBA to town a game changer for local girls

WNBA Team Las Vegas Aces Announced

From left: Bill Hornbuckle, Lilian Tomovich, Lisa Borders, Lisa Alexander, Jim Murren, Moriah Jefferson, Bill Laimbeer, Ann Rodriguez, Jay Parry, Chuck Bowling pose for a photo during a WNBA and MGM Resorts announcement at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay, Monday, Dec. 11, 2017. MGM Resorts International announced that its WNBA franchise will be called the Las Vegas Aces. Las Vegas first major professional basketball team  formerly the San Antonio Stars  will begin play in its new home in the 2018 season. Launch slideshow »

When the WNBA launched in 1996, Sequoia Holmes was a middle-school student in North Las Vegas with a singular passion — playing basketball. She went from having few players to look up to and model her game after to a league of women she hoped to one day join.

After a standout four-year career at UNLV, Holmes debuted in the WNBA with Houston in 2008. She’s now 31 years old and a veteran of 59 career games in the league, including last season with San Antonio. The Stars relocated to Southern Nevada in October, and the rebranded Las Vegas Aces will begin play in the spring, possibly with Holmes on the roster.

What the Vegas Golden Knights have done for the youth hockey scene here — from clinics to facilities to developing a young fan base that includes both boys and girls — will be emulated by MGM Resorts and the WNBA.

“This will have the same effect with the Las Vegas women’s basketball community,” Holmes said in October. “Young girls will see that it’s possible to play this sport professionally.”

That was apparent in the league’s first formal act this month at Mandalay Bay Events Center, where the franchise owned by MGM Resorts International invited local high school teams to take part in the festivities. Players from schools such as Centennial and Spring Valley were introduced to WNBA President Lisa Borders and players, reveling in the historic moment for their sport.

“How cool that the (Bulldogs) get to be at the unveiling of the WNBA team??!! Excited for our future team Vegas.#WNBA #Vegas #basketball,” read a post on Centennial’s Twitter account.

“If you look at the data for the market, according to ESPN and ESPN2, (Las Vegas) is a top-10 market for basketball,” Borders said.

Looking for a hockey program? The Golden Knights have it covered.

Since the NHL came to Las Vegas, the league and the Golden Knights have tried to infuse hockey into the local community.

From sprouting youth programs to giving away hockey sticks at local parks, the team has hosted a bevy of events. The latest is a “Women’s Learn to Play” program for those 18 and older.

The women’s hockey scene is scarce across the U.S., particularly in the West. According to the latest numbers from USA Hockey, only 75,832 of the 555,175 registered members are female. Of those, only 18,040 are older than 18.

“I grew up in a place where girls’ hockey was really small, and even when I was in college, I had to play men’s league because we didn’t have girls’ hockey,” said Haley Craven, coach for Women’s Learn to Play and daughter of Golden Knights senior vice president Murray Craven. “It’s nice to get out here with a bunch of women who are all levels, and all super excited to play together.”

Craven and other coaches put the women through drills, skating through cones, passing the puck and firing it into the net.

“Tonight we had 16 women, which was super awesome,” Haley Craven said. “The hope is to get a women’s league going and a women’s team to start traveling to the nearby areas.”

The lessons started Dec. 4 and run through Jan. 15, with practices every Monday, excluding Christmas, at City National Arena. The cost was $135 for the whole program.

One participant flies in from California each week to play because it’s so difficult to find women’s hockey. Most are Las Vegas locals.

“I’ve been a hockey fan my entire life, and I figured it sounds fun so I’ll try it out,” said 23-year-old Brittany Sabine, who has lived in Las Vegas since she was a child. “I played hockey a little bit, but I haven’t played in a really long time because there are no women’s leagues here, so I’m hoping this kick-starts something.”

Women of all ages and skill levels showed up for the event.

“They are having a blast,” Haley Craven said. “The first practice, they were scared to fall and scared to trust their skates. And now, just in the second week, I’ve noticed a huge improvement. We try to get them to know each other so it’s less awkward. It’s easier to fall when you’re surrounded by friends.”

Keys to fostering girls' sports

• Exposure and funds: Sue Thurman, the College of Southern Nevada volleyball coach, is quick to recite this statistic: Of the 80 girls who are in the junior college’s athletic department, 80 percent are first-generation college students. CSN also has a women’s program for soccer and softball.

“When you think about the opportunity for those kids, that’s pretty awesome,” Thurman said.

Thurman was previously the boys’ and girls’ coach at Las Vegas High, and still teaches at Harney Middle School in the northeast part of the valley. She’s a vocal proponent of funding to provide increased middle-school sports programs for girls, especially in areas considered socioeconomically disadvantaged. At Harney, there’s a club soccer team that attracts 60 kids to try out for a handful of spots, meaning cuts are inevitable. The same goes for the school’s basketball team.

“Those kids are losing self-confidence to put themselves out there again,” Thurman said.

The end result is seen a few years later on the high school level, where freshmen and junior varsity teams are half-full or teams are eliminated altogether.

“Not having kids involved, that’s heartbreaking,” Thurman said. “There’s a real need to develop these kids through athletics.”

• Safety: Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics coach, received a 60-year prison sentence this month for child porn crimes and assaulting female gymnasts.

In Las Vegas over the past 13 months, volunteer high school coaches at Eldorado, Del Sol and Silverado have been arrested on suspicion of sexual misconduct.

It’s a stark reminder that keeping children safe, whether it’s from a concussion or ankle sprain during a game, or from an inappropriate relationship with a coach, is an obstacle in empowering female athletes.

Coaches in the Clark County School District are required to be finger-printed and pass a background check before gaining access to a team. They also need CPR certification and are required to complete an online safety class on concussions.

It’s a similar scenario in youth leagues, where local affiliates for Little League or USA Soccer have multiple levels of background checks and safety-precaution training.

• Opportunity and role models: Roger Tabor, the founder of Downtown Las Vegas Soccer Club, receives a phone call around the same time each year from the coach at Cochise College near the Arizona-Mexico border.

“They’re like ‘Hey, we have full-ride (scholarships) to give. Can you send a kid our way,’ ” Tabor said. “That place is so close to the end of the world that they’ll take a kid sight unseen.”

More than 3 million girls play soccer annually in this country, according to USA soccer. Tabor said the sport’s growth is attributed to two factors: the advent of Title IX in 1972 and the United States’ World Cup victory in 1999.

Title IX, which is regulated by the federal government, calls for equal opportunity for female athletes when it comes to college scholarships, facilities and the like. So when a Division I football program — the lone money-maker for most university athletic departments — has 85 scholarship players, it leaves the college’s female sports with a full roster’s worth of scholarships to construct a team.

At UNLV, for instance, women’s soccer has 15 fully funded scholarships. For men’s soccer, it’s just nine, and they can be awarded only partially. The same breakdown is similar with softball and baseball.

In 1974, just 103,432 girls were registered as participants with USA Soccer. That spiked to 810,793 in 1980 because of the impact of Title IX. Another bump of about 700,000 girls occurred following the 1999 World Cup, when Brandi Chastain’s penalty kick gave the U.S. a victory against China and, more importantly, one of the signature moments in the growth of girls’ sports.

Chastain ripped her jersey off in celebration and the iconic photo helped usher in a new era of female sports. Women instantly became marketable celebrities and provided girls someone to aspire to.

“What the team did changed women’s sports. It’s that simple,” Tabor said. “Every girl wanted to play.”

The club each February hosts the Las Vegas Mayor’s Cup, which is broken into separate weekends for boys and girls. That’s by design because the line of coaches recruiting girls — upward of 200 programs each year — is so long. Coaches come from all levels of college soccer.

The event, Tabor estimates, contributes to hundreds of girls getting free education annually. In Southern Nevada alone, nearly 50 girls from the graduating class of 2017 advanced to college soccer, many on scholarship.

“We get dozens of schools at the Mayor’s Cup. They walk up and ask, ‘Who’s not committed?’ ” Tabor said.

Benefits of participating in athletics

Tennis champion Billie Jean King founded the Women’s Sports Foundation in 1974 with a mission statement to “advance the lives of girls and women through sport and physical activity.” Among the materials the nonprofit charity organization offers is a compilation of studies answering why it’s important for girls to get involved in athletics. Here are some of the reasons the foundation highlights.

• Four hours of exercise a week can reduce a teenage girl’s risk of breast cancer by up to 60 percent, according to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

• Sports help increase bone mass, meaning they significantly help cut the chances of participants developing osteoporosis later in life.

• High school girls who play sports get better grades, graduate at a higher rate and have a lower rate of unintended pregnancy.

• Girls who participate in sports have higher levels of confidence and self-esteem, and lower levels of depression than those who do not. They also have a more positive body image and are more likely to have a higher state of psychological well-being.

• Women without a background in sports are disadvantaged in the job market. It’s proven that sports serve as one of the first sociocultural learning environments for boys, and girls deserve the same advantage.

Ray Brewer can be reached at 702-990-2662 or [email protected]. Follow Ray on Twitter at twitter.com/raybrewer21