Going to the Mat for a Great Cause
Mission High School stands just three
blocks from Castro Street, the heart of San Francisco’s gayest
neighborhood. Forty percent Hispanic, 30 percent Asian, and 22 percent
black, it suffers the financial and educational woes of many urban
schools. So no one was surprised when the wrestling team lost its practice
room, and was forced into the hallway.
But what happened next was definitely
surprising. The Golden Gate Wrestling Club extended a hand. The
26-year-old, Castro-based group offered Mission its mats—and coaches.
They adopted the team, and quickly brought its wrestlers’ athletic
skills to unimagined heights.
In the process, whatever eyebrows might
have been raised at the thought of gay male wrestlers working with young
boys (and girls) from “the hood” soon turned to satisfied smiles.
For years, Golden Gate—a no-nonsense club
with fistfuls of Gay Games medals—had turned away anyone under 18.
“Some of them even came with parents,” says president Gene Dermody
(pictured at right), a
Gay Games winner who competed for New York University in the 1960s and
coached at New Jersey high schools for 11 years.
“But we wanted to protect ourselves from
‘bad publicity.’ I instituted that rule in 1982. It was just me being
anal. But as the years passed, we realized we were discriminating against
kids. They wanted a good, healthy activity, and we were keeping them out
for a stupid reason.”
Things changed when a Mission student asked
about renting Golden Gate’s facility. “We invited them up, and things
just snowballed,” Dermody recalls. “It all fell into place.”
The first day of practice drew a small,
wary crowd of 15 wrestlers, seven parents, and three administrators. But
as soon as the Golden Gate coaches—all fingerprinted and vetted by city
officials, aided by a white board listing foreign-language translations of
common wrestling terms for the non-English-speaking athletes—started the
session, the youngsters and adults realized what lay ahead: superb
instruction, hard work, and the opportunity to reap great rewards.
The next day, Dermody says, “It was
standing room only. Being at a gay wrestling club was no longer a
problem.”
The Mission Bears, as the high school team
is called, thrived, as did a second team from John A. O’Connell High
School, a bit further away in the Mission district. They won matches. They
earned praise for their technical prowess. Their self-esteem soared—and
so did their grades. Mission’s wrestlers boasted a team GPA of 3.0, and
captain Terrence Li won a $40,000 scholarship based on scholarship and
community service. Ivy League colleges vied to recruit him.
Dermody also points with pride to a
4-foot-9 14-year-old. “He’s ripping the competition apart. He can’t
speak a word of English, but he’s doing great. And he’ll take what
we’re giving him as far as he can.”
Dermody is under no illusions that training
five days a week at a gay club is easy for teenagers. After practice, many
take a roundabout route to the bus stop, purposely avoiding Castro Street.
“It seems kind of silly, but I’m not a kid anymore,” Dermody says.
“I don’t know what kinds of pressures they get. It’s bad enough
wrestling has a reputation in schools as a ‘gay sport’—even though
any wrestler could knock your teeth out.”
But, he adds, some wrestlers walk straight
through the Castro, clowning unself-consciously with each other as
teenagers often do.
“Most kids today don’t make snap
judgments about homosexuality,” Dermody notes. “They deal with
whatever pressures they get. They’ve made their own decision that our
club is the best thing and place for them. They like us, and they
appreciate what we do for them. At the same time, they’re not going to
go out and become gay advocates. We have our T-shirts, and they have
theirs. That’s fine.”
Adult attitudes can be tougher to change.
But they, too, see the positive changes in their children, and they’re
talking publicly about the good things coming out of the Golden Gate
Wrestling Club. Dermody even convinced one “old-fashioned” Chinese
father to get on the mat himself. “He was damn good!” Dermody
exclaims.
“I think the parents have been startled
at how nice, clean, and well-run our place is,” Dermody says. “And
we’ve been astounded at how nice, polite, and receptive the kids are.
They stay after practice, they clean up, and they shake our hands before
they leave. I’d love to drag some of them back to the suburbs where I
used to coach.
“Our club has been energized and
excited,” Dermody continues. “We open up our wallets and hearts to
these kids. They’re like sons and daughters we can pass something along
to.”
And, like all good works, Golden Gate’s
outreach has inspired others. A few hours south, the largely gay San Diego
Wrestling Club was recently asked to help coach a nearby Christian school.
Dan Woog is a journalist, educator,
soccer coach, gay activist, and author of the “Jocks” series of books
on gay male athletes. Visit his website at www.danwoog.com. He can be
reached care of Letters from CAMP Rehoboth or at OutField@qsyndicate.com.
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