Spotlight: Two Female Wrestlers

Davidson is a place that aspires to making dreams a reality. Want to start a knitting club? Go for it. Interested in learning Swahili? That can be arranged. So when incoming freshmen Kari Sickles expressed interest in joining the all-men's wrestling team, no one could come up with a reason why she shouldn't.

Sickles, who hails from Davie, Florida, competed in mixed martial arts in middle school. Her freshman biology teacher, who was also the wrestling coach, thought that wrestling might interest her. He dared her to join the team, and she decided to give it a shot. She was injured in the very beginning of the season and couldn't compete until the end of the year, but she liked it so much she decided to stick with it. In her three years at Western High School, Sickles went 32-31 against boys, going 12-8 her senior year in high school where she wrestled at 103 and 112 pounds. She was named a U.S. Girls' Wrestling Association Folkstyle All-American in 2011 and was one of the team captains on the Western wrestling team. Meanwhile, she also lettered in track and cross country.

When it came time to think about applying to colleges, Sickles felt that continuing her wrestling career seemed like the "next logical step." Sickles attended wrestling camps at Davidson, where her mother, father and grandfather also attended. She approached Coach Bob Patnesky, who told her that if she got in, she would be welcome on the team. "It's the Davidson philosophy: creating the same opportunity to everyone," Patnesky said. "She is a female that likes to wrestle. I have worked with her before and it's no different than training with a male." Sickles joined the team as a walk-on, along with eight other men. A total of 20 women have participated on men's college wrestling teams since the 2004-05 season across all divisions, but Sickles was the first at Davidson.

According to Sickles, most people were supportive of her decision. "There were a few that were against it, though they never tried to talk me out of it," she said. The transition for her was pretty easy, since her high school team was also a men's team, but she says, "whether I'm on a women's team or a men's team wrestling is always going to be a challenging sport."

One day Sickles was talking with some of her freshmen hallmates and mentioned that she was looking for a female training partner. She found that partner in a friend that lived across the hall from her, Avery Haller '15. Haller, who is from Seattle, Washington, had never wrestled before. In fact, she had never even been to a meet, but she says she "couldn't come up with an answer to the question ‘why not?'. I was ready to try something new in college and it seemed like something I would enjoy."

Haller played soccer throughout high school, but she says being on an all-men's team is a completely different scenario. "Training with men leaves no room for slacking. When we ran, I had to work my rear off just to finish within a respectable distance-- and most of the time it wasn't so respectable." But, as Haller says, the challenge is also the best part. She enjoys the feeling of pushing herself to the limit, and "I learned how far I could go without throwing up."