The forfeit heard 'round the world

Everyone is talking about it, including Bobblehead, so I though I would flip my two cents into the discussion jar.

Yesterday, the first day of the 2011 IHSAA State Wrestling Tournament, Cassy Herkelman won her first round match against Joel Northrup because Northrup refused to wrestle her.

“As a matter of conscience and my faith, I do not believe that is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner,” he said in a statement prepared with the help of his parents.

Northrup, the son of a pastor, refused to wrestle Herkelman earlier this season and was substituted out of the draw, something that was impossible yesterday. It was mano-a-mano, and Northrup played the religion card to forfeit the match.

Though many are applauding him for maintaining his principles, I look at it this way: the kid did not want to get beat by a girl.

Mad props to Herkelman and Megan Black for being the first female wrestlers to qualify for State; they have shattered yet another glass ceiling. Yet their spotlight seems to have been focused on Northrup. The kid is like 15 or 16, so I feel bad everyone is hurling politically and sexually charged criticism at him. But I have to say he deserves it. The kid has a right to believe and do whatever he wants, and I applaud him for doing that. However, I cannot help personally judging his decision as backward and uncivilized. To me it is a gesture of blatant sexism, and that I cannot condone.

Despite the fact Northrup wrestles for Linn-Mar, a public school, he is home-schooled. It makes me wonder if he was the one who had a problem wrestling Herkelman or if it was his parents. Home-schooled kids seem to be culturally inept and less freethinking because their parents have molded and programmed them to be automatons; they lack the social experience and tools to think independently and challenge ideas. Coming from a devout Christian family with a likely patriarchal pastor at its helm, I do not think Northrup had any other choice.

I really would have liked Northrup to have wrestled Herkelman. As much as he supposedly thinks wrestling a girl is wrong, just think of what it would have done to his convictions of gender roles had he been beaten by a chick. (Technically he was, but I am talking about fair and square on the mat.)