Golden – Daddy’s little girl?
Of course, Golden High School’s Brooke Sauer is all that and more.
The senior has a 3.27 grade-point average, is student body president and is a mentor in a program that addresses violence at school. She captained the volleyball team in the fall. And, if you must know, it’s less likely she will offer something such as “Ooh, ick!” than, say, “Stick him!”
Why? Sauer is the first female wrestler to qualify for the Colorado wrestling tournament that begins today at the Pepsi Center.
No need to preface wrestler with the words girl or female when addressing her. It’s cool she’s the one, she said, but it won’t help her tonight at 7:15, when she takes the mat like any other previous Colorado competitor in 71 years. Yet she will be the most different, novel and scrutinized – and it will grow if she progresses through the bracketing.
“It was my goal last year, too,” said Sauer, a senior. “It was to be a wrestler who got to state. I’m just like any other wrestler (who qualified). Being a girl was just a bonus.”
And what a bonus it is for the daughter of Dave Sauer, the school’s wrestling coach, who was a state qualifier for the Demons from 1975-77. The younger Sauer, who is simply doing what she chooses and loves, has managed to cause quite a stir at the largest annual gathering on the prep calendar, one exclusively dominated by tough guys who now have to make way and move over for the charter member of the female qualifiers club.
A 5-foot-2, 103-pounder, Sauer advanced through consolation rounds in the past weekend’s regional rounds in Grand Junction and, yes, it was as sweet as you can imagine.
“I would have been happy if any girl had made it,” Dave Sauer said. “As long as they were in it for the right reasons, I would have been happy. But because it’s (Brooke), it’s special.”
Consider some of the annual emotions, antics and sights of the tournament. Victory. Defeat. Pins. Technical falls. Superior decisions. Overtime. Referee’s decision. Shaking hands. Injury. Blood on the mat. Having your arm raised after winning. Ending the season on a positive or negative note. Competing. Making weight. Marching in with the parade of champions. Being introduced. Jubilation. Dejection. Joining five others on the podium as placers. Performing in front of family, fans and maybe more than 17,000 people on finals night.
Brooke Sauer not only has the opportunity to join the fun, but has modified it already with the possibility of it getting better.
For instance, having been one of the few in-state schoolgirls to win a wrestling match against a schoolboy, is there a move to freeze out Sauer? Or is she being treated like the NFL’s Green Bay Packers in the first Super Bowl, as in don’t lose to Kansas City of the old AFL or all is lost? She can’t win a state match, too, can she?
There’s the fragile male ego thing. What young man, previously worried about losing to a girl in the first place, wants to say he was eliminated from the tournament by a – gulp! – girl?
Sauer, who said she struggles to make weight just as boys do, is well-versed and experienced in “the gender thing,” according to her father. There have been minor incidents, subtle ones, too, such as grudgingly acknowledging her accomplishments, but nothing that has made her blink.
She has furthered the notion that wrestling is for everybody who wants to pay the price. Sauer is well beyond sideshow, with the numbers to back it up. She was 4-20 as a sophomore, 19-21 as a junior. This season, Sauer is 26-12. Never mind she’s a lightweight who owns more victories than only four others in her 16-person bracket.
Most qualifiers for the wrestling tournament don’t get there by luck.
“It has been at every end of the spectrum, everything from being respected to the exact opposite; they could care less or say that I don’t belong out there,” Sauer said. “For the most part, the guys, win or lose, it doesn’t matter. I’ve earned their respect as a wrestler, not someone trying to make a statement.”
Sauer, who accompanied her father to countless practices as a youth, picked it up in middle school and stayed with it, is guaranteed two matches. She’ll open against Pueblo South’s Jeremy Aguero in a field devoid of placers from 2005.
As is the usual case for 103, there are five freshmen and four sophomores. She is the only senior.
A victory tonight would put her in Friday afternoon’s quarterfinals; a loss sends her to the consolation rounds. In her wildest dreams, she would make the semifinals Friday night, then march in with 111 other finalists Saturday night.
Stranger things have happened.
“It’s another tournament,” Sauer said. “Before, I would have been happy to make it to state, but it’s not really enough anymore. I don’t want to go two and out. I want to prove I earned my spot.”
An aspiring health sciences student who also wrestles competitively in the offseason and can bench press her body weight, Sauer wouldn’t mind joining Michaela Hutchison of Alaska, who earlier this month became the nation’s only girls wrestling state champion in a sport dominated by boys.
Sauer has applied to Colorado State, but doesn’t know if wrestling will remain in her long-term future.
Remember: Her being here isn’t a victory for females everywhere. She’s doing something she loves.
“I’ll definitely do the offseason freestyle this summer,” she said. “But I really don’t know … I’ve been playing with the idea of going to the Olympic Training Center. I’m kind of open right now.
“I’d be able to live without it.”
