Rosen wins national wrestling championship
Last year, Donna Rosen made sports history by becoming the first transgender woman to compete in a sanctioned women's freestyle wrestling tournament, winning one match at the U.S. Open Women's Freestyle Wrestling Championships in Cleveland and earning a berth in the World Team Trials. (See HERE). It was her first mainstream wrestling match in 40 years.
Sunday July 10 she made her debut in beach wrestling by winning the 2011 Senior Women's U.S. Beach National Championships on the shores of Lake Ontario in Rochester, New York. Although she is better known as a transgender educator under the name Donna Rose, which she has used for the past decade, under USA Wrestling rules, she competed under her legal surname of Rosen.
"It was such a great weekend," she told the Bay Area Reporter. "This is the biggest title I have ever won. I am so excited. This is just the beginning."
Beach wrestling is a relatively new phenomenon that is more akin to sumo and Greco-Roman wrestling than it is to freestyle. Points are scored by taking opponents down or shoving them out of the ring. As Rosen, 52, was driving 900 miles from her home in South Carolina to Rochester, I talked with her on the phone about the importance of being sure not to overextend when pushing or throwing her opponent. It's a critical point because of the deceptive ease with which sand gives way under off balance footing, and Rosen had not even trained on sand before. As part of her dream to compete in the U.S. Olympic trials next year, she has been driving three hours each way to train with 2004 Olympic silver medalist Sara McMann and other elite wrestlers.
In her blog, Rosen wrote of her participation in the event.
"I know many trans people who support the notion of equal rights but stop short of being able to support competing against natal born women," she wrote. "I'm not going to argue about it – there are rules in my sport that cover this particular situation and I'm well within the guidelines. I've had my blood chemistry tested so I'm confident I'm good in that regard as well. But once you find yourself arguing about muscle memory or the lingering effects of growing up on testosterone or other things you find yourself in an argument that is as much emotional as logical. Those are arguments that have no winners. But as we look at the boundaries of being involved in life as men and women, and enjoying the unquestioned rights (and obligations) that come with the territory so, too, is this one of those. And so, too, are some of us going to want to participate. It's just that simple."
Rosen actually started her wrestling comeback in May 2006 in San Francisco. "The Memorial Day tournament there before the 2006 [Gay] Games in Chicago somehow started all this insanity for me again," she wrote me earlier this year, and she spoke in her blog of her undying desire to return to wrestling.
"How do you explain to someone that you do it because you enjoy it," she wrote. "Last year at this time I got (the urge) and didn't expect to compete again but here I am. Early last year I was coming off a hiatus that I never expected would end. But as with most things, passions are as hard to explain as they are to define. The main opponent in all of this is myself – mentally and physically – and in that regard I'm determined not to allow myself to stop myself. Where it leads? Who knows? I've stopped trying to rationalize this and am focused on simply doing."
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