While this week marked the first time JCC has competed in girls wrestling, which is in its third season as a Minnesota State High School League activity, it's not the first time a girl has wrestled for the Huskies.
In the 2006-2007 season, freshman Natalie Rutt, who attended JCC for a short time, wrestled at 103 pounds.
On Jan. 9, 2007, she wrestled Elissa Reinsma of Fulda/Murray County Central in the first match between two girls in state history. Reinsma won the match 7-2.
Prior to that night, JCC coach Randy Baker had thought a lot about matching Rutt up with Reinsma, who was an eighth grader.
He had two reasons:
Give seventh-grade 103-pounder Cooper Moore a break because of match count and that he already had defeated Reinsma about a month earlier, pinning her in the finals of the JCC Pizza Ranch tournament.
“Wrestling is about learning and challenges,” Baker told Tim Leighton of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “When I decided that Cooper wasn’t going to wrestle, Natalie was the next person in line.
“She has composure, handles stress well and is a competitor. When I was thinking of putting her out there against (Reinsma), I thought maybe it would be a first.”
Reinsma had a 15-6 record at the time, breaking the match open with a three-point surge in the third period to defeat Rutt, who had won her first two varsity matches.
“The crowd was going pretty crazy, especially when she got a takedown on me,” Reinsma said. “I was wrestling a little bit lazy. When she pulled to within 4-2, I had to tell myself to get going. It’s kind of neat for it to be a first, but I’m thinking about something else later on.”
That something else was becoming the first girl to qualify for the MSHSL state tournament.
Reinsma became the first female to qualify for the state tourney as a sophomore in 2009. She was injured in 2010 and qualified again as a senior in 2011.
Reinsma went on to become an all-American in softball at Southwest Minnesota State.
Now Elissa Weineke, she is now Community Education Coordinator, Student Council Advisor and head softball coach at Murray County Central.
Rutt would later be a section place winner at New Prague High School, was a two-time runner-up at the Junior Nationals and wrestled at Jamestown University, where she was a Women’s College Wrestling Association all-American in 2011.
Natalie’s brother, Travis Rutt, won two state titles while attending Jackson County Central and went on to wrestle collegiately at both Wisconsin and Oklahoma.