Female Wrestler Wants In on High School Team

Support is growing for a Philadelphia Catholic schoolgirl who wants the chance to wrestle on her high school team. Inspired by the success of another girl in a similar situation, 16-year-old Amanda Leve has started a petition on Change.org to help her get the Archdiocese to change its mind and let her hit the mats this season.

"Being in jujitsu for five years and competing regularly against boys at tournaments, I thought it was just a good idea to wrestle at my school," Leve told EDGE in a recent interview. "It would be great to have it on my college application, and I could possibly get a scholarship out of it. I would love being on the school team."

The mixed-martial arts athlete has years of experience and said she trains twice a day almost every day of the week. She said that her goal is to be a professional mixed-martial arts athlete in the Ultimate Fighting Champion, noting that they officially launched a women's league in February. Leve also said she is involved in anti-bullying programs to help empower people.

So when she heard that her Catholic Archbishop Ryan High School was forming a wrestling team, she was all set to join. Until the Archdiocese told her that was a non-starter, said Leve, citing "similar excuses [used] before like how certain sports aren't meant for girls and that there is intimate and inappropriate touching."

"I'm sorry, but they need to grow up because that is ridiculous!" said Leve on the Change.org petition site. "I'm an athlete who has beat boys in competition before, and I deserve to be treated fairly." See Leve in action in the YouTube video below.

This sense of fighting for what is fair led Leve to found this petition. She said that she was inspired by a similar story where 11-year-old Caroline Pla and her family successfully used a Change.org petition to help the girl win permission from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to play on a football team.

Leve said that the Archdiocese has agreed to review her request -- but not until next spring. That is too late for wrestling season, which begins in November, said Leve.

"By then, the season is over," said Leve. "So I am trying to get a meeting sooner. They want to push me aside. But being a girl in a sport with mainly guys is tough enough without discrimination. I feel like they should just move the date of the meeting up so I have a chance to wrestle this season, as opposed to next season."

To that end, Leve founded the Change.org petition, which currently has 12,500 signatures. She said that her fellow students have been very supportive, noting that when she appeared on Fox News, "my Twitter blew up with classmates saying, 'Let her wrestle!' and 'Go Amanda!'"

Also supporting her petition are members of the mixed-martial arts community, including UFC star Miesha Tate, the 27-year-old former Strikeforce Women's Bantamweight Champion who is one of the top MMA fighters in the world. Tate wrestled on the boys' wrestling team in high school, and in 2005 won the national at the World Team Trials in her division. Leve just wants similar opportunities to be opened up to her.

"I feel like it's good for me, and for any girl that thinks they can do it," said Leve. "The Archdiocese needs to realize that wrestling is in the Olympics, it's in colleges, and if they hold a girl back from doing a sport, if they don't let me in, that this situation will just happen again in the future."