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As a young girl, Lisa Whitsett used to hang out at UNI wrestling meets. She was there so often the wrestlers thought of her as family. She was, in a way.
Her dad, retired psychology professor David Whitsett, served as the sports psychologist for the UNI wrestling team.
Whitsett didn’t think it’d be a big deal. “I’m small and short. People would say, ‘I didn’t realize you wrestled guys’ or they don’t realize there aren’t that many girls who do it,” said Whitsett, who received her M.A. in mental health counseling at UNI in 1996. |
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The Cedar Falls native, who now lives and works in Grapevine, Texas, wrestled at the University of California in San Diego, where she got her bachelor’s degree in 1991.
“When I got my B.A. I realized there were no women wrestling teams, not organized teams anyway,” Whitsett said. “There were only 50 women in the country who wrestled, so we had to wrestle the guys. Most wrestlers’ reactions, though not all, were stereotypical. Some were vocal, like ‘you don’t belong here,’ others were more covert; even now it’s covert—that just made me stronger and better. I had lots of emotion and aggression.”
In 1991, she was accepted as the first female member to the California JETS, a Greco-Roman wrestling team. In |
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| Whitsett works with an actor on the UNI production of “The Wrestling Season.” |
1992, she was named the country’s first female assistant wrestling coach to a male wrestling team in Colorado.
She also coached the first Texas girls’ national wrestling team in 2002 and 2003.
“Texas and Hawaii are the only states that mandate separate girls’ and guys’ (high school) teams,” she said. “At the college level there are scholarships now and full teams. The sport has really blossomed, there are lots of opportunities for women.”
By 2003, Whitsett no longer wrestled but continued to coach. That year, her book, “Beneath the Armor of an Athlete: Real Strength on the Wrestling Mat,” was published. “The book is about making your own reality, describing my journey from self doubt to self acceptance and how I had my identity all wrapped up in sports and if I give up that identity, who was I? I realize I’m evolving into something and someone else.”
She has translated the skills she learned on the wrestling mat to the business arena.
Whitsett and her husband, Steve Wills (BA ’94), who wrestled at UNI, founded Efficient Facilities International five years ago, where she is responsible for corporate development, business process and Web development. She has traveled Texas and Iowa, talking about her experiences and taking on special projects, occasionally visiting her hometown.
Her most recent visit was this winter when she trained cast members for Theatre UNI’s February production of “The Wrestling Season.”
“Her involvement with the students was to both talk to them about the psychology in the high-school freestyle wrestling world and also help choreograph scenes that involve wrestling moves,” said Eric Lange, head of the Department of Theatre.
The play, written by Laurie Brooks, focuses on a high school wrestling team and deals with the challenges wrestlers face: weight and competition.
“There’s also a subplot; there are rumors about a couple wrestlers being gay and the effect it has. There’s also a rivalry established early on and you can see how the rumor affects the relationship. The play has a message directed toward high school students,” said Whitsett, who has assisted with the production before, at the Dallas Children’s Theatre and in Austin.
How did she end up in the Lone Star state? “My husband attended a career fair and was recruited to teach at Grapevine High School.” Her twin sister, Laurel, lives nearby, and their father spends half the year in Fredericksburg in southwestern Texas.
But Cedar Falls will always have special meaning: “I have a connection here—to my dad, the university, the town and the people.” |
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