"I CAN'T really say I won because I beat a girl. But if I lost I'd get a lot more heckling from people than normal. It's a lose-lose situation."

This was the assessment of Washington high school wrestler Ben Hamlin after he defeated 17-year-old Dena Glisen in a tournament which featured co-ed contests. With 1,900 girls now participating in high-school mat wrestling, the issue and of co-ed wrestling is gaining increasing exposure in the US. For the competitors, there are incidental considerations, as the much put-upon Ben went on to explain.

"Thoughts will go through my head, like, `whoa'," he expounded. "I don't know if I should do this move with her."

Ben's dilemma is nothing compared to that of his buddy Bryce, who was feeling forlorn after succumbing to defeat against the problematic Dena. The loss did not rest easily on his young shoulders.

"I felt short. I felt dumb. Everybody razzed me. They said if they lost to a girl, they'd never wrestle again," he confessed miserably.

Dena, for her part, doesn't really give a hoot about the sensibilities of her male colleagues. She just wants to fight. Attitudes towards co-ed wrestling vary according to region. South Dakota and Wyoming have classed it as a dark practice and placed an outright prohibition on the mixed version of the sport. The Lutheran High School Association for Greater Detroit theoretically approves of co-ed wrestling, but have added a fairly important proviso - boys must forfeit games if drawn to wrestle a female.

Hawaii has a greater concentration of female wrestlers than any other state and already runs women's tournaments. The general feeling is that this is the way forward for the women's game.