By JOSEPH FITZGERALD

WOONSOCKET -- Brittney Keophoxay’s debut on the wrestling mat was not the glorious moment of athleticism she thought it would be.

She threw up three times during the match and her male opponent had her pinned before she knew what hit her. The practice match, her first since joining the Woonsocket High School varsity wrestling team as a freshman last year, was over in less than a minute.
Looking up from the floor at her teammates sitting on the bench, she remembers seeing them roll their eyes and shake their heads. A couple of them had smirks that seemed to say: “I told you so.”
After all, who would have thought that 15-year-old Keophoxay — the only girl on the wrestling team and only the third female wrestler in team history — could take down a boy.
At only 5 feet tall and 119 pounds, it just wasn’t going to happen, they said.
“It was pretty much a disaster,” she says of that first practice. “I was unconditioned and sloppy and pretty much had no idea what I was doing.”
As Keophoxay picked her bruised body off the floor, her teammates figured that would be the end of her wrestling career. Maybe she’d realize the error of her ways and find another sport like field hockey or golf.
Wrong.
To the surprise of her 15 teammates, and perhaps even her coach, Keophoxay showed up for practice the next day ready to prove herself. It was at that point the attitudes started to change.
“Some of the guys never thought I’d last,” she says. “At first I felt like they all hated me because they were always on me and telling me to ‘pick it up.’ But after a while I think they began to respect me.”
What Keophoxay, a diminutive girl of Laotian descent, lacks in lean muscle mass and testosterone-driven power she makes up for in sheer determination and a will to succeed.
A sophomore this year, she’s come a long way since that first practice. She hasn’t won a match in her weight class yet, but she’s come close and getting closer.
“In my very first match my whole body went numb. I was confused and needless to say, it was a very short match,” she says. “But the very last match of the year last year was one of my best. I actually got to three periods and got first takedown.”
Her first match this year with a Ponaganset High School wrestler was even better, albeit a little bloodier.
“I was so close to winning. I was up by one point and had pretty good control over him with 20 seconds left until he took me down and pinned me,” she says. “My nose was bleeding after he accidentally caught me in the face. I think my coach was happy, though.”
Even though she’s worked hard to win acceptance from her teammates, she still endures the looks and occasional taunts from the opposing team. During a match she’ll often hear her opponent’s teammates yelling: “Take her down. You’re losing to a girl.”
That’s just the kind of thing Keophoxay likes to hear. “It pumps me up and gets me going,” she says.
Keophoxay’s interest in wrestling started in eighth grade. She was sitting in the school library thumbing through the senior yearbook when she saw a photograph of Amy Linsamouth, who happened to be Woonsocket High School’s first female wrestler to finish a complete season.
“She was very pretty and looked like a girly-girl, but she was also this tough competitive wrestler. She’s Laotian like me so I was immediately inspired,” Keophoxay says.
Keophoxay’s cousin in Alaska, Lipho Thirakul, was also a wrestler, so she decided to check out Woonsocket’s wrestling program and see what it was all about. She attended a team open meeting last year and a week later she was on the roster and taking part in her first practice.
Folkstyle or collegiate wrestling is the form of wrestling that is practiced mostly in American high schools and colleges. The object of folkstyle wrestling is to pin your opponent. Failing this, you want to get as many points as possible. Folkstyle point scoring focuses mainly on changes in control. Taking an opponent down to the mat, escaping from or reversing control, or turning an opponent’s back to the mat are all scoring situations. This differs from other styles of wrestling such as Freestyle or Greco Roman, which don’t encourage escapes or reversals.
As a member of Woonsocket’s varsity wrestling team, Keophoxay wrestles in two to three matches a week and one tournament on the weekends.
Just recently, she got the opportunity to meet her role model, Amy Linsamouth. Just by coincidence, one of Keophoxay’s classmates is Linsamouth’s younger sister.
“We were in class and she noticed the bruises on my arms,” Keophoxay said. “When I told her I was on the wrestling team, she said her sister, Amy, used to wrestle. I was blown away because her sister was Amy Linsamouth. When we finally met her advice to me was to never give up.”
“Brittney’s really determined. She wants to succeed and fights for what she wants,” says Linsamouth, 19, who graduated Woonsocket High School in 2007 and now lives in California attending Los Angeles City College.
“As a female wrestler in a sport dominated by boys there’s a lot of verbal put downs. Not abuse or anything, just a lot of criticism,” she says. “Brittney just shrugs it off. She’s a strong person inside and out and she’s a very smart girl.”
Keophoxay may be the only girl on Woonsocket High School’s wrestling team, but she’s not the only female high school wrestler in the state. Scituate High freshman Katelyn Bouyssou competes as an independent wrestler since her own school does not field a team. She “shadows” the Cranston West squad and owns a 25-3 record this season. Bouyssou will be among the top contenders for the 103-pound title at the state championship meet set for Feb. 27-28.
Ponaganset, West Warwick, Cranston East and Chariho all have a female member on the team, Keophoxay says.
Wrestling has helped Keophoxay — voted one time by her classmates as ‘most quiet’ — break out of her shell.
“I didn’t want to be that way for the rest of my life. I wanted to stand out as much as possible,” she says. “I love the aggressiveness of wrestling. I like the fact that I can get beat up in a match and then go right back in again and try to do better the next time.”