ALL GROWN UP
Maine's Rix is more than a daddy's girl
For most young athletes, their first coach is also their parent. Be it mom or dad, that is where a child learns how to throw a ball or catch a pass. And in the case of Maine wrestler Deanna Rix, her father was the one who first taught her to wrestle.
Rix, named All-American and Girl’s High School Wrestler of the Year by Asics, officially closed out her high school career when the 18-year-old earned the Asics Vaughn USAW Fargo Junior National championship, July 30, in Fargo, N.D.
And her father, Matt, was matside … just as he did when he first started coaching his daughter as a four-year-old beginner back in Eliot, Maine.
“It’s tough to separate sometimes from dad to coach,” Matt said shortly after Deanna scored a 10-0 technical fall over Bethany Harris of Calif
ornia in the 128-pound championship match. “We kind of made a pact together that when we’re in the room it’s coach and out here it’s coach. “She has a hard time sometimes when I’m trying to coach her and trying to correct her on some things. I’m trying to motivate her and she sometimes can’t separate that from thinking I’m yelling at her. And I tell her, ‘I’m not yelling at you, I’m trying to motivate you. I’m trying to tell you what you’re doing wrong.’”
Although it can get difficult, their close father/daughter relationship makes their coach/wrestler relationship a good match.
“It helps me out a lot because we can go over moves at home if I don’t understand stuff,” Deanna said. “But it does get tough. He’s always pushing me as hard as I can. I prefer having him over somebody else being my coach.”
With her father serving as the head coach of the boys’ wrestling team at Marshwood High School, Deanna also made a name for herself in boys’ wrestling as well.
She is a two-time state freestyle champion in the boys division and won two out of three matches in Greco-Roman before an arm injury forced her to withdraw.
But it was a match last spring that really made people notice around the country as she placed second in the 2005 Maine boys’ state tournament at 130 pounds, losing in double overtime to Shane Leadbetter, who she had beaten twice before. Leadbetter earned the state title when he scored an escape with four seconds remaining in the overtime tie-breaker.
“It was exciting. I was upset because I lost, but second place was definitely good,”Deanna said. “I’d rather wrestle against guys. It’s more fun beating them.”
“This kid she wrestled, other than his mother and maybe his coach cheering for him, most were pulling for Deanna,” Matt said. “I was told it was the most publicized match in state history in Maine. It was phenomenal.”
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