Editor's note: Hawai'i athletes listed on the Jamestown roster are Tani Ader (Farrington), Kuuipo Badayos (Mililani), Ki'ikea Kalalau (Baldwin), Raquel Paaluhi (Wai'anae) and Chaelyn Tan (Kapolei). Ader is mentioned in the story below.

JAMESTOWN, N.D. — Jamestown College athletic director Lawrie Paulson anticipated some would have a skewed view of his school's first-year women's wrestling program.

"I think for a lot of people who heard 'women's wrestling,' they thought we were going to have a place with mud or Jell-O in there," he said.

Paulson, a 1977 Jamestown College graduate, recalls his college days in the early Title IX years as a time when such women's sports as basketball and volleyball were viewed with similar cynicism.

"This is never going to go; this is never going to go," Paulson said in reference to what skeptics thought of those sports at that time.

Any doubts Paulson had about his school's newest female athletic offering were answered swiftly.

"When I watched the first dual, it took me until the second match until the novelty wore off," Paulson said. "On our campus, it's not a novelty anymore. It's just one of our programs."

The Jimmies have a 2-0-1 record in duals in their first season and have competed in three tournaments. They are one of 10 women's varsity programs in the country, head coach Cisco Cole said. Jamestown has wrestled teams from Canada and the United States.

The Jimmies have 19 wrestlers on their roster, including 18 freshmen and one junior transfer. They have held three events this season, including an intrasquad dual.

"I think a lot of people are curious," said Cole, who also is the head men's coach at the school. "That's what we've seen. They come curious and for the most part, they've left believers."

The program has proved to be a solid recruiting tool for the college, attracting student-athletes from places as far away as Hawaii, Alaska, Texas and New York.

"That was not the motivation behind it, but that has allowed us to get into parts of the country we haven't been able to before," Paulson said. "We have a good school."

Paulson said women's wrestling is funded the same as other sports at the college. The majority of the financial aid to team members is academic.

The team's final home dual is at 2 p.m. Friday when the Jimmies host Wisconsin-River Falls. Cole expects River falls to bring a limited roster for the dual.

Jamestown competes in two national tournaments in January to close out its first season. Besides fielding a competitive team in Year 1, dispelling stereotypes also has been a challenge.

"When people think of girls wrestling, they would think of big girls that look like men," said freshman Tani Ader, who is from Hawai'i and wrestles at 121 pounds. "But little do they know there's also, like, lightweight girls. We're just like normal girls and we just wrestle."

At a dual earlier this season, freshman Michelle Canete, who wrestles at 105 pounds, said she heard rude comments.

"They wear that much?' Like they were expecting us wearing bikinis or something, I don't know?" Canete said. "It was kind of weird. They said kind of some stupid stuff."

The cynicism is nothing new for most of the athletes on the team.

Tiffany Sluik, a freshman 112-pounder, faced reluctance from her family when she wanted to start her wrestling career in middle school.

Sluik said her father, Tim, a wrestler himself, was against her taking the mat. Sluik also had a brother who wrestled.

"He thought I would just lose and not want to do it anymore," said Sluik, who competed for the boys team in high school in Mason City, Iowa.

Sluik experienced success in her first tournament in fifth grade, finishing second against boys. By the end of her prep career, Sluik felt she earned the respect of spectators and teammates.

She posted a 26-18 record her senior season wrestling at 112.

"You could always hear people like, 'Oh my gosh! You have that girl.' I could hear people talking about it," Sluik said. "It bothered me in the fact that, 'Why don't they just see me as a wrestler? Who cares if I'm a girl?' At the same time, I'm not expected to win. I just want to go out there and win."

Canete forged her mom's signature on a permission slip so she could start wrestling in eighth grade. The charade was figured out after Canete came home with mat burns on her face and knees.

"She was mad," Canete said. "My mom didn't like it and I think I was in that rebellious stage."

Canete, of Kodiak, Alaska, said her interest in the sport started in middle school when she would attend her cousin's wrestling practices.

"I watched them do all the wrestling moves and that kind of interested me," Canete said. "I kind of liked the hard intense workouts and stuff. I was really into that."

Growing up in Hawai'i allowed Ader to wrestle other girls in high school. Hawaii is one of just three states that sanction girls wrestling, the National Federation of State High School Associations Web site (nfhs.org) says. Washington and Texas are the other two.

Ader was a three-time girls state champion.

"When I heard this was going to be the first women's wrestling team here, I figured that was a great opportunity to make history and have a huge impact on people here," Ader said.

Cole said drawing athletes to the school hasn't been too challenging. In some respects, he said it's easier to recruit women wrestlers than men because male wrestlers have more options. Cole said he hopes to grow the women's roster to around 30 in the second year.

"This is a top academic school for women's wrestling, so it's an easy sell for me," Cole said. "We're not just getting girls that are just here for wrestling. We are getting girls out of high school who are 4.0 students and valedictorians."

Cole estimates the team travels around an average of 800 miles per road trip. The team's shortest trip was a five-plus hour drive to Wisconsin. One of the trips to Canada lasted more than 16 hours.

"It's not hard finding people to wrestle, but we travel," Cole said. "We do a tremendous amount of travel."

Women's college wrestling differs from men's wrestling in that the women wrestle freestyle instead of folkstyle. Freestyle in general has a quicker pace than folkstyle with more of an emphasis on scoring.

Headgear is not required in women's wrestling.

"I think a lot of people come, thinking they are going to see a very poor representation of wrestling," Cole said, "when in actuality, some of these women are every bit as good as male collegiate wrestlers, technically."

The Web site nfhs.org says the number of girls participating in high school wrestling has grown by more than 3,000 since 1999-2000. There were 5,527 girls prep wrestlers in 2007-2008 compared to 259,688 boys wrestlers.

Paulson hopes growth at the high school level leads to more women's college programs.

"I think it's going to be slow and steady," Cole said. "I think it's just getting wrestling, no matter the gender, back in people's minds. I think it's an important sport."

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Information from: The Forum, http://www.in-forum.com