Aunt, nephew forge bond through wrestling

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There are plenty of examples of high school teams with brothers or sisters as teammates, or with parents coaching their children.But this is a family matter of a different kind: the Camarillo (Calif.) High wrestling team includes an aunt and her nephew.As teammates."They're both wrestling varsity, and that's got to be a very unusual situation in the whole country," says Scorpions wrestling coach Ron Wilson. "Could be the only one ever, I don't know."Let's just say it doesn't happen every day.Before your head spins around too much trying to figure out the genealogy of the situation, here's how it works: Camarillo senior Deyvonne Mondragon's older sister Ericka -- a number of years older, obviously -- is the mother of freshman Leo Anaya. Mondragon wrestles in the 132-pound weight class. Anaya wrestles at 215.There, that was simple enough, wasn't it?Still, it takes some getting used to -- if you know about it, which most people don't."Nobody really knows I'm his aunt," says Mondragon. "They all think we're cousins. Everybody thinks we're cousins, but no."Wilson knows better, now."When she was first telling me, she said her nephew," he recalls, "and I said, 'Your nephew? You mean your cousin?' And she said no."That the two are teammates is fitting, because Mondragon started wrestling because of Anaya -- who had taken up the sport as a third-grader because his father, Leo, had also been a high school wrestler."I would always go to his tournaments," says Mondragon. "I would always tag along, and then my brother-in-law, he asked one time if my little brother would wrestle. And I was just joking around and I told him I would wrestle. And he was like, 'Well, we're going to go to practice one of these days.'"I didn't think he was serious, but he showed up and told me we had to go to practice. So that's when I started."And so, as a seventh-grader, she took up the sport, joining the same wrestling club as Leo.More and more girls are wrestling, but it's still unusual enough that Mondragon said people looked at her a little oddly because of her interest."Especially at first," she says, "because" -- and here she takes a long pause before continuing, "they beat me really bad, because I didn't know anything. But slowly, I started learning. It was tougher than other sports I played, and it was a challenge. And I saw myself slowly progressing, so I wanted to stay with it."She did through her first two years of high school, but took a break last year to play soccer."I missed it," she says now. "It's a different sport. I liked it more."It's a weird sport because it's individual, but it's also like a team. That's what I really liked about it."And now, she likes having her nephew on the team."It's fun," she says. "It's like old times, when he would go to a tournament, and I would go because we both wrestled in the same tournament."Both wrestlers have their challenges.Anaya, at 215 pounds, usually finds himself pitted against older, more experience wrestlers."They're a lot stronger," he says, saying he's learning "how much I need to work, and push myself to beat them."Says Wilson, "That's a big weight class for a freshman wrestling on the varsity, so he's taken some lumps, but he's learning, and he's getting better every week. He'll definitely be a great wrestler by the time he's finished."Mondragon, at 132, wrestles both in the traditional wrestling structure -- meaning she's going against boys -- and in girls' tournaments."She placed in the girls' state tournament as a sophomore," says Wilson. "She does pretty good. The only problem she has wrestling boys sometime is the guy's strength. That's usually what it comes down to, male strength versus female strength. She's just as competitive, though. She really works hard."He recalls a dual meet when Mondragon was wrestling in the final match of the night, which would decide the team outcome. "She almost pinned the (opponent) Thousand Oaks wrestler," he says, "which would have been pretty exciting."Anaya says he gets nervous when Mondragon wrestles."I know when she wrestles girls, she has a better chance of beating them," he says. "She wrestles, sometimes, these monster guys -- they're just, like, wow. But she still gives them competition."Mondragon, though, she says gets more nervous wrestling girls."I'm on the boys' team," she says, "so I'm used to wrestling boys. But I'm not used to wrestling girls."She is used to having her nephew as a teammate, though, and it seems to work for both of them."She'll sometimes remind me when practice is," Anaya says, "or if I forget something, I'll just ask her."And the support has been particularly useful during the holidays, when food and inactivity can be a challenge."We go running, like after practice or something," she says."Extra work after practice," he agrees."And," she says, "we take care of each other -- like, 'Don't eat that.'"After all, that's what family does.Even if the relationship between those family members is not one you'll often see on a high school team.(Contact David Lassen of the Ventura County Star in California at www.venturacountystar.com.)