This was just a feel-good story in the sports section of The Philadelphia Inquirer, how a teenaged girl was competing, and having some success, in wrestling competition against boys.

Julissa Ortiz became the first girl to win a Public League wrestling title. She’s just getting started.

Julissa Ortiz was about 7 years old when her older sister wrestled a Catholic League rule to its knees. Now, at age 14, she just became the first girl to win a Public League wrestling championship.

by Aaron Carter | Friday, March 10, 2023 | 5:00 AM EST

Julissa Ortiz was about 7 years old when her older sister, Tatyana, then a freshman at Marianna Bracetti High School, inadvertently wrestled a Catholic League rule to its knees.

Last month, Julissa, who is now a freshman at Bracetti, became the first girl to win a Public League wrestling championship.

I will admit it: I sometimes wonder if these Inquirer articles for “paid subscribers only” are so restricted to keep people not exactly friendly to the newspaper’s editorial slant from seeing them. 🙂

“I feel like my sister went through a lot of roadblocks,” Julissa said before a recent practice. “When she was in high school, there were barely any girl wrestlers. When a guy saw a girl wrestler, it was like the end of the world.”

Later, she added: “I just learned to never give up and not listen to what other people say, because this is what I want to do. So I’m just going to stick with it.”

So, young Miss Ortiz has set a goal, has been working hard to achieve it, and has succeeded at some level.

Ortiz, 14, had hoped to compete in Sunday’s unsanctioned girls’ state championships at Central Dauphin High School. Last week, however, Ortiz was unable to compete in girls’ regionals after she weighed in one pound over for the 124-pound weight class.

Last month, with Tatyana, who is now 22, in attendance at the PIAA District 12 co-ed championships, Julissa won her first-round match but lost in the quarterfinals at St. Joseph’s Prep.

“For me just watching [Julissa] grow,” Tatyana said via phone, “it just makes me feel happy because I feel like I’ve done my job. I feel like I’ve shown her how to pave her own way. Even if you’re a girl battling against guys. It doesn’t matter, as long as you put the dedication in. I am so proud of her.” . . . .

And on Feb. 11, she won the Pub title in the 121-pound weight class, beating Central’s Henry Hunsicker via decision in the finals.

Hey, she beat a teenaged boy competing in the same weight class; good for her.

But here’s where the Inky undermined their own agenda: the entire article on Miss Ortiz’s success is based on the fact she is a teenaged girl, occasionally wrestling against, and beating boys. In the ‘man-bites-dog’ reporting notion, her story merited a full-sized article in the sports section of the newspaper precisely because it was so unusual. It’s not as though the newspaper routinely covers high school athletics other than football and basketball, and even those infrequently.

Miss Ortiz’s competition and victories against the boys are newsworthy because no one expects it, because everyone knows that males have physical advantages over females, even of the same size, in sports requiring strength, endurance, speed, and quickness.

As of 4:08 PM EST, there was only one reader comment, one offering her congratulations. No complaints, no deleted comments noted.

That certainly hasn’t been the case with the newspaper’s reports on Will Thomas, the male University of Pennsylvania swimmer who claims to be a woman and goes by the name “Lia.” As we have previously reported, the Inquirer was quick to censor reader comments — and there were several of them — which challenged the notion that Mr Thomas is a woman and should be competing against women in formal swim meets. The 6’3″ tall physically intact Mr Thomas absolutely destroyed the competition before he learned to hold back a little, to win races but not by such devastating margins.

It’s actually pretty simple: most conservatives don’t object to someone trying to step up against tougher competition, and we recognize that girls and women deciding to compete against boys and men in sports where males, overall, have a decided physical advantage over females, isn’t unfair to anyone. What we also realize is that males competing against females in women’s sports is different, is the taking advantage of male size, speed, endurance, and musculature, against women. The Inquirer would never publish an article about how some teenaged boy who wasn’t claiming to be a ‘transgender’ girl won a girls’ sports competition; the newspaper simply goes along with the ‘transgender’ ideology because the editorial and news staff are #woke journolists^[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading who have swallowed the far-left line hook, line, and sinker.

But, every once in a while, they wind up reporting on something, something very much in the realm of common sense, which completely destroys the “LGBTQ+” meme without ever realizing what they’ve done. I am amused.