Reading the Workmans' story, I got that hazy, wavy deja vu feeling.

I had been here before. Or rather, a young woman I once knew had been here before. I met Courtney Barnett, a senior at Arlington Martin High School in Texas, in January 1997. I was a reporter for the Dallas Observer, and this is how I began her story:

On the final night of Courtney Barnett's high school wrestling season, she is waiting, as usual. Waiting to see if any of the boys on the opposing team will agree to face her. Waiting to learn which weight class she might compete in. Waiting to see if a referee will deign to officiate a match involving a girl.

Waiting, when it comes right down to it, to find out if she'll be allowed to wrestle at all this night.

Courtney was already nationally ranked in judo. Like Candace Workman, Courtney was a tough athlete. Also like Candace, she had wonderfully supportive parents. Her coach believed in her. Her male teammates treated her as an equal.

Courtney was willing to wrestle girls - but there were only a half-dozen or so who competed.

I watched her coach try to enter her in several wrestling meets. Entire teams refused to go against her school, simply because they had a girl along. Typically, they would forfeit the whole night rather than have one boy face a girl.

Her parents, Mike and Rai Barnett, sued.

Eight years later, little has changed.

In Courtney's story, opposing coaches, referees and many parents of boys trotted out predictable protests: She would get hurt. Girl-boy wrestling is sexual. And perhaps the deepest truth of all: It would be too embarrassing for a boy to lose to a girl.

In Utah, the same old arguments have been applied.

Eight years ago, I recall thinking how great it would be if coaches and parents could view wrestling like any other coed sport. Sure, there is an intimacy involved that does not exist in say, soccer. But we have all manner of intimate, coed interaction in this society that is not about sex. It's business. It's life.

Don't male gynecologists treat women? Last year, a female nurse set my husband up for his first colonoscopy. I once had a male massage therapist who worked my bare back until the baseball-sized knot there turned to pudding.

Courtney Barnett's teammates understood this distinction. They respected her as a competitor. It was the adults, they said, who wanted to make this about sex.

As for the matter of bruising a male ego, I liked this response from one of Courtney's teammates, a 180-pound boy:

"Losing to a girl, you know, boys don't want to. But nobody wants to lose, period. If it's a fair match, it shouldn't matter."

Courtney's case was still in limbo when I moved away months later. I never learned the outcome.

She had a big support network, which helped. Candace Workman appears to have the same kind of family.

One night, after Courtney had waited an hour for an opponent, officials matched her with a boy two weight classes above her, hoping to intimidate her.

If her parents were worried, they didn't show it. Mike Barnett just squeezed her and gave her some advice: "Just get in there, pin his ass and save your energy."

hmullen@sltrib.com