First published in the Jan. 13 print issue of the Outlook Valley Sun.
The winter season is one that is known to be one of giving with the holidays, and two local Girl Scouts bestowed the ultimate gift to the La Cañada High School varsity girls’ wrestling program — one that will keep on giving for years to come.
Anna Kleineahlbrandt and Amber Mase — both 8th-graders at LCHS — recently converted a storage and laundry room into a locker room for the girls’ wrestling team, which didn’t have any private space to call their own. The project earned the pair their Girl Scout Silver Award, one of the highest honors given to Cadettes who complete a plan that can improve their community.
As athletes themselves, equity is an important issue for Kleineahlbrandt and Mase, and the duo realized this was the perfect opportunity for their Silver Award.
Kleineahlbrandt, a former wrestler who plans to get back into the program, overheard a conversation between the girls’ wrestling team and head coach Justin Luthey about the need for a locker room.
“I thought, ‘Oh, I have a Silver Award project that I need to do and I could possibly do a project on this and do it for you guys,’” Kleineahlbrandt said. “I already had the girls’ contact info, so we were talking and chatting about it.”
Mase, a volleyball athlete, and her mother, Grace, saw the need for it as well during matches and practices at the LCHS gymnasium.
“We were just spectators sitting in the bleachers and looking at Amber in the volleyball game and seeing Anna and some other wrestlers down the hallway changing,” Grace Mase told the Outlook Valley Sun. “It was heartbreaking. Anna shared the story with us and we just watched Amber and Anna collectively thinking what they can do to start addressing the issue.”
Kleineahlbrandt is one of Luthey’s physical education students and floated the idea to him. An ecstatic Luthey was willing to help and found space in a laundry room that also served as storage for electronic waste.
“It was just unused space and one that we thought could be modified without taking anything away from anyone else,” he said. “There’s always a battle for space, but this was a space that wouldn’t affect anyone else.”
And so, the 100-plus-hour journey for Kleineahlbrandt and Mase — who are members of the Girl Scouts troop 801 and have known each other since the 1st grade — began in November. The two started with design and planning and collecting donations before doing the physical labor, which included cleaning, demolition and debris removal, washing the room, patching walls and painting. They had a little help with some of the heavy lifting.
“There were a lot of people (who) came to help us,” Kleineahlbrandt said. “My dad and brother came with demolition to help take out some of the cabinets. The [boys’ wrestling team] had a meet at the school and [the coaches] let us borrow the stronger ones to help us carry some things out.”
The girls spent multiple weekends and the Thanksgiving break working on the project, with some days going as long as 12 hours. They completed the work in late November and by December, the LCHS girls’ wrestling team — the first in the school’s history — had 12 lockers and some privacy. The squad put the finishing touch on the room that made it officially theirs by placing their second-place trophy from the prestigious El Monte Arroyo Tournament on a shelf created by Kleineahlbrandt and Mase. The two Cadettes had the idea of cutting a cabinet in half and using one half as a storage shelf and the other as a bench.
“It was nice, after all the hard work we put in, that they were so happy,” said Amber Mase.
Luthey walked into the room and didn’t recognize it. He thought Kleineahlbrandt and Mase had installed lights because he had never seen it so luminous.
“The space wasn’t gray, and it was so much brighter,” he said. “Turns out they just painted it. They very much were go-getters and busy bees.”
The coach was just as grateful and cheerful as his girls, knowing what it means to not only this year’s team but to the future of the program.
“For us, it’s more than a locker room — it’s a space for the girls to feel like a team, not like an outcast or an appendage of the boys’ program,” he said. “It really helped with their team chemistry and bonding. They were so appreciative.
“The attention shown to [the girls’ wrestling squad] matters. Having a space of their own, having their own uniforms and going to tournaments — these are physical symbols that won’t make them wonder, ‘Are we appreciated?’ They can now say they have something of their own, and that means something.”
