Scott Uses Slights as a Driving Force
Summer Scott learned many valuable lessons growing up in Castro Valley. One involved beating up on boys. In a nutshell, if you want to put boys in their place, take up wrestling.
“I dealt with a lot of animosity in college – boys who didn’t want you in that (wrestling) room or competing,” Scott recalls. “It was frustrating, but also it was a driving force because it made me do better. It’s not like that now, and I’m proud of that.”
Scott wasn’t elected to the Castro Valley Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2024 because she wrestled boys. She was honored because, most of the time, she wrestled girls … and almost always won.
A youth softball player in the Castro Valley league and a three-year member of the Trojans’ teams, Scott decided to get serious about wrestling as a high school senior.
She was an immediate standout. After starring for Castro Valley’s first all-girls team the year before, placing fifth at the state tournament, she captured league, section, and state titles as a senior in 2004, a year in which a boy was brought in to be her practice partner.
Countless wins, medals, a rare California “triple crown,” and even national honors later, Scott credits her support crew, led by former Castro Valley coach Steve Solis, for creating an environment where individual success was only part of the fun.
“The Castro Valley wrestling team earned the highest academic award both years,” she boasts. “We were a family. The whole town (of Castro Valley) is very athlete-friendly. The coaches were always trying to connect with you. Steve always said if you needed to get something done (away from wrestling), he’d give you the time.”
After having a U.C. Davis offer pulled back in what turned into a Title IX litigation, Scott wrestled for two years at Lassen College and then three at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. At those stops, she experienced the gamut of relationships between male and female wrestlers, noting, “At Lassen, we were brothers and sisters. There was no camaraderie at Pacific between the boys’ and girls’ teams. The boys would get upset if I beat them.”
Injured most of her freshman year at Lassen (which allowed her a fifth year of college eligibility), Scott placed fifth at the nationals as a sophomore, then went on to take fifth and third, respectively, at the NCAAs in her first two years at Pacific before a second-place finish as a senior in 2009 that still rankles her.
“I had already beaten the girl earlier in the tournament,” she noted. “Then I had to wrestle her again in the finals. She got up one, then every time I got close to getting a point, she’d step out of bounds. I should have won.”
After undergoing surgery on a torn posterior lateral corner in her knee following her college career, Scott returned to Castro Valley and considered a comeback, working out with the men’s team at Chabot College. She became pregnant with her first child shortly thereafter, however, and as she says, “That was the end of me competing … as of now.”
Now 37 and blessed with three children – daughter Abaigeal and sons Howard and Elliot – Scott has been teaching preschool while finishing up work on a master’s degree that will allow her to work with special-ed students.
Along the way, she has been both an assistant and later head coach at Castro Valley High, where her teams four times placed in the Top 4 at North Coast Section. She hopes to do more coaching in the future.
This is the fourth in a series of 16 articles profiling the 2024 inductees into the Castro Valley Sports Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame ceremonies and banquet will be held on Sunday, April 21, at Redwood Canyon Golf Course. Contact Patrick Ryken at pryken@cv.k12.ca.us for tickets.