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Blood, Sweat, and No Fear: Women wrestlers compete for the four spots on the Olympic Women's freestyle wrestling team.

3/10/2004
Amy Ufnowski/USAW

Walking into the wrestling room at the U.S. Olympic Training Complex in Colorado Springs, Colo., visitors watch in awe at what the women wrestlers are working towards accomplishing. One can sense there is no fear among these women, and hard work and determination are the keys to their success.

With only four weight classes used in Women's freestyle wrestling at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, rather than seven at the World Championships, many women face a delimma. The four weight classes are separated by 20lbs. Some women must step on to the scale and decide whether or not to move up or down a weight class to fulfill their Olympic pursuit.

Five prominent women stars have decided to either to move up or down a weight class; Jenny Wong of the Sunkist Kids, Sally Roberts of the Gator Wrestling Club, Kristie Marano of the NYAC, Katie Kunimoto of the Gator Wrestling Club, and Katie Downing of the Sunkist Kids.

Women who are moving up are Wong, moving up from 51 to 55 kg, and Downing is moving up from 67 to 72 kg. Those who are dropping include Marano, from 67 to 63 kg, and Kunimoto from 51 to 48 kg.

Roberts has yet to decide whether or not to move up or drop a weight class.

"I could go either way," said Roberts. "With good work and diet I am just going to see how my body feels and when the time comes, I will decide."

Whether or not they choose to move up or down a weight class, all the women are staying healthy and have made sure that before the decision was reached it was a realistic goal that could be accomplished. The decision making process was based on how each individual's body felt and being able to stay healthy. Their one goal in mind is to be the best they can be.

For example, Marano has dropped a weight class from the Worlds, but has wrestled at it for two years. She is very comfortable remaining at 63 kg. Wong is moving up a weight class but is finding it hard to gain weight.

"My body wants to maintain its current weight so instead of doing a lot of cardio, I lift four days a week instead of two to gain more muscle mass," said Wong. "Thus, I am focusing on increasing my strength instead of weight. I am sure with the lifting I am doing I will be at my desired weight."

Kunimoto, who is moving down a weight class, knew it was a realistic goal for her.

"It was never a decision to move up or down. I always knew I would go down. I feel really good," said Kunimoto. "I have been working with Patrick, our strength coach, to gain strength while staying trim. Also I work with the nutritionist to make sure my diet is appropriate and I am getting all the necessary vitamins and minerals."

With only four weight classes to wrestle, it should be an amazing test of America's finest women wrestlers. All four weight classes will be very deep in competition. It should be an intense battle at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Wrestling in Indianapolis, Ind., May 21-23.

"The competition, as a result of the four weight classes, is good for the sport. It pushes all of us to work that much harder in practice and to compete with each other," said Kunimoto.

Wong, who is ranked currently No. 1 at 51 kg expressed her excitement of how competitive things will be,

"There is so much talent at 55 kg. From top to bottom, the weight class is stacked with World medalists," expressed Wong.

Potentially there are four world medalists at this weight class including Wong, who is a World Bronze medalist at 51 kg, Tina George, who is the World Silver medalist at 55 kg, and Stephanie Murata also won a World Silver medal at 51 kg. If Sally Roberts decides to drop to 55 kg she is also a World Bronze medalist at 59 kg. Also, Tela O'Donnell, the 2003 U.S. Nationals champion, is a contender at this weight class.

Many of the worlds top women are dropping or moving up a weight class as well, so therefore there will be new competition internationally all around.

Kristie Marano is familiar with the international competition at 63 kg and feels good about it because she has been wrestling at it for two years now. On the other hand, Kunimoto has been to few international competitions but remains positive about wrestling new opponents.

"It can only make me a better wrestler," said Kunimoto. "The competition in the States is always good, but it will be good for me to go overseas to get the international experience necessary."

Wong also looks at the new international competition coming with moving up a weight class optimistically.

"I look at it in a positive light. There is a whole new set of competitors out there that I can learn from, gain experience, and figure out," said Wong.

Confidence with changing weight classes is not an issue for many of these girls. They are the first women wrestlers with a chance to qualify for the OIympic Games, thus they are setting the benchmark for success. If anything, the pressure will be more intense come the next Olympics in 2008. By working daily with top competition, their own U.S. training partners, each athlete is confident they can compete with any opponent they come across.

"Confidence is not going to matter," said Roberts. "Everything on the mat stays on the mat the moment you step on and the moment you step off."

Being able to leave everything on the mat is why all the women are good friends off the mat. They go hard in practice for themselves, to get better. Each one knows that when it comes to competition, the friendship is taken out of the mix in order to stay competitive and win.

Fans can witness the intense competition and rivalries between these fearless women and watch the race for the four spots on the Olympic team unfold. No one is sure who the four women will be on the first ever U.S. Women's freestyle wrestling team. However, when it is all said and done, the U.S. will have a strong and talented Women's freestyle team representing this country.

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The U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Wrestling are May 21-23 at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis. Tickets and hotel accommodations are available. Visit www.trials2004.com for more information.

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Okemos grad sets sights on Athens
Woman working to be wrestler on U.S. Olympic team

By James McCurtis Jr.
Lansing State Journal 3/10/04

When Lauren Lambwas 13 years old, she beat women in their 20s to become the youngest 97-pound USA Wrestling Women's National champion.

Now 26, the former Okemos High School wrestler hopes to become one of the first Olympic gold medalists for women's wrestling.

Women's freestyle wrestling is the only new sport added to the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.

"It's a lot of pressure," said Lamb, who now lives in Farmington, N.Y. "Everyone wants to see me go. I'm excited. I'm looking forward to it. I spent a lot of years training for this."

Nationwide, the sport has grown from about 600 women 10 years ago to about 6,000 this year, said Gary Abbott, spokesman for USA Wrestling, which runs the women's team.

At the high school level, 132 girls competed in the sport in 1991, while some 3,700 participated last year, he said. Most of the girls, like Lamb, wrestle against boys on boys teams.

Lamb's biggest fan, her mother, Gail Wolfe of Okemos, said she and her husband, Alan, didn't mind their daughter wrestling boys. She said it made her daughter tough and taught her valuable lessons in life.

"She certainly is independent," said Wolfe, whose two sons also wrestled at Okemos High School. "She's capable of doing whatever she wants to do. And she's persistent. We're very proud of her."

Aside from wrestling, Lamb, a 1995 Okemos High School graduate, earned a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Cornell University in 2000.

She's now a scientist for Johnson & Johnson.

Lamb, who has been wrestling since she was 6 years old, hopes her commitment and dedication pays off on the long road to the Olympics.

Now considered a veteran of the sport, Lamb plans to drop 9 pounds and wrestle in the 121-pound weight class. Next month she has to place among the top eight in the national tournament in Las Vegas to move on to the Olympic Trials, which are in Indianapolis in May.

Lamb, a six-time national women's champion, works out two to three times a day starting at 4:30 a.m. with weightlifting or cardiovascular exercises.

She also practices with a New York high school wrestling team after she leaves her job to stay sharp.

But the full-time scientist, wife and mother of an 8-year-old stepson said it's challenging balancing family, work and her Olympic goal.

"It's difficult," Lamb said. "I don't sleep. It does put a lot of stress on my family because I'm not home a lot. They're great. They're supportive."

Lamb said she chose to go for the gold because it's been her dream to represent her country wrestling ever since she was a little girl watching her older brothers compete.

"I didn't want to walk away with any regrets," Lamb said.

"I wanted to train as much as I can. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity."

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Female wrestler heads to state championship

Wednesday, March 10, 2004
jwisniewski@kalamazoogazette.com 388-8400

One recent night, a woman from Kent City sat at the edge of her seat at a high school wrestling match, watching in anticipation as Amy Berridge of Martin took on an opponent.

Little did the woman know that Berridge's father, Tim, was sitting right next to her.

"When Amy is wrestling, you look around and see these women in the crowd and it's like Amy is wrestling for every woman out there," he said. "You'll be in the crowd and all these women will be cheering her on."

That scene could be repeated several times this week. Berridge, a senior who has a 39-13 record and is the fifth female to ever qualify for the Michigan High School Athletic Association individual wrestling championships, will step onto the wrestling mats Thursday at the Palace at Auburn Hills on the verge of history.

The only Michigan female to qualify for the state championships two consecutive years, Berridge will attempt to be the first-ever in the state and one of the few in the nation to medal in a state championship.

None of the previous four girls has even won a match at the state championships.

But it is not the uniqueness of being a female wrestler that fully motivates Berridge. She is like any other student-athlete at Martin High School: She goes to school, practices with her teammates after school and then goes home and completes her homework assignments. A smile from her proud dad, a high-five from a teammate, mean as much as anything.

"I'm not really doing it for people's reactions," she said. "I'm doing it for myself. If I was doing it for anybody, it would be for my parents and my team. If my dad was proud of me, that would mean more than someone saying, 'Look, you're the best girl ever.'"

"These kids want her to win," Tim Berridge said of Amy's teammates. "They count on her just like they do a guy."

Amy Berridge qualified for the prep wrestling individual state finals two weeks ago when she finished fourth at a Division 4 regional at Hart.

"I didn't even think about going to state or anything," she said. "I just thought it was for awesome people. I thought I'd do my best and whatever happens, happens."

A wrestling family

Berridge got turned on to wrestling in seventh grade after watching younger brother T.J. and older sister Aundria, who also wrestled at Martin.

"My brother started wrestling when he was pretty little," she said. "My sister did it a year or two before me. My dad always said I should try it, and when I was in seventh grade, I tried it.

"I wasn't really good at first but my dad showed me some things and I got better as the years went on."

Over the years, the raised eyebrows included those of people who spoke out against her being on the mat, wrestling against boys. Those voices are silent now. Berridge is simply viewed as an important part of a wrestling team that nearly won a state team championship Saturday in Battle Creek.

"She's not looked at as a girl, she's looked at as a teammate," Martin senior captain Noah Boyd said. "She works hard, she comes to all the practices, she wins a majority of her matches. ... She's tough."

Tough enough to win more than 140 matches in her career and win a conference championship this year, Berridge has garnered a variety of reactions from opponents over the years. She is ranked second in the nation at 100 pounds by the United States Girls Wrestling Association.

"There are a few different reactions," she said. "Some that don't know about me say, 'I get a girl?' Some are, 'I'm not going to lose to a girl,' and some say they are going to beat me."

Early in her career there were doubters. Martin head coach Pete Boyd recalls a time when a parent from another school came out of the crowd and confronted him for having a girl wrestling on his team.

"I had one guy come down and said girls should not be wrestling on the mat," Boyd said. "I said I hope your kid's not wrestling her because you're going to be sorry."

Assistant coach Ken DeMann has worked with Berridge for six years. He was the junior high coach when she first came out for wrestling in seventh grade.

"She's like any other wrestler, she's gotten better every year," he said. "Not that she was a bad wrestler when she started. I think it comes down to the fact that the team knows she's our 103-pounder. They are confident in her ability."

They should be. She has been taught by one of the most well-respected coaches in the area in Boyd.

"Pete is the kind of guy, he gives the student all the tools they need to be a champion and it's up to the student or athlete to use that," Tim Berridge said.

It helps that Martin has had female wrestlers before. Berridge's sister Aundria wrestled for Boyd when Berridge was a freshman.

"I feel like if you have the qualities to be in a sport, you should," said Aundria Sunnerville, who recently moved to California with her husband. "You shouldn't be discriminated against because of your sex. I was happy and pleased with my community."

Making history

Before Berridge, four girls made the trip to the individual state finals in Michigan.

In 1999, Saginaw Buena Vista's Cynthia Harrold became the first female to compete at the state finals. The next year, Davison's Keristen LaBelle, Caledonia's Lynde Baltrusait and Sandra Padnon of Mason County Central followed suit.

Was it a big deal? LaBelle was featured in USA Today and in a segment on HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.

"We did some bending over backwards to make sure she was on the same mat for every match," said John Johnson of the Michigan High School Athletic Association.

The attention will be there for Berridge this weekend, whether it's welcomed or not. One thing that Berridge's accomplishments, along with that of the previous females to compete at the state meet, could do is garner more attention from female athletes interested in pursuing wrestling.

"Anytime you have a girl who is successful in a predominantly male sport, other girls are going to want to follow her lead," Johnson said.

The numbers are increasing. In the 2002-2003 high school participation survey conducted by the National Federation of State High School Athletic Associations, 239,845 male wrestlers were listed. There were 3,769 females.

"It's fairly unusual for girls to wrestle," federation spokesman Bruce Howard said. "That phenomenon has increased but it is fairly unusual for a girl to medal at a state tournament."

Very few have. Erica Dye of Elizabeth, W. Va., placed second in the state's lowest weight class in 2002. Miyo Yamamoto, an exchange student from Japan who wrestled at a high school in Phoenix, finished sixth in her weight class in the late '90s.

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Pink singlets and ponytails
Local girls join growing numbers

By David Pressgrove, Sports Writer

Wednesday, March 10, 2004

Samantha Erikson has traveled all over to wrestling tournaments but she'd never seen a hot pink wrestling singlet before.

"There were all kinds of cute singlets," she said. "There were ones with stars and hearts and lots of bright colors."

Cute probably isn't a word often associated with a wrestling singlet unless it is a girl talking about the attractiveness of her boyfriend on the mat. Last weekend though, it was different when five girls from Moffat County traveled to Denver for the United States Girls Wrestling Association's Colorado Girls Wrestling State Championship.

"It was exciting for us because our parents won't let us wrestle boys," Erikson said.

The "us" is Erikson and Amanda Nichols, who only wrestle when there is a girls bracket available in a tournament.

"I used to wrestle boys but when they started an all-girls league my mom said ‘you'll only wrestle girls,'" Erikson said. "So it was nice to have our own tournament this weekend."

More than 60 girls from around the country came to the tournament. The brackets were small compared to regular boys' tournament that averages 150 to 200 wrestlers.

The most any of the Craig girls had in their age and weight was four.

Ashley Griffiths finished first in the 8 and under division. Clara Tomlin finished second in 10&U, Kelly Myers was fourth in 12&U while Erikson and Nichols were both third in their weight classes in the 14&U age group.

The growing numbers of girls on the Bad Dawg wrestling club is following a national trend. According to the U.S. Girls Wrestling Association, the numbers of girls in high school wrestling have increased 200 percent from five years ago.

Next year Nichols and Erikson would like to become the first female wrestlers at Moffat County High School.

Tuesday night at the eighth-grade expo held at the high school, wrestling coach Roman Gutierrez was asked a question he hasn't heard before from an eighth grader.

"I asked him if he would let girls wrestle on the team," Nichols said. "He said he wasn't sure because he'd never had a girl wrestler before."

Erikson and Nichols are both new to the mat. They started wrestling last year so they know it would be tough in a wrestling room of one of the best boys teams in Colorado.

"I want to try to wrestle at the high school level," Erikson said. "If we could do it, we could clear the way for other girls."

This weekend they got to see some of the female wrestling pioneers who had already gone through the trials of proving themselves in a male-dominated sport.

"There was one girl who was going to be traveling for three months straight to wrestle at different tournaments," Erikson said. "She was on varsity at her high school."

The ability level of some of the high school girls surprised the eighth-graders.

"They were a lot faster than we've seen from other girls," Nichols said. "I wrestled a girl who was the fourth-ranked girl in the country and she smoked me."

The Intermountain League in Colorado started to offer girls brackets at their tournaments for elementary to middle school aged wrestlers this year. High school wrestling does not offer the same option. If the girls want to wrestle in tournaments they will have to be the best in the wrestling room.

Three younger girls will watch if Erikson and Nichols will next year to see if they get a chance.

"We have to prove ourselves," Erikson said. "We have to get faster and tougher if we want to make it."

Tomlin, Griffiths and Myers hope to wrestle in high school. What they'll have going for them is a little bit more experience.

All three have will have at least five years of time on the mat before high school.

They are already trying to prove themselves.

"Ashley beats my brother all the time," Nichols said.

"My mom tells me that I'm just as tough as those boys," Tomlin said. "I just go out there and beat them and make them cry."

Seven colleges have female wrestling teams and the 2004 Olympics will have women's wrestling as a medal event.

As the orders for more rolls of bright pink and heart-patterned Spandex increase, Erikson and Nichols hope their efforts will encourage others.

"I want to go to the Olympics," Erikson said. "I have a long way to go."

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Female Wrestler Gets Ticket to Olympics

By Kim Hyun-cheol 3/10/04

Lee Na-lae became the first South Korean female wrestler to qualify for the Athens Olympics after winning the 55kg freestyle event at the first qualification tournament held in Tunis, Tunisia, on Sunday local time. Lee defeated Giampiccolo Diletta of Italy by pin fall in the final.

The 25-year-old former judoka, emerged as a promising wrestler as she placed fourth at the 2001 World Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria, then gained a silver medal at the 2002 Pusan Asian Games.

Three other Korean wrestlers, Park Ji-young in the 48kg class, Hwang Jin-young in the 63kg and Kang Min-jung in the 72kg, will challenge for the remaining Olympic berths at the second qualification tournament to be held in Madrid, Spain, March 20-21 this month. All three can qualify as long as they place within the top three in the competition.

Female wrestling becomes an official Olympic event in Athens, with only four classes in freestyle events to be held with 12 wrestlers participating in each.