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Canada announces women’s freestyle lineup for the second annual Titan Games
4/22/2004
John Fuller/USA Wrestling
Canada has announced its potential lineups in women’s freestyle wrestling for the second annual Titan Games, The Road To Athens powered by Home Depot, in Atlanta, Ga., June 18-20.
The Titan Games will be the final chance for wrestling fans to see the 2004 U.S. Olympic Teams in all three styles compete before the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. This will be the first Olympics to feature women’s wrestling.
Six-time World champion Christine Nordhagen will lead the team, competing at 72 kg/158.5 lbs. Nordhagen is also an eight-time World medalist.
Also competing is 2003 World bronze medalist Viola Yanik at 67 kg/138.75 lbs.
Lindsay Belisle, who placed fourth at the 2001 and 2002 World Championships, will compete at 48 kg/105.5 lbs. Belisle captured a gold medal at the 2003 World Cup and a silver medal at the 2003 Pan American Games.
Rounding out the Canadian women’s freestyle team will be Tonya Verbeek at 55 kg/121 lbs. Verbeek won silver medals at the 2003 World Cup and Pan American Games.
The Canadian team will be coached by Todd Hines.
Wrestling will again be one of the featured sports at the Titan Games, along with boxing, fencing, weightlifting, judo, taekwondo and shot put. Philips Arena is serving as the competition venue and Centennial Olympic Park is serving as the backdrop for the shot put.
Wrestling will be contested on Saturday, June 19 and Sunday, June 20.
The Titan Games will feature a “USA versus the World” format in dual and triangular meets. In men’s freestyle and men’s Greco-Roman, the teams competing against the United States will be Georgia and Iran. In women’s freestyle, the opponents will be Canada and China.
In men’s freestyle, this field will feature the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 teams from the 2003 World Championships. Georgia won the World team title, followed by runner-up United States and third-place Iran. It was one of the closest team races in history.
In men’s Greco-Roman, Georgia was the 2003 World Champion. Iran is a developing power in Greco-Roman wrestling and has qualified six Greco-Roman weight classes for the Olympic Games.
In women’s freestyle, the U.S. team was second in the 2003 World Championships. China was fourth and Canada sixth at the 2003 World meet. All three teams have qualified all four women’s weight classes for the Olympic Games. Canadian women participated in the 2003 Titan Games.
Wrestling fans may purchase their tickets through USA Wrestling by calling (719) 598-8181.
There are two packages available for purchase for wrestling fans. Package A features a $120 all-session floor pass, with only 100 available. This includes VIP Hospitality, matside seating and a chance to meet and greet wrestling legends.
Package B features a $60 All-Session Lower Level Seating ticket, which will be placed in the arena where the wrestling mat is located. Only 707 of these prime seats exist.
These exclusive packages are available only through USA Wrestling thru June 1.
Individual session tickets are available through Ticketmaster.
Final rosters of all competing nations will be posted on TheMat.com as they become available.
Titan Games, The Road to Athens powered by Home Depot
June 18-20, 2004 at Atlanta, Ga.
Canada Tentative Team Roster
Women’s Freestyle
48 kg/105.5 lbs. – Lindsay Belisle
55 kg/121 lbs. - Tonya Verbeek
63 kg/138.75 lbs. - Viola Yanik
72 kg/158.5 lbs. - Christine Nordhagen
Coach: Todd Hines
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Coach's daughter has her sights set on Athens
The David Douglas High School junior grew up wrestling boys and now has a shot at the Olympics
Thursday, April 22, 2004
MOLLY BLUE
Bobo Umemoto was running wrestling drills 12 years ago when, surveying the room, he realized there was an odd number of little boys, so one would have to sit out.
Unless, he reasoned, he could persuade his 5-year-old daughter to jump in and work out.
"She ended up beating every kid in the room that day," he said, still with a mixture of disbelief and bemusement in his voice.
That's where it started for Na'Tasha Umemoto, now a junior at David Douglas. Tagging along with her father, who coaches for the USA Cobra wrestling club, she started to absorb the nuances of a sport primarily defined by men, that is subtle in its techniques and brutal in its strength.
From that first day, Umemoto said she fell in love with wrestling, and her father found in her a discipline and dedication that has guided them both to the brink of the Olympics.
Na'Tasha Umemoto, 17, will compete at the USA Wrestling Team Trials May 21-24 in Indianapolis. She's vying for a spot on the 2004 Olympic team that will compete in Athens this summer.
In her first senior women's tournament, Umemoto qualified for the team trials by winning the national championship qualifier in Las Vegas on March 8, at 59 kilograms (130 pounds), a non-Olympic weight class. At the team trials, she expects to compete at 55 kilograms (121 pounds), which is one of four classes in the women's Olympic program.
"It's fun and exciting when you have a breakthrough performance like she had," in Las Vegas, said Gary Abbott, the media director of USA Wrestling.
"It's the first year she's eligible to wrestle in the senior women's events. She's as young as you can get, but the coaches have been aware of her for a while," Abbott said. "She's been very successful in age-group tournaments."
In Las Vegas, Umemoto beat Brandy Rosenbrock 5-2 in overtime in the quarterfinals; beat Chelynne Pringle of Minnesota in a fall at 1 minute, 26 seconds; and in the final, beat Michigan's Lauren Lamb, 8-5. Lamb was a member of the USA Women's national team in 2001-2002 and is ranked No. 3 at 59 kilograms in TheMat.com's April 1 poll.
The win in Las Vegas, "was great," Umemoto said. "I got to be around all the Olympic-caliber athletes. It was really inspiring."
Umemoto is on a roll. She advanced to the OSAA Class 4A wrestling tournament -- only the second girl to qualify in the tournament's history -- after finishing third at 119 pounds at the Mt. Hood Conference district meet last winter.
At the state meet, she lost in the first round to the eventual champion, and in the second round, she lost to the No. 3 seed, who eventually finished sixth.
"The state tournament was great," Umemoto said. "I'm excited for next year. Now I have the experience of a state tournament."
Does she get a lot of flak in the Scots wrestling room?
"No. The guys at David Douglas are good to me; it's like having all kinds of brothers," Umemoto said.
It wasn't always that way. In the second tournament of her career, as a 6-year-old, she finished second.
"Fathers weren't happy. Neither were their sons," she said.
At first, "there were a lot of forfeits," she added. No boy wanted to wrestle against her, win or lose.
But things changed as she stuck to it. A familiar face, a workout partner every day of the week, and a consistent opponent, Umemoto said the male wrestlers around her eventually got used to her.
"As soon as I got to middle school, guys accepted me," she said. "I've been around. I've paid my dues."
Now, there's a chance to get some return. Umemoto currently is ranked No. 9 at 55 kilograms in TheMat.com's poll.
"I think she can wrestle with anyone in the world," Bobo Umemoto said. "She'll have her hands full come the Olympic trials, but she has the potential."
All three women she beat at the qualifier are veterans of the national program, part of the first wave of athletes that brought women's wrestling to the Olympics.
Women's wrestling is an established program at Pacific University in Forest Grove, and there are college programs from Kentucky to California.
Pacific's program, in particular, has spawned several elite wrestlers -- including Umemoto's potential rivals for a spot on the Olympic team -- such as Kristen Fujioka and Katie Kunimoto, who all have qualified for the trip to Indianapolis. Danielle Hobeika, who wrestled at Harvard before becoming an assistant coach at Pacific, also has qualified.
And more are in the pipeline.
"Now, there are 30 or 40 girls coming along who are going to be tougher than we are," Na'Tasha Umemoto said. "They'll have more opportunities."
But, they'll have to go through her.
Umemoto is eyeing colleges and plans to wrestle at that level. At the international level, her timing couldn't be better. Barring injury, she should be competitive for the Games of 2004 and 2008, and by the 2012 Olympics, when she's 25, she may be at her peak.
"The women I'm wrestling now are all in their early- to mid-20s, and they're tough," Umemoto said. "Eight years from now, I'll be hitting my prime."
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By Lauren Coyle 2004-04-22
Athens NEWS Campus Reporter
An hour-long documentary exploring the intersection of gender and sports in American culture will be shown for free at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 27, as part of the Athens International Film and Video Festival.
The annual festival runs this Friday through next Thursday at venues in Athens, though most showings are scheduled for the Athena Cinema and Baker Center. For information, go to www.athensfest.org.
In "Girl Wrestler," director and producer Diane Zander traces the life of Tara Neal, an enthusiastic wrestler at a pivotal point -- next year in high school she no longer will be allowed to wrestle boys under state guidelines. Her chance to wrestle will be virtually gone because there are so few girl contenders. "The message, I think, is about what sports means in this culture," said Zander, a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin. "Sports are really just a vehicle for our ideas about culture -- what a boy should be, what a girl should be, and how parents and kids should or shouldn't communicate with one another."
"'Girl Wrestler' is a documentary that uses a girl's outsider point of view to get inside the world of Olympic-style wrestling and shows what challenges and obstacles and conflicts there are, not just as a girl, but as a competitor," Zander continues. "Ultimately -- amidst the thrill of competition, the critiques of folks who think girls shouldn't be on the mat, the struggles with parental expectations and weight management -- we are able to reflect critically on our ideas about sports and gender roles, by connecting emotionally to a girl who challenges those ideas."
The documentary traces Neal's complicated struggles as she wades through issues such as opposition to Title IX, the federal law granting women's sports programs proportional funding in public schools. As she journeys to the national championships, she must respond to those who claim girls should not wrestle boys. She also endures a battle with her body, as she strives to "make weight."
"Ultimately, Tara's story is a direct and immediate chronicle of such broader cultural issues as the social construction of masculinity and femininity, athleticism and eating disorders, teenage identity, gender discrimination in organized athletics, and the meaning and value of sport in American culture," states a news release about the film.
Zander said she was inspired by the concept of boy-versus-girl, the eloquence of Tara Neal, and the broader implications for gender and equality. "I started by being interested in the image of a boy wrestling a girl," Zander said. "It's both a spectacle and a metaphor -- you're constantly trying to figure out where that arm went, where that hand is. But beyond that, a girl wrestling a boy stands in for a larger struggle for participation, equality, and fair play. Once I found Tara, the girl wrestler in the documentary, I was struck by her bravery and her no-nonsense attitude."
The documentary provides a potentially eye-opening experience for viewers, Zander said. "I am excited for people to see a young girl in a movie who is doing something positive and nontraditional," she said. "Seeing someone move against the grain, move against the status quo, makes us realize what boundaries there are in this culture. Experiencing the world from someone else's point of view for a short time can be an extremely revolutionary and transformative thing."
The Athens International Film and Video Festival will include 16 feature films, shown at the Athena Cinema, and 150 competition films, most of which are shown for free at Baker Center.
The festival is organized by the Athens Center for Film and Video, a project sponsored by the College of Fine Arts. It's intended to bring to the Athens community new, international, and independent films that would otherwise not be shown here.
"I'm excited about the breadth of work that we're able to bring to the screen, and I'm excited about the community support the festival enjoys," said Ruth Bradley, director of the Center for Film and Video.
This is the 31st festival, and last year's sold just over 6,000 tickets. A committee of eight people screens the films beforehand and selects those that will be part of the competition, Bradley said.
"For the features, we have a 'wish list' of features that anybody -- and lots of people -- add to," she said. "Then, it's a process of figuring out which prints we can put our hands on, which also exemplify a diverse, representative sampling of world cinema."
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