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Espíritu tries grappling

By Jill Espíritu; jespiritu@guampdn.com
Pacific Daily News 4/28/04

I've watched wrestling matches during meets of varying levels, but I never thought I'd actually find myself on the mat looking for a take-down opportunity.

Wrestling is one of the oldest sports in the world, and is a sport "which has always been linked to the evolution of humanity," the Fédération Internationale de Lutte Associeés Web site states. Additionally, wrestling provides the basis for many other combat sports and martial arts, Guam Amateur Wrestling Federation president Neal Kranz said.

Other than taking an interest in its history, I decided to try out the sport, but not without nervousness and hesitation prior to stepping on the mat. Earlier this week, I joined about 15 experienced wrestlers -- including two female wrestlers -- at open-mat practice at the Department of Parks and Recreation Paseo wrestling room.

In a wrestling match, two individuals enter the mat in an attempt to win the bout utilizing various holds and actions. A bout may be won through various methods, including a fall or pin, technical superiority -- a difference of at least 10 points between wrestlers -- and by points, with three as the minimum number of points earned by an individual wrestler, according to FILA rules and regulations. A fall is awarded to a wrestler who has correctly held his opponent in a position that forces both shoulders against the mat according to the referee's judgment. Bouts usually are two three-minute rounds. Wrestling also comes in two styles: Greco-Roman -- in which a wrestler takes down his opponent using only the upper body -- and freestyle -- in which a wrestler may use upper body strength to take down an opponent, or take down his opponent by use of his legs.

Not one body type is favorable in the sport, Kranz said. Competition is divided into different weight categories to "provide the opportunity for all men and women, regardless of their size ... to try their ability on equal footing," the FILA Web site states.

My first exercise was to get a feel for the mat by running around on it. Next, Kranz explained the importance of balance and keeping one's center of gravity central. I was instructed to stay on my toes and not shift my weight in a way that would make me vulnerable to falling. After doing a couple of preliminary exercises, Kranz demonstrated basic throws and takedowns on the two-inch thick mat.

I did some takedowns on some wrestlers and also was thrown down on the mat several times after Kranz's demonstration. However, taking down the other wrestler is only one component of the sport. I plan to go back for at least one more lesson so I can learn to pin my opponent.

I've gained more appreciation for the athletes who compete in the sport. Training for wrestling is intense, as I witnessed on the mat, and, by the way, bring an extra shirt because you will sweat a lot.

Open-wrestling practice is open to anyone who would like to train for competition or just to become familiar with the sport. Practices are held from 6 to 8 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the DPR Paseo wrestling room.

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Keystone senior looks to strike wrestling gold

04/29/04Pat Galbincea
Plain Dealer Reporter

It's been a busy time for Keystone High senior wrestler Heather Martin, who qualified for the Olympic Trials and committed to a college both in the same week.

Martin qualified for the Olympic Trials to be held May 21-23 in Indianapolis by placing second at 147 pounds in the Senior Women's National Tournament in Las Vegas this month. She also will wrestle May 3-10 in the Pan American Games.

She also made Cumberland College wrestling coach Kip Flanik a happy man by signing a national letter of intent to attend the school in Williamsburg, Ky., in the fall. Flanik was an assistant coach at Cleveland Heights High before founding the women's college wrestling program at Cumberland.

Martin also will be reunited with her close friend Toccara Montgomery, a Cleveland native who wrestles at 158 pounds. Montgomery, a two-time world silver medalist, is expected to compete in August at the Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. Martin will wrestle at 147 pounds in college.

In Las Vegas, Martin won three matches and was beating Ali Bernard of New Ulm, Minn., 8-6, late in the match when she injured her knee.

"Heather rolled back and grabbed her knee in pain," said Jim Martin, her coach and father. "When she did that, Bernard got on top of her and the official called a touch pin."

The top four place-winners at 147 pounds qualified for the Olympic Trials, but Martin said she has another problem to overcome.

"There are only four weight classes for women in the Olympics," Martin said. "One is at 158, and I'm not happy with the thought of wrestling against Toccara. We've trained together for a long time. The weight class below her is 138 pounds, and that's a big drop. I'm not positive I can cut that much weight.

"I'm pointing for the 2008 Olympics, and maybe by then there will be more weight classes for women. Twenty pounds between weight classes is a pretty big gap."

Martin has a 285-18 career record wrestling against girls and women. She posted a 32-34 record at Keystone against boys while competing at the 145- and 152-pound weight classes.

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Fiery McSloy leaves mark, marks

[4/22/2004 Houston Chronicle)

SOMETIMES athletes have no idea of the impact they make on their
coaches.

In a world where it is supposed to be the other way around, sometimes
the wins and losses don't, eventually, mean as much as the lasting
impressions.

Take Mayde Creek senior Tosha McSloy, who will graduate at the end of
next month with her class after trying her hand at football, wrestling and
golf during her high school career.

"We'll miss her," said Mayde Creek head wrestling coach Mike DeMarchi.
"She's totally changed the way I look at girl wrestlers. Ten years ago,
I was in the boat with the others who thought, `Girls wrestling in high
school? No way.' I don't think like that after coaching Tosha. She's
taught me an athlete's an athlete. "

"It is quite an unusual combination, but she's such a competitor that
she can pull it off," said Rams head golf coach Johnnie Butterfield. "The
thing that stands her out from a lot of athletes is her competitiveness.
She's one of the most competitive people I've ever been around."

In March, McSloy made her second consecutive trip to the state
wrestling tournament. She placed second as a junior, losing the championship
match in the 110-pound division. She may have never won the top prize, but will
leave Creek with the most career victories as a girls wrestler with 63.

"It's not even close as far as who is second," said DeMarchi. "From the
first day she came to me and said she wanted to wrestle, she's worked
hard to be the best she could be. She's also worked hard to be the best in
school history."

McSloy, who did not respond to attempts to be interviewed for this
story, did not take time to let her body heal or rest after her final matches
in Austin, instead doing her annual switch to the Mayde Creek golf team.
For the past two years, after the wrestling season, she has come out to
play in the Rams' last couple of events and then at the District 19-5A
tournament.

DeMarchi says McSloy is simply a driven person.

"Anything you tell her she can't do, she's going to attempt to do,"
said DeMarchi. "That's the way she's been since she came to me and said she
wanted to wrestle. I think sometimes she got into it because someone
told her, `She couldn't do it.' She's very tenacious. That's why I felt
privileged to have her on our team. I like people that love a
challenge. And Tosha loves a challenge."

One example is at the club level, where she worked out with the boys.
In standard competitive wrestling, there is freestyle or normal wrestling
and Greco-Roman wrestling, which consists of throw- downs. When DeMarchi
informed McSloy a couple of years ago that the girls were strictly
freestyle, he says she refused to accept it.

"She demanded to try it Greco-Roman style," said DeMarchi. "I mean she
just demanded to do it. When we told her she couldn't, that's immediately
when she wanted to wrestle that way. I think it's a great motivator for
her."

She also played football at Mayde Creek as a freshman and that
aggressiveness caught everyone's attention.

"If all the guys hadn't just left her behind regarding size and weight,
I think she'd still be playing football," said DeMarchi. "That's how
tough she is."

Butterfield said he will never know how good of a golfer she could have
been because she would join the team late, but she always showed
improvement.

"My main thing was always for her to take care of her wrestling
responsibilities and then she'd come out and play on our team," said
Butterfield. "I know how talented of a wrestler she is, so she needed
to take care of things there. But she did a good job for us."

DeMarchi said McSloy wouldn't be replaced anytime soon.

"I enjoyed our four years together," he said. "Sure, we had our
clashes, but she earned my respect because of her approach to her sport. She was a
leader and was one of the hardest-working athletes I've ever coached. She
opened my eyes and made me a better overall coach."

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Hedin shooting for Beijing
The wrestler heads to thePan-Am Games with her sightsset on the 2008 Olympics

By Nick Abramo
nabramo@starbulletin.com 4/28/04

Kailua wrestler Danyelle Hedin is heading to Guatemala to compete in next week's Pan American Games.

But she doesn't want to stop there. The three-time Hawaii state champion grappler is striving for a spot on the U.S. national team at the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

The world traveling starts Monday.

"It's the first time I'm going out of the country, except for Canada," Hedin said. "I'm not too worried, even though I hear things are a lot different in Central America. It should be fun."

Fun, however, isn't the main thing on her mind.

"My main goal is to place in the top five," the Kailua senior added. "I want to see where I'm at against top competition."

Hedin qualified for the Pan-American Games by winning a junior national championship in Minnesota last month. Earlier this month, she also competed in the senior (17-and-over) national championship in Las Vegas and finished with a 2-2 record.

Hedin said she is also close to accepting an offer of a full ride to compete for Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Mich.

"I haven't signed the paperwork yet, but I expect to within the next few months," she said.

Training at the U.S. Olympic Education Center, which is affiliated with NMU, is part of the package.

"Women's national team coach Terry Steiner said she'd like to see Danyelle train in Michigan for a year or two and then train at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., for a shot at making the 2008 Olympic team," said Billy Wood, Hedin's coach.

During the high school season, when Hedin was wrestling for the Surfriders and coach Charles Kaulukukui, Wood took Hedin to other schools' gyms to make sure she had strong practice partners daily.

"Her goal is to be an Olympian and she'll do pretty much whatever it takes," Wood said. "She's a shy person until you get to know her and then she'll talk your ear off. She's bubbly and fun to be around. And she's extremely competitive. Even with little things, she's extremely competitive."

Hedin won the newly created 125-pound class in the state high school tournament earlier this spring after winning at 121 two years in a row. She'll wrestle freestyle at 51 kg. (121 pounds) in Guatemala City.

She leaves Monday and returns Saturday.

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Grappling with greatness

U of C Dinos wrestler matches mat success in the classroom

by Kris Kotarski 4/5/04

U of C Dinos wrestler Melissa Kindratsky shares an intimate connection with the number four.

Born on the fourth of April, this fourth-year Civil Engineering student tackles four courses each term. She is also flirting with a 4.0 G.P.A. this year, and if her Dinos comeback works out as planned, she may stand atop the Canada West Conference podium for the fourth time.

“ That’s the hope,” she grins, “at least that’s how I’d like to end my Dinos career. I will be going on an academic exchange to Scotland next year.”

Kindratsky is back with the Dinos in 2003/04 after sitting out last season because of two shoulder surgeries. Her right shoulder was operated in June 2002. Just nine months later, she went under the knife for the second time, this time on the left side.

“ Recovering from injuries like that is so much work,” says the 5’2” Port Alberni, B.C. native. “Being in the sling is really hard, especially when you’re at school or working and you have to write with your off hand.”

Off hand or not, Kindratsky has managed to match her success on the mat with success in the classroom – no small feat for a three-time Canada West Conference Champion and former Canadian Interuniversity Sport gold medallist.

“ Wrestling used to be my priority,” she smiles, “but lately it has been all school.”

A neck injury after her rookie season has given her a new perspective on academics and sport, and the results have been nothing short of amazing.

In 2000/01 – her first year back from the neck injury – Kindratsky was named a Royal Bank Academic All Canadian and won the Calgary Booster Club Female Scholar Athlete of the Year award.

A year later, she was back on the Royal Bank honour roll and is on pace again this year with a 4.0 G.P.A.

The Dinos season, and Kindratsky’s U of C career, will culminate with the CIS Championships in St. Catharine’s, Ont. March 5th and 6th.

In three tries thus far, Kindratsky has yet to lose a match at the Conference Championships and she has two national silver medals to go along with her rookie-season gold.

With the 4.0 G.P.A. seemingly safe, only time will tell if four will be Kindratsky’s golden number on the mat as well.

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Wrestling Pioneer Nordhagen Seeks Historic Gold

Wed Apr 28, 5:11 PM ET

By Emily Bowers

TORONTO (Reuters) - Christine Nordhagenwas "just an athletic girl with a lot of aggression" when she first took up freestyle wrestling.

Six world titles later, the Canadian is aiming to go down in history as one of the first female Olympic wrestling champions.

Women's freestyle wrestling is the only new discipline being added to the program at August's Athens Olympics and Nordhagen, 10 times Canadian champion, will be one of the most watched competitors on the mat.

The decision to add women's wrestling to the Games came just in time for Nordhagen, already 32 and considering winding down a pioneering career that stretches back to 1991.

"I'm really fortunate that I get to end off my wrestling career getting to the Olympic Games (news - web sites)," said Nordhagen who is expected to challenge for gold in the heaviest of the women's four classes, 72 kg.

"I was one of the first women to start wrestling in Canada," added Nordhagen, who is based in Calgary.

"The first time that we started, I wasn't that good, I was just an athletic girl with a lot of aggression."

NATIONAL CHAMPION

While studying education at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Nordhagen took a course in wrestling. She enjoyed it and was recruited to start training for the 1992 Canadian national championship. That year, a women's component was being added to the competition for the first time.

Nordhagen won that national title and did not stop winning until injury derailed her a decade later. By then, she had earned a series of six world titles and two Pan American championships and had been named Canadian female wrestler of the year five times.

Nordhagen is among four Canadian women, one in each class, who have qualified for the August 13-29 Athens Games. Lyndsay Belisle will compete in the lightest class, 48kg, Tonya Verbeek will take part in the 55kg and Viola Yanik in the 63kg.

The women's debut on the mat in the Ano Liossia Olympic Hall will add credibility to a sport that in earlier years was treated as a sideshow to the men's event, said Leigh Vierling, head coach of the Canadian women's Olympic team and Nordhagen's husband of four years.

"Initially there were some programs and some people that were resistive of women coming into this male-dominated environment," he said. "The girls kind of were off on the side and the guys were in the center training."

But athletes such as Nordhagen have helped to change that. Thirteen years ago, Nordhagen became national champion after less than a year on the mat but there has been intense competition for each place on the Athens Olympic team.

"I think the Olympics is a great stepping stone for the ladies," Vierling said "It shows how competitive and how far and how widely accepted it's become."

OLYMPIC BERTH

Nordhagen herself faced a wrestle-off against another Canadian in December to earn a spot at the Olympic qualifiers.

She won that match, and earned her Olympic berth in a tournament in Tunis in March.

Nordhagen hopes Olympic success will help to raise her profile at home, where she said some people still expected wrestlers to look like the muscle-bound entertainers in the world of televised professional wrestling.

Her training now focuses not only on fine-tuning her own skills but on studying the 11 other athletes in her weight class. The wrestlers will be divided up into four pools of three athletes but that does not happen until the eve of the Olympic competition.

So Nordhagen and Vierling are watching hours of videotape from previous matches and coming up with a few surprises to spring on her competitors who are likely to be studying her just as intently.

"I have some things that I'm working on, just little things," Nordhagen said.

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Community Notebook: Washougal wrestler wins freestyle state championship

Tuesday, April 27, 2004
The Columbian

Kelsey Hanson of Washougal won her second Washington state wrestling championship on Saturday. Hanson, 12, won all five of her matches by fall or technical fall on her way to the 100-pound weight division championship at the Washington State Kids Freestyle Championships.

Hanson won her first four matches with pins, then scored a technical fall by a 17-4 score in the final match in the tournament at Tumwater High School.

She won her first state title in February at the state folkstyle tournament in Bellingham.

Hanson trains with Merle Crockett at Southwest Washington Wrestling Club in Battle Ground. She is a member of the Washington Women's National Wrestling team, coached by Bobo Umemoto, from Portland.

The state title means Hanson qualifies for a Western regional tournament in June at Winnemucca, Nevada.

She will take a shot at sweeping the state championships when she competes at the state Greco-Roman tournament on Saturday in Sedro Woolley.

Hanson said freestyle is her favorite form of wrestling.

"There's a lot more throws, a lot more action," she said.