News Page

Londoner grappling with world

BRIAN WHITWHAM, Free Press Sports Reporter 2004-05-25

It's been an overwhelming spring for Laura Skopelianos. In March, the 18-year-old Londoner and Western wrestling team rookie, won the national title in the 48-kilogram class. Her success also placed her on this summer's junior national team.

"I've never thought I could go this far at all," Skopelianos says. "This year was a complete shock to me."

Yesterday, she left for Berlin, where she'll compete in the three-day Hans Von Zons tournament beginning Friday. After that, she'll stay for an international training camp before returning to Canada to prepare for the Canada Cup in Guelph.

Still later, she'll have another training camp and then the Pan American junior championships in Venezuela, July 22-25.

Not bad for a girl who says she started wrestling in Grade 9, only to be on a team with her older brother, Dave.

But her busy summer schedule doesn't appear to bother her.

"I didn't know what I was going to do this summer, so this gives me something to work toward," Skopelianos says. "It helps me keep in shape, I guess."

It definitely will. Every day, Skopelianos has spent 45 minutes running and an hour and a half on the mat. She also plays competitive soccer for London Forest United.

But even with all of the training, she says the idea of going into her first international competition seems surreal and a bit intimidating.

"I'm still thinking like, 'Oh it's great weather, I'm going to go to the beach,' " she says. "I'm going through the motions but nothing seems real."

Skopelianos says she even had doubts about being ready to compete for the national team.

But once again, her older brother was a deciding factor. He called her from Australia to talk about the Pan American championships.

"I said, 'I don't know' and he said, 'I'll come (to Venezuela) and watch you,' so I said, 'OK,' " Skopelianos says, adding that her mother and sister might also go.

She says she'll really appreciate the support of her family and friends through what's bound to be a nerve-wracking summer.

"All of this is quite overwhelming," she says. "It's so tough to walk on that mat with no one else there."

And she says it will be even tougher without her London Western Wrestling Club coach, Chris Capangyarihan, in her corner.

But she says knowing she'll be on her own this time is teaching her to become more confident and independent.

Skopelianos will turn 19 in July, right in the midst of a national training camp in which she'll be preparing for the Pan Americans.

"There won't be much celebrating," she says with a laugh. "I guess I'll just go out and giv'er on the 26th (after the Pan Ams) to celebrate everything."

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Glenbard prep chases dream

BY REID HANLEY

May 22, 2004

INDIANAPOLIS -- The Olympic wrestling trials are
filled with some contenders and a lot of pretenders.
Someday Caitlyn Chase will be in the first category.

Chase, a Glenbard North sophomore who recently turned
17, is just getting started. The 105.5-pounder is
using her first Olympic trials as a building block for
what she hopes will some day be an Olympic career.

Women's wrestling is being conducted for the first
time this summer in the Athens Olympics. Medals will be
awarded at 105.5, 121, 138.75 and 158.5 pounds. The
trials field was made up of 62 women and Chase is among
the least experienced.

"For someone who is about the youngest here, I'm just
trying to do my best," said Chase, who won her
preliminary match 7-1 against Julie Gonzales of Vallejo,
Calif. "I'm wrestling the top women in the world. For this
tournament, I want to do my best. In the future I want
to get to the Olympics."

Chase, who lost to top-seeded Clarissa Chun by
technical fall in her next match of the challenge tournament,
is one of the bright hopes for the growing American
women's program. This summer she will travel overseas to
compete in international tournaments.

"She is one of our up-and-coming people," said women's
national team coach Terry Steiner. "She's been on our
radar for a while. She comes out to the Olympic
training center for extra help and goes other places for
help. She's doing all the right things to move her career
forward. Realistically, she has to be looking at 2008
or 2012. She just doesn't have the international
experience yet."

The trials were a big step. She had wrestled as a
regular at Glenbard North last season and scored the
decisive victory in the Panthers' third-place finish in the
Class AA dual team tournament. Friday's first match
was a new level of butterflies.

"I was more nervous than anything," said Chase, who
had 10 family members at the RCA Dome. "I was out there
and saw all these people. It was like, `Oh, my gosh!'"

Once her nerves settled, she wrestled well. Chase got
the opening takedown and one more takedown before
Chun, a three-time national runner-up, ended the match
with a 12-2 score. Chase won her consolation match with a
technical fall of Kristin Fujioka of Honolulu.

Mahomet's Mary Kelly, Illinois' other women's
competitor, is the No. 2 seed at 105.5 pounds. Kelly, who
wrestles for the New York Athletic Club, opened her
tournament with a 9-2 victory over Miriam Jenkins of the
Marines.

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2004 U.S. Olympic Trials Photos

5/25/04

I've posted a special gallery for the Sunday Finals competition. Two days later, the emotions of the events that day are still overwhelming. Rulon and Byers in prayer before the first match, the Paulson vs Hall epic battle, O'Donnell pinning Tina George TWICE, the Sanderson vs Fullhart bloodbath and Kevin Bracken's fairwell just to name a few. I tried to capture as much of it as possible and I hope everyone gets a chance to enjoy it.

http://www.printroom.com/ViewGallery.asp?userid=jrsachs&gallery_id=67200

John Sachs
www.tech-fall.com

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Miranda pinning doubters

By Tom Archdeacon

Dayton Daily News 5/25/04

INDIANAPOLIS | The guy in Oregon finally may want to leave wrestling's
equivalent of the witness protection program.

He may want to share in what could be the one of the biggest stories
coming out of this summer's Olympic Games in Athens.

He could tell the world: "I was Patricia Miranda's first man. The first
guy she beat in a college tournament. The one who helped her overcome the
ongoing resistance to women's wrestling, got her through the harassment
and numbing close-mindedness, the guy who truly helped her answer those
questions she said had long plagued her.

"Am I (as she was once taunted) a joke? Am I delusional? Do I belong?"

In Athens, for the first time in the history of the Games, women's
wrestling will be an Olympic sport. And Miranda — as has been obvious this
weekend at the U.S. Olympic Wrestling Trials in Indianapolis — is the most
celebrated women's wrestler in America. She's just 5-feet tall, weighs 105 pounds
and her face shows both her exotic parentage — Brazilian dad, Japanese
mother — and her bruising passion. She has a purple shiner, a typical training
souvenir, under her right eye.

Off the mat, the 24-year-old dynamo is just as overwhelming as she is
in her matches, where she's a three-time U.S. champ and ranked No. 2 in the
world behind the Ukraine's Irini Merlini. When it comes to wrestling the
books, Miranda graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford, where, in five years,
she got a bachelor's degree in economics and a masters in international
policy. She has deferred her acceptance to the Yale Law School until after the
2004 Olympics.

If victorious in today's best-of-three championship matches, she will
head to Athens where Terry Steiner, the U.S. women's coach, predicts big
things could happen for her and the sport.

Last year, according to statistics of the National Federation of State
High School Associations, 3,769 girls wrestled in high school programs
across the U.S. Over the same period, 301,000 were in soccer. Only Texas and
Hawaii sanction girls wrestling and everywhere else girls compete on boys'
teams. Six colleges offer women's wrestling and here at the Trials, 62 women
are vying for the four Olympic weight-class berths.

"We need some Olympic heroes to emerge," Steiner said. "We need
incredible people to do some incredible things in Greece." He sees Miranda being
able to do for wrestling what Mia Hamm did for soccer: "She could be a hero
for millions of girls who watch the Olympics."

And maybe for that one guy in hiding.

At Stanford — where Miranda was the only woman on an NCAA Division I
men's wrestling team — she was a bench jockey until her senior season.
Although working doggedly in practice, she never got into a match her first four
seasons with the Cardinal. Because the lightest men's weight is 125,
she gave up considerable poundage along with strength and sometimes went
days in practice without scoring a point. Yet she was undaunted and said she
coped by setting achievable goals: "Just not getting pinned. Then getting an
escape point, a take-down and, of course, one day, I wanted to beat a
guy."

That happened in her senior year, when as a part-time starter, she
decisioned the Oregon wrestler in a Reno, Nev., tournament.

"It wasn't a fluke pin at the end," she said. "I got ahead in the first
period, maintained the lead and won 7-3. He was quite mature about it,
but I still could tell he was upset when we shook hands. Afterward I told
him, 'Listen, your name's never going to come up. I won't mention it.' "

And she never has though people tell her the guy now ought to lobby for
a little of her limelight.

"Sure," she laughed. "He can call me and say, 'Hey, go ahead. Tell
'em.' "

And Miranda would be a good one with whom to be associated. She was the
only athlete, pro or amateur, to land on Newsweek's end-of-the-year list of
"exciting people to watch in 2004."

As Steiner put it: "She's what the Olympics are all about. She's about
excellence in every aspect of her life."

She's the product of immigrant parents who fled political tyranny in
Brazil for California. Her dad is a doctor and both parents stressed
academics.

"My father believes in the power of education," she said. "He said
that's what's great about the U.S. You can build yourself up and education is
the ladder."

Yet, it was not a smooth climb for Miranda. When she was 10, her mother
—
40-year-old Lia Miranda — died suddenly of an aneurysm.

"I had a lot of questions then, but as is often the case, everybody
leaves the kid who's mourning alone," Miranda said. "I had a lot of time to
think and I figured, 'If I die the same time (my mom) died, well, my life's
already one-fourth over. What do I want to do?' There was a sense of
urgency and I decided on my death bed, I'll want to know, 'How much did you
explore yourself? How much did you challenge yourself?' I wrote that in my
diary. And I felt if you didn't explore, that would be one of the big sins."

Soon after she took on an ultimate challenge for a little girl. Though
her family had no sports background and she said she was not athletically
gifted, she went out for the middle school boys' wrestling team. She
became the only girl in the league, just as it would be in high school.

"The first day I was so scared, I was like a deer in the head lights,"
she admitted. "I couldn't move and I remember thinking, 'Am I a scaredy
cat? Am I gonna shut down?' I had to learn to fight back. But that's what's so
good about wrestling. You get a chance to explore yourself. Self-honesty is
one of the great things in wrestling. You're out there naked. You can't
delude yourself very long."

Initially, older boys on the team taunted her. Parents of her opponents
sometimes berated her. One outraged mother howled: "It's unfair what
you did to my son. He'll be scarred for life."

Yet, the biggest naysayer she encountered turned out to be her dad. Dr.
Jose Miranda wanted his daughter to concentrate on academics. He was worried
she'd get hurt and, in a total flip-flop of most parental disputes, he
threatened to sue her school if it allowed her to compete.

In turn, Miranda put Dad in an academic headlock. She got him to relent
by promising she'd excel in her schoolwork. And she did. She got straight
A's at Saratoga High in California, a standard she carried on to Stanford.

While she won over her father, other critics haven't been so easy.
There is still a big resistance to women's wrestling.

At the Trials on Friday, an elderly man associated with Ohio State
wrestling came into the RCA Dome media room and berated a writer for embracing
women's wrestling. "It's a bunch of bunk," he scoffed.

Steiner — an NCAA wrestling champ at Iowa under Dan Gable and once
narrow-minded himself — knows the type: "Basically it's an ignorance.
Some guys say its been a men's sport forever, so why change. I tell them,
'If you truly believe in our sport and what it teaches — that it develops
character, how to deal with adversity and so many other life lessons and skills —
how can you deny that to half the population?' "

Miranda agreed, saying the lessons are what's important to her, not the
limelight: "It's not like I wanted to be the poster child for equal
opportunity. I got addicted to the character building aspect of this
sport. Thanks to wrestling, I learned I could tackle anything."

Well, accept one thing.

"At Stanford, Chelsea (Clinton) and I were in an American History
through Literature class together," she said. "We had very different views
about history and we used to debate. . . . Sometimes she sounded like she was
spewing off stuff she heard from her dad and I'd go, 'Come on, have
some facts of your own.' But it was all good and she handled it quite well."

And what about asking Chelsea to move the debate to the mat? "If I made
a move," she laughed, "one of the Secret Service men probably would have
knocked me out."

Then again — as that guy in witness protection can attest — maybe not.

----------------------------------------------------

Abas, Miranda Win Olympic Wrestling Berths

May 24, 2004

INDIANAPOLIS -- Former James Logan High star Stephen Abas and former Saratoga and Stanford standout Patricia Miranda earned slots on the U.S. Olympic Wrestling Team at the Trials this past weekend.

Abas defeated 2000 Olympian Sammie Henson twice Sunday by scores of 5-3 and 3-1 in the best-of-three finals. Meanwhile, Miranda followed the Abas match on the Ring 2 championship mat with 6-3 and 10-0 wins over Clarissa Chun. The Saratoga native now becomes a member of the first-ever Olympic women's team.

"(My) First thought was step one," Miranda said of her win. "(I also felt) Happiness for winning the tournament, but now I have been given a large responsibility and I want to carry the weight and represent my country the best I can."

Earlier this year, USA Wrestling named Miranda the 2003 Women's Wrestler of the Year. It was just one of her many awards.

She won yet another national title and headed into the Olympic Trials as the top-ranked competitor in the 48 kg/105.5 lbs weight class. She also won a silver medal at the 2003 World Championships of Freestyle Wrestling in New York.

But being an Olympian has yet to sink in.

"Growing up, thinking about being on an Olympic Team was not something I thought of," Miranda said. "It was not in the realm of possibility. I have had many painful moments thinking about this just recently."

"In college, all I wanted to do was beat a guy. Now, at the Olympic level, it is different. I feel pleased to have this opportunity. I'm trying to conclude a lifetime of waiting."

Patricia's father, sister, brother-in-law and two brothers were in the stands in Indianapolis, wearing white T-shirts with red letters spelling out "T-R-U-X-A," which is Portuguese for Tricia, her nickname.

Jose Miranda, of Saratoga, admits he doesn't understand how the game is scored, but knows his daughter has to beat the other girl.

"We're all so proud of her," he said. "Whatever she's done, she did completely on her own. There are no athletes in this family, and I certainly tried to stop her."

Jose, a Portuguese immigrant, told a younger Patricia he'd let her wrestle only if she maintained a 4.0 grade point average.

Patricia Miranda attended Stanford University, where she became the first woman to join the wrestling team. She trained for five years and was able to graduate with honors. She postponed an acceptance to Yale Law School for the Olympics.

"She kept her end of the bargain," Jose said.

Now he's planning to buy a ticket to see his daughter compete in Athens, where she will face the woman who swiped the gold medal from her at the World Championships last year, Irini Merleni of the Ukraine.

Abas, too, struggled Sunday with the meaning and emotion of his victory.

"This is the only thing I’ve worked for," the 27-year-old said. "It's a dream come true. I am going for the gold now. I'm focusing on the medal."

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Montgomery To Compete in Olympics

WKYT, 5/25/04

At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece this summer many Cumberland College students and faculty will recognize a familiar face. Junior Toccara Montgomery will represent the United States, as she will wrestle in the first ever Olympic women’s wrestling event. Montgomery, of Cleveland, OH, will compete in the Women’s Freestyle at 72 kg.

To qualify for the U.S. Team, Montgomery had to battle some tough competition. On May 23, in the final round of the Team Trials for the 72 kg class, she took on 2003 World champion Kristie Marano. Down 5-0 going into the second round, Montgomery pulled some crucial moves scoring four points on two double-leg takedowns. With the score now 6-4 in the last 30 seconds of the match, Montgomery was awarded two additional points for an exposure. In overtime, she pulled out the victory by putting Marano on her back with a double-leg takedown at the edge of the mat. With a final score of 9-6, Montgomery was named National Champion at 72 kg and won the chance to represent the U.S. in the 2004 Olympics.

Cumberland College president Dr. Jim Taylor said, "Toccara Montgomery is not only an outstanding female athlete but a wonderful student as well. She reflects immense credit upon Cumberland College and will represent the USA exceedingly well in the Olympics. We are very proud of her accomplishments."

Montgomery can add the honor of being an Olympic Team member to her already impressive list of accomplishments. She has won gold medals at the Yasar Dogu Tournament in Turkey, Manitoba Open in Canada, Sunkist Team Trials Championship, U.S. National Championship (2002), World Team Trials (2002), Hoover/Gellar Keystone Open Championship, University Nationals Championship, Senior World National Tournament (2001 & 2002), Dave Schultz Memorial International (2002), and the Gilbert Schaub Opening. Montgomery, also, received silver medals at the Women’s World Championship in Sofia, Bulgaria (2002), Junior World Championship (2002), and the World Championship (2003). She was awarded the bronze medal at the Dave Schultz Memorial International in 2004. Some other honors include: U.S. Nationals Outstanding Wrestler (2002), Sunkist Open Outstanding Wrestler (2002), Dave Schultz Memorial International MVP, Championship Title in the Pan American Championship, 1st place at the University Guelph Invitational (2002), 2001 USA Wrestling Championship Belt Series, 2001 High School Wrestler of the Year by TheMat.com/ASICS, 2001 Women’s Wrestler of the Year by USA Wrestling, 2002 All American, 2002 International Women’s Wrestler of the Year Award, Finalist Ranking for AAU James E. Sullivan Award (first women’s wrestler to be named a finalist), two time Outstanding Wrestler Honor at the Senior World National Tournament (2001 & 2002), 2002 finalist for the Sportsman of the Year by Women’s Sports Foundation, 2002 won Sunkist Open, named Most Outstanding Wrestler at the UM-Morris Women’s Open, 1st place at the Dave Schultz Memorial (2003), qualified for the Pan-American Games (2003), 1st place at the National Tournament (2003), 1st place at the Women’s Senior Nationals (2003), won Gold at the Pan-American Games (2003), 1st place at the McMaster Tournament (2004), 1st place at the Missouri Valley Tournament (2004), and 1st place at the Collegiate National Championships (2004).

Cumberland athletic director Randy Vernon stated, “We are very proud and happy for Toccara. This will be a great experience for her and it will be a lifetime dream to not only represent the United States but Cumberland College as well. We wish her the best and know she will do her best to represent not only her country but herself and Cumberland.”Several other Cumberland College women wrestlers competed in the U.S. Olympic Team Trails. Those included Iris Mucha of Anchorage, AK, Alaina Berube of Escanaba, MI, Suekolya Shelly of Bedford, TX, and Shelly Ruberg. All entered the Challenge level at the 63 kg class. Mucha lost a 4-3 decision in the first round to Vanessa Oswalt. She, then, gained a victory in the first consolation round by defeating Mollie Keith with a 2-1 decision. In the second consolation round, Mucha came up short losing a 5-0 decision to Tori Adams. Ruberg, in the first round, lost a 14-5 decision to Brandy Rosenbrock. In the second consolation round, she was defeated with a technical fall of 10-0 at the 2:56 mark to Leigh Jaynes. Suekolya Shelly was, also, defeated in the first round. She lost a 2-2 decision to Tori Adams. In the second consolation round, Shelly went down to Vanessa Oswalt with an 8-3 decision in favor of Oswalt.

Berube came within one person of joining Montgomery on the U.S. Team. She was awarded a first round bye in the Challenge level. In the quarterfinals, Berube won by forfeit at the 2:15 mark over Brandy Rosenbrock. The semifinals saw Berube defeat Kaci Lyle with a 5-1 decision. In the finals of the Challenge level, Berube overcame Stefanie Shaw with a 5-4 decision. This victory put her in the championship final against Sara McMann, with the winner being named to the U.S. Team and a chance to compete in the Olympics. During their first match, Berube lost with a technical fall of 10-0 at the 2:05 mark. In the final match, Berube did not fair any better. She was defeated by a technical fall of 15-2 at the 3:35 mark. Berube had a tremendous tournament by winning the Challenge level and then advancing to the Championship finals.

With her experience and talent, Montgomery could be the top women’s wrestler in the world. She will try to prove just that as she goes for the gold medal on August 22. Hopefully she will be able to stand the next day on the gold medal podium for Cumberland College, for the United States, and for herself.

For complete details visit www.themat.com. Montgomery and head women’s wrestling coach Kip Flanik were unavailable for comment at time of release.

Article provided by Jacob Sumner, Cumberland College Sports Information Assistant

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Road to Athens: Only one new women's sport; a sign of equity

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

By Dejan Kovacevic, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

INDIANAPOLIS -- As a child in Manteca, Calif., Patricia Miranda was the oddball. The freak. The girl who wanted to wrestle.

The girl who was so determined to wrestle that she did so against boys, despite a wrestler's grasp of the imbalance involved.

The girl who, at times, would deny her own sex to keep moving forward.

"Competing in high school and college, I never thought of myself as a female," she said at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials this past weekend in the RCA Dome. "In fact, I took down all the mirrors so not to use it as an excuse of why I didn't wrestle well. However, after meeting other women who train as hard and are as dedicated to the sport as I am, I do like to be recognized as a female."

Sara Fulp-Allen experienced much the same in her early wrestling years in San Francisco.

"It can help you in a way to train against men because it pushes you. At the same time, if you make a mistake or don't succeed, you have a tendency not to be hard on yourself," she said. "I wanted more than that. I wanted to go over every little mistake. I wanted to expect to win. I wished there were other girls who wanted the same thing."

She no longer has to look far.

Neither do females in pretty much any sport at this point.

That much is evident at high schools and colleges across the United States, where female participation in athletics rivals or exceeds that of the males. And, even though the rest of the world generally has lagged behind, it is becoming evident in the Olympics.

Of the 28 sports and 37 disciplines on the slate for Athens, the only ones in which women will not participate are boxing and the steeplechase, a century-old Olympic event in which the runner must clear four hurdles and a water hazard. Women also participate not in baseball, of course, but in softball.

Most striking, perhaps, the only new women's sport will be wrestling, along with the discipline of saber added to fencing. Compare that to 2000, when eight women's sports were added: Taekwondo, hammer throw, modern pentathlon, triathlon, pole vault, trampoline, water polo and weightlifting. Or to Atlanta in 1996, when women finally joined the Olympic stage in soccer, the world's most popular game.

Clearly, the boom is over, the novelty diminished.

"It's about time," Fulp-Allen said. "But you know what? It's also a good time. Speaking just for wrestling, I know this might not have worked for us a few years ago. There just weren't enough of us to make it respectable."

The International Olympic Committee has no Title IX, no stipulation that men and women must be represented equally. An Olympic sport, according to the IOC, must be "widely practiced by men in at least 75 countries and on four continents, and by women in at least 40 countries and on three continents." That does allow for a lower standard of participation for women, but it also takes into consideration that women in many parts of the world are not afforded the same chance -- be it because of culture, economics or both -- to compete at an elite athletic level.

Change appears to be coming, though, even to those places least willing or able to effect it. That can be best measured through the mounting international parity in sports the United States was dominating only a decade ago.

"The team I like to look at is Mexico," U.S. star Mia Hamm said. "For years, they lacked the organization, the resources to do what it takes to succeed on the top level. We remember the way they used to look at us. They saw the way we were doing things, how seriously we were taking it. And now, they've got a real program. They have some real talent."

The same can be said of softball, an all-American sport that other nations' federations are taking more seriously.

"We're not in a position anymore where we can just show up and think we're going to win," softball outfielder Kelly Kretschman said. "The bar is set higher everywhere. Believe me: The rest of the world is catching up."

Even in wrestling.

As the man on the loudspeaker boomed repeatedly over the weekend at the RCA Dome, wrestling is "the world's oldest sport!" It dates to Greece's ancient Olympics, and it has carried on in a manner not significantly altered since then. That included a largely exclusionary attitude toward women even after other sports had torn down such walls.

Wrestling's walls are coming down, as well. In 1990, only 112 girls were competing in U.S. high schools. Last year, there were 3,769. There are NCAA programs, national and international tournaments, even a bit of fame for the more prominent athletes such as Miranda, the champion in her class and outstanding wrestler at the 2003 World Cup.

Now, for the first time, there is a women's team -- including Miranda -- going to the Olympics.

Big deal?

Not so much anymore, and certainly not for the United States.

In Atlanta, women accounted for 13 of the 44 American gold medals. In Sydney, that figure rose to 18, nearly half of the nation's total of 40. Athens might well put the women over the top.

"I have a message for the guys," U.S. Olympic Committee president Bill Martin said. "Watch out because the girls are kicking our butts."

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Lady grapplers building dream of Athens

Women's wrestling is being offered for first time as an event this summer in Greece.

By Pete DiPrimio 5/24/04

of The News-Sentinel

INDIANAPOLIS -- FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER the brink, eight hours before the fall and Marine Sgt. Miriam Jenkins seemingly has it all.

Here, in her U.S. Olympic Team Trials wrestling debut, she is unbeaten, unbowed and unshaken in her belief that anything is possible -- even an Olympic berth, perhaps a medal.

"This is the real thing," she says from the floor of the RCA Dome. "I'm just as good as anybody else."

The Olympics are offering women's wrestling for the first time, and Jenkins is focused on a trip to Athens. That means winning her 48-kilogram (105.5-pound) class -- six six-minute matches in three days.

"In high school I used to joke that I'd be in the 2004 Olympics," she says. "That was before women's Olympic wrestling was set in stone. When it happened, I thought, now it's there. I can do it."

Jenkins, the fifth of nine children raised by a single mother, has thrived on can-do tenacity. It helped her become the first Florida high school girl to place in the boys' state meet (eighth at 103 pounds with a 35-17 season record).

"That was my first 15 minutes of fame," she says.

Jenkins' quest for Olympic Trials fame nearly ended before it began. She fell behind Kristin Fujioka 7-0 in her opening match before rallying for a pin. That earned her a quarterfinal berth against Mary Kelly, a wrestler she had beaten multiple times before en route to becoming the nation's third-ranked 105.5 pounder.

Those victories had come before she lost nine months of training because of the war in Iraq. She was stationed in Kuwait and then Iraq with the 9th Engineer Support Battalion, Bulk Fuel Company, before returning last summer.

"We did refueling, everything from kerosene lamps to jets," she says.

They did everything except what Jenkins most wanted to do.

"It sucked for me because it was right in the middle of wrestling season. It was the year before an Olympic year and I couldn't get on a mat."

Still, she says she's better for serving. "I wasn't scared over there. My job was very important. But it made you realize life is dangerous. You could die. You could go to the Porta-John and boom, you're gone. It happened when I was there. It's happening now."

Jenkins is half a world away from that, enjoying the possibilities. So what that Kelley is now the U.S.'s third-ranked wrestler and if Jenkins gets past her, there is second-ranked Clarissa Chun and if she gets past her, there is two-time world silver medalist Patricia Miranda.

She's faced higher stakes.

"My unit is going back to Iraq," she says. "If I make the Olympic team, there's no chance I'd go with them. I'd be better for the Marines in Athens."

Jenkins flashes a smile.

"I plan on going to Athens."

Duty drives the 24-year-old Jenkins. She will remain a Marine until at least 2006, and "I could see me doing this for 20 more years. In the Marine Corps, you can be an athlete and serve your country."

Jenkins is still an athlete, but no longer an Olympic competitor. Her dream ends with a 9-2 loss to Kelley. A return to Iraq is likely.

"I've got no complaints," she says. "I'm a Marine first and a wrestler second."

Sometimes, it seems, you can have it all.

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