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Adams takes aim at Olympic berth

Ex-Caprock wrestler seeks spot on American team in Indianapolis

By Dwayne Hartnett 5/20.04
dwayne.hartnett@amarillo.com

The wrestling skills of Tori Adams and the motivation of coach Scott Tankersley brought her four state individual titles and two national titles to Caprock.
Four years removed from the mats in the Caprock gymnasium, Adams is asking Tankersley for guidance again. This time, however, the stakes are higher.

This weekend in Indianapolis, Adams is wrestling for a spot on the first women's Olympic wrestling team. Tankersley again will be at her side.

Two years ago, the International Olympic Committee approved women's wrestling for this summer's games in Athens, Greece.

To qualify for the lone spot in the 138.5-pound weight class, Adams will have to win three matches. Starting Friday, the top eight wrestlers in the class will compete in the three-day, single-elimination tournament. Seed Nos. 2 through 8 will wrestle Friday and Saturday for a shot to wrestle U.S. Nationals Champion Christie Marano in Sunday's final and a berth in the Olympics.

"It's kind of hard to explain how I felt (when it was announced women would be allowed to wrestle in the Olympics)," Adams said. "I was excited and shocked at the same time. I never thought they would have women's wrestling when I started so long ago. I remember being the only girl and now it is an Olympic sport. It's amazing, and I thank God daily that I am able to be part of something like this."

Adams, seeded seventh, has been training at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., for the past 22 months. With the window closing on her physical preparation time last week, Adams focused on her mental preparation.

She called Tankersley and asked him to stand in her corner during the qualifying matches. Tankersley said he would do it.

"When she comes home, she usually comes by and visits, picking my brain for advice. One of my greatest strengths is motivation and mental skills," Tankersley said. "Tori wanted to be trained in mental skills so she could have the total package. For example, we went over Chi, Yi and Jing, which are Chinese mental skills.

"Chi is what you feel inside your body when you execute a move. Yi is your intent or aim. You focus on a specific area while you attack it. You mix your aim (Yi) with your internal energy (Chi) and direct it to a specific point. When your Yi is mixed with your own energy or Chi, the power that was issued is what we call, 'Jing."'

At the Olympic Training Center, Adams trains under Keith Wilson, an alternate in Greco-Roman in the 1996 Olympics. After a recent trip to Amarillo, Wilson suggested Adams invite Tankersley to the trials.

"I am internally motivated most of the time, and so it is hard for me to find someone that can motivate me. But Tank is the one who can," Adams said. "I was in town last weekend for a funeral and my coach from Colorado was with me. I went to do some mental training with Tank, and I was so fired up when I was done, Keith told me, 'You need to get Tank to go. It will be good for you."'

Adams wrestled two seasons for Missouri Valley College in Marshall, Mo., where she won an NAIA national title in 2002. But when the IOC announced women's wrestling would be a part of the 2004 Olympics and opened the Olympic Training Center to female wrestlers, Adams jumped at the chance.

She moved to Colorado Springs, Colo., started training 10 hours a day and taking online college courses at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and Amarillo College.

Caprock assistant coach T.J. Johnson said he is never surprised by Tori's successes on the mat.

He said she is one of the most focused athletes he has been around.

"It's strange when a young girl has that kind of motivation and ambition," Johnson said. "I think when she was here, sometimes she would look around at other girls and not understand why they didn't have the same goals and ambitions. We'd have to cool her down a little bit and say, 'Tori, not everyone wants to go to the Olympics. Not everyone wants to be a champion."

As the No. 7 seed, Adams will battle a tough draw at the trials. Tankersley said it wouldn't surprise him if Adams found a way to win the spot. But if she doesn't, it won't change how he feels about her.

"Regardless of what happens, I'll be proud of her," Tankersley said. "I remember when I coached her at the state and national tournament, it was the journey or the destination that made it worthwhile. For Tori, the final result is not as important as the process.

"She has worked so hard ever since she was a kid and she knows how to get there. Regardless of the level of competition, I have so much confidence in her. She knows what she has to do."

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Profile: Wrestler Patricia Miranda; RENEE MONTAGNE

Morning Edition (NPR) 05-20-2004

Profile: Wrestler Patricia Miranda

Host: RENEE MONTAGNE
Time: 11:00 AM-12:00 Noon

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

The nation's best wrestlers begin three days of competition tomorrow to
decide who will represent the United States at the Summer Olympics in
Greece. Those Olympic trials in Indianapolis feature something new:
women's wrestling, the only new medal sport at the Athens Games. Those who
follow female wrestling say one athlete in particular could be the inspiration
for a new generation. As part of our occasional series on Olympic athletes,
NPR's Tom Goldman profiles wrestler Patricia Miranda.

TOM GOLDMAN reporting:

She's at it again. Patricia Miranda is winning another match. This one,
an opening round contest at last month's National Wrestling Championships
in Las Vegas. Miranda's blue and green mouthpiece flashes into view as she
executes a difficult maneuver and scores points doing it. Her opponent
tries to delay the inevitable by hugging the mat.

Dr. JOSE MIRANDA (Father): She's glued to the floor.

GOLDMAN: Miranda's father watches from the sidelines, twisting his body
like he's wrestling, too.

Dr. MIRANDA: Up, up, up, up, up!

GOLDMAN: Tiny Patricia Miranda, five feet fall, 105 pounds, scores
enough points to win this match in three minutes. She went on to win the
national title, giving her an automatic berth in the finals of this weekend's
Olympic trials. Victory and a supportive father on the sidelines--it certainly
wasn't always this way. If Miranda wins an Olympic medal, as many
expect, it'll be a moment laced with irony. Athens will be the site of her
greatest achievement after a journey that had the tumultuous elements of a
classic Greek drama.

The journey began when Patricia was 10. Her mother died suddenly, and
Patricia began wondering about her own mortality.

Ms. PATRICIA MIRANDA (Wrestler): Why am I here? What are my goals? What
am I going to be proud of that I did, you know, if I die at 40? You know,
that kind of thing. And I think one of the conclusions that I came to is
that, you know, everybody's born with a given body, a given mind, given tools
to work with, and one of the true sins in life is to die having not
explored them.

GOLDMAN: Embracing life with an awareness of death, Miranda was a most
uncommon child. At an age when kids avoid things difficult and scary,
she attacked everything difficult and scary.

Ms. MIRANDA: That was a time that I really got to look into myself, and
that really excited me. You know, I was scared today, and I can't change the
fact that I was confronted to do this challenge. But did I run or did I
fight? And those kinds of conversations I had in my head, and those were
conscious.

GOLDMAN: As an eighth-grade tomboy in California, Miranda followed her
guy friends to a junior high wrestling tryout. The sport fit her psychic
needs perfectly.

Ms. MIRANDA: And it just hooked me right from the beginning, I think,
because I wasn't very good at it. And it's something that really
freaked me out, actually, the intensity of being in a fight, which is really what
a match is. So I've got to go back at least till I figure out how to
fight, you know, and not freeze up.

GOLDMAN: Armed with her precocious sense of purpose, the heroine of
this wrestling epic faced the first of many obstacles at home. The father
cheering on the sidelines last month, a decade earlier he hated what
she wanted to do. Dr. Jose Miranda was born in Brazil, and like many
immigrants believed education, not sports, was the key to success in America.

Dr. MIRANDA: Many athletes are not known for being very good students.
You see, it's a way of social ascension in this society, which is a valid
way. But I was afraid that this would be a problem.

GOLDMAN: It turned out not to be because father and daughter sat down
and negotiated a compromise. She was 14 and agreed to get straight-A's in
high school. He agreed in return to let her wrestle. Lucky Patricia. She'd
won the right to suffer for eight more years. Wrestling for her high school
boys' team, she was taunted by teammates, berated by parents. One
mother scolded Miranda for wrestling the woman's son because it was unfair,
particularly if he lost. And many boys did, to a young woman who didn't
think it was such a big deal since in her mind she was better
conditioned, had better technique, was more driven. Miranda even was named captain
of her boys' team. Success on the mat softened the body and ego blows, but
then she went to college, the first woman ever to wrestle on the men's team at
Stanford University, and she got quite familiar with losing.

Ms. MIRANDA: Try five years of it, never winning, ever.

GOLDMAN: Miranda's too humble. She actually did win in college, once.
In high school, she wrestled boys more or less her size and ability. In
college, everyone was bigger and better. Still, she kept coming to
practice, kept doing extra workouts, amazing everyone around her with persistence
and an elastic body.

Mr. CHRIS HORPEL (Wrestling Coach): She would just fight and fight and
fight and get so twisted and torqued and be in positions that were just not
common things to see.

GOLDMAN: Chris Horpel was Miranda's wrestling coach at Stanford.

Mr. HORPEL: It scared me at first, and then I wrestled her a little
myself and I realized, `Wow, her body can go in these positions without
injury.'

GOLDMAN: But Horpel worried about what the constant physical domination
and losing might do to her psyche.

Mr. HORPEL: We had to redefine what success was. Success wasn't getting
the best of her opponent throughout a practice, it was occasionally scoring
with a technique.

GOLDMAN: The technique developed, and in her senior year she finally
won a match. After graduation, after the hard slog through high school and
college, Miranda started piling up victories, wrestling against women.
She's now considered a great wrestler, supremely conditioned, with superior
technical skills. She's often a model for coaches working with other
women.

Mr. LEE ALLEN (Coach): Patricia will get you there. I'll tell you,
Patricia's one wrestler that, she'll get that near leg up and if you
don't defend against it, then you're--she has a lot of options from there. So
you're in deep trouble then.

GOLDMAN: Coach Lee Allen invoked the `Patricia does this, Patricia does
that' lesson at a recent practice for female wrestlers at California's
Menlo College.

(Soundbite of practice)

Unidentified Woman #1: I can't feel where the leg is.

Unidentified Woman #2: Yeah.

Unidentified Woman #1: Wild kick.

Ms. MIRANDA: I think I'd just keep my hip down.

Unidentified Woman #1: You actually kicked me right here.

Unidentified Woman #2: Yes, I'm sorry.

Unidentified Woman #1: You broke the law.

GOLDMAN: Menlo is one of six colleges in the nation with a women's
wrestling team. The sport is growing, Allen says, despite lingering biases about
women encroaching on a traditionally male world. Five years ago, he said,
about 400 girls were competing in California. This year, he estimates about
1,300. A prominent women's wrestling coach says the sport could make even
greater strides if heroes emerge from the Athens Olympics. Patricia Miranda
would be an obvious candidate, but her college coach, Chris Horpel, worries
about the publicity she's getting and how it might affect such a thoughtful
person like Miranda. She doesn't worry.

Ms. MIRANDA: No matter what they say, it can't compare to the pressure
I put on myself.

GOLDMAN: Miranda's only 24 but says she's not thinking about the
Olympic Games beyond Athens. She's been accepted to Yale Law School, where she
wants to focus on arbitration. Learning how to bring two sides together would
be intriguing, says Miranda, especially since she's already figured out
how to fight.

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

Wrestling equality going to the mat

BY JOHN JEANSONNE
STAFF CORRESPONDENTMay 23, 2004

INDIANAPOLIS - Title IX has jumped up and kicked a most unsuspecting victim in the pants: wrestling.

Of course, it is Title IX that has opened the floodgates to girls' and women's participation in sports during the past couple of decades. And it is the sport of wrestling - an activity for the men, by the men and of the men for so long - whose coaching fraternity has complained the loudest that schools bent on encouraging female athletic competition were killing them.

But voila, the latest Olympic sport to welcome women is wrestling, and this weekend's U.S. Olympic wrestling trials here are evidence of how strong, intense athletes - male or female - tend to break delicate political china.

"It's just numbers; you can't get rid of us," said Stephanie Shaw, a high school junior from Waterford, Conn. "We're just as aggressive as the guys. When I was young, it was bad. Really bad. People would say, 'You shouldn't be here.' But after you beat so many coaches' sons, they tend not to put you down as much."

Shaw's is a fairly typical story: Her father wrestled, her brothers wrestled, she grew up around the mats and she wanted to give it a try. "It's his fault," she said, jerking a thumb toward Roger Shaw, who wrestled in high school and at RPI and now coaches his daughter.

He shrugged, "Anything's better than watching TV. She rides horses. She paints. This is healthy."

Sara Fulp-Allen of El Granada, Calif., started wrestling when she was 9; her dad signed her and her younger sister up for a tournament and she "wrestled a boy [while] wearing my gymnastics tights and water shoes taped to my feet. These little plastic moccasins."

But for all the dad/enablers, there still are fathers like Jose Miranda, whose daughter Patricia would sign up for matches in her native Saratoga, Calif., then learn that Jose had scratched her from the meet. She finally had to cut a deal: If she made straight A's in school, he would allow her to wrestle, and she now is reigning national champion at 24.

Still, the idea of women wrestling makes some people squirm. "You watch them here," said Cael Sanderson, the man who had a 159-0 match record through his collegiate career at Iowa State. "They're getting tougher. I'm glad I don't have a sister, I'll say that."

When Jenny Wong of Woodbury, Minn., informed her mother that she wanted to try wrestling, Florence Wong asked if it had something to do with mud. Wong, now 22, was a high school cheerleader at the time, and she knew she was fit because Woodbury High had a terrific football team.

"We would do a pushup for every point they scored," she said, "and one game they scored, like, 66 points, and I had to do 66 pushups." She had heard a couple of boys talking during math class about how much fun wrestling was, and she figured: why not?

"Most of the ones who are fighting for this," said 24-year- old Marine Miriam Jenkins, who started wrestling in high school, said, 'Daddy, I want to do this.' And the daughter started kicking butt and Daddy said, 'Maybe I'm doing the wrong thing.'"

Her own mother wondered, "Why don't you play basketball?" But the tiny Jenkins rolled her eyes in telling the story. "Mom," she had responded. "I'm short." Five-one. "And a half," she added.

So the cultural war goes thusly: There are a total of seven college varsity women's wrestling teams in the nation. Only two states, Texas and Hawaii, have high school wrestling for girls (with Washington and California about to join them).

Beyond the obvious boys- will-be-boys, rough-and-tumble sense of wrestling - sweaty guys rolling around trying to make each other cry uncle - there is the built-in obsession with how much everyone weighs. Competition is divided into weight classes and athletes are known to lose as much as 20 pounds in a week to "make weight."

When reigning world champion Kristie Marano missed the 138¾ cutoff for her competition here - she is the reigning world champion in that division - she was forced to bump up to the next Olympic classification of 158½ and has been faced with repeated questions of how much she weighs.

Such discussion is verboten for virtually all other women's sports - gymnastics organizations refuse to list weights, for instance, and U.S. women's soccer coach April Heinreichs recently made clear that she "would never make weight an issue" because of concerns of eating disorders.

None of this bothers Roger Shaw, who recalled when his daughter was paired against boys in junior high school.

"There was this one coach, before his kid's match against Stephanie; he shouted out, 'Come on, it's only a girl!' After she stuck him, her next match was against another of that coach's boys. He yelled, "Watch out! She knows what she's doing!"

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

Ready or not, wrestling embraces women

By Vahe Gregorian
Of the Post-Dispatch
05/22/2004

INDIANAPOLIS - If wrestling is what it proclaims itself to be, the "oldest and greatest" sport, it is straining to cope with its advanced age.

A dearth of television coverage and both the stigma and popularity of so-called "professional" wrestling hamper its mainstream popularity. The excruciating demands of the sport have diminished its participatory appeal in a culture that favors paths of least resistance.

But as the ancient game grapples for its place in the contemporary landscape, adaptation and innovation are the essence of a movement not only to stabilize but grow the sport - by welcoming females to compete. Women's wrestling is the only new sport in the upcoming Athens Olympics, and USA Wrestling is endorsing, embracing and even emphasizing it.

"We believe in the sport and what it teaches: ... character development and dealing with adversity and life lessons and life skills," said Terry Steiner, the U.S. women's wrestling coach. "And if we believe in that so much, and that's why we're still in the sport, why do we want to limit that to half the population? ...

"How can inviting another half of the population into a sport that's struggling for survival and acceptance in the mainstream public ... hurt it? It can't."

The notion reeks of irony because of continued debate over the consequences of Title IX, the 1972 federal mandate of equal opportunity for men and women in education that some blame for the reduction of men's collegiate wrestling teams from 363 in 1982 to just 222 in 2003.

Some in the "wrestling community are upset with women's athletics and Title IX," said Gary Abbott, spokesperson for USA Wrestling, adding, "There are people who are against women's wrestling, and they're always going to be against it."

But that's only one dimension of the resistance. To others, the idea is inherently uncomfortable, even offensive, because so few females are competing at the high school level that they seldom have their own teams - and thus wrestle against males.

Those arguments are shallow and pale against the benefits, said Steiner, who sees girls wrestling boys as a nonissue but one that would be minimized if more women join the sport.

"It's been a men's sport forever. And that's all they know. So why change? Why should we change now? It's an ignorance standpoint," said Steiner, who was apprehensive about his job when offered it in 2002 but changed his mind as he saw the dedication of prospective team members. "It's in an infancy stage that needs someone to stick up and fight for it a little bit."

About 4,000 girls wrestled at the high school level in the United States last year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, up from just 200 in 1991. Only two states, Hawaii and Texas, have sanctioned state championships for girls, and there are just seven collegiate programs - including one at Missouri Valley College in Marshall, Mo.

Although Steiner and Abbott believe growth must come from the grass-roots levels, they also think it can be fertilized from above if the U.S. team succeeds in Athens. Since the U.S. medaled in all four weight categories in the last two world championships, multiple gold medals is a realistic goal.

But they also believe it is imperative that the sport produce charismatic role models. And it has a budding one in Patricia Miranda, a 24-year-old with a master's degree from Stanford who has been accepted to Yale law school. As reigning U.S. champion in the 105.5-pound bracket, Miranda has a bye until Sunday in this weekend's Olympic wrestling trials at the RCA Dome.

"She's what the Olympics are all about," Steiner said. "She's about excellence in every aspect of her life."

Before she was born, Miranda's family immigrated to California from Brazil by way of Canada after friends began disappearing or being tortured for their social activism, she said. Her mother, Lia, died of an aneurysm when she was 40 and Patricia was 10. Searching for meaning in her mother's death, Patricia resolved to "explore myself."

"I felt like for somebody to die having not really gotten to know themselves is one of the big sins," she said. "So if anything scared me, that was a huge indicator for me to go try it out."

Soon after dabbling in wrestling two years later, she knew it was for her "because it freaked me out" in its challenges, she said. Initially, she didn't even realize her gender would be an issue. By high school, taunting and harassment were common.

Among her most vivid memories: The mother of a boy she'd beaten scolded her for putting him in a "no-win situation." Miranda's response: If it was "an atrocity" for him to lose to a girl who had outworked him, perhaps the issue was her "bad parenting."

But Miranda hardly is all bravado. To the contrary. She wept when she heard someone yell, "You're a joke," after being humbled by an opponent.

Taunts of "'You shouldn't be out there on the mat. What are you, kidding yourself?'" followed, she said. "I think that got to me the most because it was quite plausible that I was a joke. You know? I didn't know. ... I like to know the truth. Self-honesty is one thing I think is great about wrestling."

Her resolve to stay with the sport was confronted repeatedly. At one point, her father threatened to sue high school officials in Concord, Calif., to prevent her from wrestling, seeing it as a distraction to her studies. So she struck up an agreement with him that if she maintained a 4.0 grade-point average, she could stay on the team.

At Stanford, she was allowed to join the men's team as a freshman but didn't compete in a match until her senior year, when she had her only collegiate victory over a male whom she always declines to identify.

"I actually told him that afterwards, because I could tell he was sort of upset when he shook my hand," she said. "I said, 'Listen, your name's never coming up.' "

Perhaps not surprisingly, then, she aspires to a career in conflict mediation. Her master's thesis at Stanford was on the economics behind the Palestine-Israel conflict, and she says it would be "a dream come true" to work for a United Nations commission on that cause.

No wonder she sees resolving conflict in accepting women's wrestlers as a viable cause, too.

"I think most people don't think about it. They don't think it through. And it's something new, and most people are pretty resistant to change," she said. "But why should women be denied all the benefits the sport gives? . . . I think if they really asked themselves that question, most of the public would not be against it."

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

OLYMPICS: Women wrestlers grapple for acceptance
Sport making Olympic debut

Karen Rosen - Staff
Sunday, May 23, 2004

Indianapolis --- Wrestling dates back to the ancient Olympic Games, an
age when only men were allowed to compete. Because the men wrestled naked,
women were not even allowed to watch.

More than 2,700 years later, women's wrestling will make its Olympic
debut in Athens this August with 48 women competing in four freestyle weight
classes. Yet some people are still grappling with the concept of
women's wrestling, especially when girls have to take on --- and take down ---
boys because of the scarcity of all-female teams outside international
competition.

World silver medalist Sara McMann said that while she was competing in
high school in North Carolina, "I got a few comments from moms like, 'She
should be cooking for them boys, not wrestling with them.' "

McMann, 23, who will compete today in the finals of the U.S. Olympic
Team Trials at the RCA Dome in the 63 kg (138.75 pound) weight class, did
not respond to the barbs.

"I figured it's what I want to do," she said, "I don't have to change
everybody else's mind."

Yet more people have been going to the mat for women's wrestling since
it became a recognized sport in 1987. The United States began sending
athletes to the World Championships in 1989. After dashed hopes in Atlanta in
1996 and Sydney in 2000, women's wrestling was accepted into the Olympic
Games for 2004.

Dan Gable, the 1972 Olympic champion, said members of the wrestling
community who opposed the introduction of women, "just hadn't been
convinced yet."

When Gable spent a couple of months helping the men's freestyle team in
Colorado Springs, Colo., he had a chance to see the women practice. "I
watched their skill level and I watched their commitment and they kind
of hooked me," he said. "I saw how genuine it is."

Hockey got boost

Among the 700,000 or so wrestlers in the United States, only 5,000 to
6,000 are female, USA Wrestling spokesman Gary Abbott estimates.

Athletes and coaches are pinning their hopes on Athens to create
awareness of the sport and move it beyond the novelty stage.

"Women's hockey exploded after it entered the Olympics," McMann said.
"Hopefully it will do that for our sport also."

"This is a pioneer team," said Terry Steiner, a former NCAA champion
and the first national women's coach. "We expect to go in there and bring home
some medals and hopefully move this sport forward."

But he added that to "catapult it to a new level of respect and
acceptance and popularity, we need success."

At the 2003 World Championships, the U.S. won silver medals in the four
Olympic weight classes.

"That's why I think Athens can do so much good," said Patricia Miranda,
the silver medalist at 48 kg/105.5 pounds, "I don't necessarily need every
girl to wrestle or say that she should, but if you get enough positive
exposure, hopefully every girl in the U.S. will know that she can wrestle if she
wants to."

Female wrestlers are attracted by the brute strength and
unpredictability of the sport, plus the fact that you have no one to blame but yourself if
you make a mistake.

Three-time national champion Iris Smith, an Albany native and the only
female Olympic Trials competitor from Georgia, believes there's a place
for women in such a traditionally masculine sport.

"I'm very feminine," she said. "Outside of wrestling, all the guys are
like, 'You clean up pretty good, you don't look like a wrestler.' I said,
'How am I supposed to look? All rough all the time? I love dancing and going
out and I like flowers. Pink is my favorite color.

"When I'm out there on the mat, I'm a wrestler. I'm not worried about
looking cute. All I'm worrying about is pinning her shoulders to the
mat or getting more points than her. Off the mat, that's when I've got time to
be my regular girly self."

Smith, an Army specialist and member of the World Class Athletes
Program based at Colorado's Fort Carson, did not make the final in the 72 kg/
158.5 pound class.

"I've still got another eight years," she said. "These girls better
fear this. I'm only 24."

Toppling stereotypes

Ten years ago, the coach at Darsey Private High School spotted Smith
throwing her brother and asked her to join the team.

"He persuaded my mom, and my mom talked me into it," said Smith. "She
said if it's something you like to do, I'll support you, and if you don't
like it, just quit."

She liked it and found it wasn't that hard to beat high school boys. "I
kicked a lot of their butts," Smith said. "Some of them ran off
crying."

Usually, the parents were the ones bent out of shape when their sons
lost to girls.

"I would have a lot of resistance from kids' parents saying it's a
no-win situation for the boy," said Miranda, who competed for Stanford. "My
response to that is that if we're teaching our kids that it's such an
atrocious thing to lose to a girl, then that's just bad parenting. Why
should it be such a taboo?"

Miranda said that any awkwardness in figuring out where to grab while
wrestling men, "disappears very quickly when you're in a match and all
of a sudden it's two arms, two legs and somebody's trying to beat me."

Miranda, 24, said that people who think wrestling should be only for
boys are denying girls a chance to explore basic character principles and
boost their self-image.

"Especially during the early high school years, wrestling kept me from
going down the path where you get real self-conscious and start reading all
the magazines that tell you that you're not good in this way or that way,"
she said.

Stacey Davis, vice chair for Team Georgia USA, said interest in women's
wrestling in Georgia is picking up as word gets out.

"There's a whole lot of daddies who don't want their girls wrestling on
the mat," he said, "But there's a whole lot of dads who don't have any
boys."