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2004 U.S. Olympic Team Members and Hopefuls to Address Transition from Athletic Competition to a Professional Career

for Friday (June 18) Summer Olympics 2004

--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Monster--

WHO: -- Patricia Miranda (Wrestling), 2004 U.S. Olympic Team member
for Games' first-ever women's wrestling competition

-- Lenny Krayzelburg (Swimming); 2004 U.S. Olympic Team
hopeful, three-time Olympic gold medalist in 2000.

-- Keeth Smart (Fencing), 2004 U.S. Olympic Team member;
recently topped International Fencing Federation world
standings in men's saber

-- Kevin Han (Badminton), 2004 U.S. Olympic Team member;
two-time Olympian (1996, 2000)

-- Jimmy Pedro (Judo), 2004 U.S. Olympic Team member; most
decorated American judo athlete in history and three-time
Olympian (1992, 1996, 2000)

-- Kirsten Peterson, Ph. D., United States Olympics Committee
Sport Psychologist

Moderated by: Steve Pogorzelski, President of Monster,
N. America

WHAT: A panel of 2004 U.S. Olympic Team members and hopefuls will
address the challenges they face transitioning into a
professional career, how they define and achieve a new set
of goals, and the transferable skills desirable to
employers. A sports psychologist will provide insight into
the emotional and financial fears professional athletes face
as they embark on a new competitive environment. The panel
will be hosted by Monster, the official online career
management sponsor of the 2004 U.S. Olympic Team.

WHEN: Friday, June 18, 2004, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m.
90-minute panel discussion followed by networking session

WHERE: Chamber of Commerce Building - Atlanta, GA
Second Floor - Boardroom
235 Andrew Young International Boulevard, NW

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Women power’ propels Japan’s bid for Olympic gold

6/18/04

TOKYO: Women will outnumber men for the first time in Japan’s Olympic squad, leading the country’s bid to use the Athens Games for a solid comeback in the world of sport, a Japanese Olympic official said Wednesday.

Shunichiro Okano, one of two Japanese members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said Japan’s Olympic delegation to Athens in August would be the biggest ever sent to overseas Games, bolstered by the participation of women in five team events.

The biggest squad before now went to the 1996 Atlanta Games and included 310 athletes and 189 officials, although Japan fielded 355 athletes when it hosted the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. “We are certain to top the (Atlanta) number. The reason why is that Japanese women have got stronger,” Okano, also an executive member of the national Olympic committee and honorary head of the Japanese Football Association, told a group of foreign journalists. “For the first time ever, women will outnumber men among our athletes.”

So far, 163 women against 135 men have qualified to compete in Japan’s Olympic team with a few dozens berths, mostly for track and field disciplines, still to be decided.

Okano said the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) is aiming for “at least 20 medals,” compared with a haul of 18, including five golds, from the 2000 Games in Sydney. It would be a further step toward the JOC’s target of 28 medals in the 2008 Games in Beijing, double the 14 medals won in 1996 and in 1998, the lowest tally since Japan grabbed nine at the 1952 Helsinki Games.

Japan finished far behind their Asian rivals in Sydney as China grabbed 59 medals and finished third overall behind the United States (97) and Russia (88). South Korea shone with 28 medals. In Athens, Japan will pin gold medal hopes on a stable of judokas as well as 100-meter and 200-meter breast-stroke world champion and world record holder Kosuke Kitajima, and four world women wrestling champions. They also see title chances in some athletic events, baseball and softball. But Okano, who piloted Japanese men to a bronze for football in the 1969 Mexico City Olympics, could explain for sure why Japanese women got stronger.

He said that the current state minister for public security, Seiko Ono, who won a gymnastic bronze medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, attributed the new-found power of Japanese women to the help of their male coaches and colleagues. On the other hand, Okano said, one of his sport-loving friends cited a trend among Japanese women to look for “handsome and gentle men. He says Japanese men are getting gentler in general, and weaker in sports.”

Japanese women will compete in softball, basketball, volleyball, field hockey and football in Athens. Japan narrowly lost to the United States in the softball final in Sydney. In contrast, Japanese men are booked for only two team events, baseball and football. afp

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No mud, just drive to win:[Home Edition]

JEFF SCHULTZ. The Atlanta Journal - Constitution. Atlanta, Ga.: Jun 14, 2004.

Author(s): JEFF SCHULTZ

The wonderful thing about covering the Olympics --- I mean, other than making fun of IOC officials and reaffirming that there really must be a country called Liechtenstein because, well, they have a team --- is having a chance to cover sports we generally know nothing about.

That, of course, wasn't the case when I spoke to Patricia Miranda, a 5-foot, 105-pound and, atypically, female wrestler. See, I have experience in this area. Many years ago and in a previous life, I wrestled a woman. The fact she was covered with mud and little else really is incidental here. All that matters is I was obliged to enter the world of athletic competition by some possibly inebriated friends, who spent lots of beer money to get me into a mud-wrestling pit. It was my bachelor party --- I couldn't say no. That's what I told my wife several years later when she found the Polaroids.

"I think you'd find what I do is a little different," Miranda said. "There's no mud, and my guess is you'd find it less aesthetically appealing."

I lost my match. I think.

"See, there's the difference right there," Miranda said, laughing. "On a mat, you'd care." Probably also not wake up in your clothes. But I digress.

(Please excuse this cheap tactic of using a hot babe mud wrestling anecdote to pull you into a column. But if I began, "Hi. This story is about women's wrestling," chances are you'd be gone by now.)

Women's wrestling will make its Olympic debut this summer in Athens. A preview is available at the Titan Games this week. Nobody knows if Patricia Miranda can do for the sport what Mia Hamm did for women's soccer or Cammi Granato did for women's hockey, but she has poster-girl possibilities.

Try this: She wrestled on the boy's team in high school, which so infuriated her father that he threatened to sue the school for not banning her. She wrestled on the men's team at Stanford, where she managed to gain respect for her work ethic and evolving talents despite winning only one out of 25 matches. She has been accepted into Yale Law School but postponed attending until after the Olympics (which her father took as well as if she had come home and said, "Pops! I've decided to be a mud-wrestler! See my bikini!")

She is 25, studied economics and international policy at Stanford, lists "conflict mediation" as one of her hobbies and used to dream about working at the United Nations. "It may not be around by the time I get out of school," she said. And she's funny, too.

There are only a handful of colleges with scholarship programs in women's wrestling. USA Wrestling got serious two years ago when it started a residency program and hired a former men's national champion, Terry Steiner, as coach. When Steiner was asked what inspired him to take the job, he mentioned Miranda's level of commitment and her decision to defer law school.

Miranda said she was "captivated" by wrestling at Saratoga High School in San Jose, despite initially being awful at it. "It just gave me such an adrenaline rush, being in a fight. It was almost like having to defend my firstborn."

There were lampoons from both competitors and teammates, all of whom were boys. Once at a tournament, somebody in the crowd yelled, "You're a joke!" Miranda later escaped to a bathroom stall and cried in private.

"I love what the sport gave me --- it was a challenge every day," she said. "I thought, 'They might think it was a joke but I'm going to keep going.' "

Her father, Jose, a Brazilian immigrant and family physician, did his best to discourage her interest --- pulling her out of practices, threatening school officials. He feared athletics would interfere with academics. Finally, the two struck a deal: If Patricia kept her grade point average at 4.0 --- straight A's --- she could compete. She did. She ended up with a 4.1 (including advance placement classes).

She continued the sport at Stanford, though competing with college men was a different world. She won more than half her matches as a high school senior, but at Stanford she won once in five years. She was in the 125-pound division but was lucky if she ever hit 120.

There has been more success against women: three straight national titles, silver medals in the past two world championships, a gold in the Pan American Games, woman wrestler of the year honors.

Looking ahead to Athens, she said, "I can't believe I'm in this position. Women have been pushing for acceptance in this sport for years, and I'm reaping the spoils, to be able to step out there."

She will wear a wrestling singlet and head gear. No mud. I'll just watch.

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Martin will add girls wrestling program

Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TX) - May 12, 2004

AREA NOTES Martin will add girls wrestling program
Martin will start a girls wrestling program next school year and has
named Clay Gilliam as the head coach. Gilliam spent the past three years as
an assistant coach for the boys team, a position he will keep. "I thought
it would be exciting to start the first girls wrestling program at the
school," he said. "We've had a strong tradition of wrestling with the boys. I
just want to keep that tradition alive with the girls." Martin had one
female...

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Female wrestler shows style, skills
Feisty Alaskan will make history at this summer's Olympics in Athens

By Tom Reed 6/17/04

INDIANAPOLIS - The new face of women's wrestling was as bruised as a
2-week-old piece of fruit.

Tela O'Donnell, the diminutive Alaskan dynamo, had a mouse under her
left eye, a gash on the bridge of her nose and a knot on her forehead that
was being soothed by an ice pack.

O'Donnell carried a water bottle. She looked like she should be sipping
from the Stanley Cup.

No need for makeup or dark glasses, however.

``I wear it with pride,'' said O'Donnell, who won the 105-pound
freestyle title Sunday at the U.S. Wrestling Olympic Trials.

Move over Rulon Gardner. America has another amateur wrestling
character on the horizon.

O'Donnell is an ebullient 5-foot-4 spitfire with Mary Lou Retton's
smile, Brandi Chastain's tenacity and tales from America's Last Frontier that
fill reporters' notebooks.

She toiled on fishing boats.

She played on a jayvee boys football team.

She was raised by a single-parent mother, Claire, who worked as a mime
in Homer, Alaska (population 5,000).

``Homer is a great place to raise a kid, but not to have a career as a
mime,'' said O'Donnell, no doubt a better quote than mom. ``She ended
up going into landscaping.''

O'Donnell was one of four women wrestlers, including Cleveland native
Toccara Montgomery, to make history in the RCA Dome. These pioneers
will represent their country in the first Summer Olympics to feature female
wrestling.

Spare us the wisecracks about Jello and mud. These are serious athletes
worthy of respect.

Women have proven themselves in other Olympic sports thought to be the
exclusive domain of men. The U.S women's hockey team's gold-medal
victory over Canada was a highlight of the 1998 Winter Olympics.

But in a sport such as wrestling -- where nearly every American not
named Rulon remains anonymous -- personality can help lure the average fan in
an Olympic year.

Enter O'Donnell.

She was brilliant on the mat, surviving a weekend's worth of punishment
to pin national champion Tina George, of Cleveland Heights, twice in their
best-of-three final.

She was just as impressive in front of the cameras, showing the
reporters how she wrote reminders to ``score now'' in pen on her left arm.

Her life story and sense of humor should make for a compelling profile,
the kind that drive Olympic television coverage.

O'Donnell, 21, worked on a drift net boat, trolling for salmon in
Kachemak Bay. She liked team sports, but couldn't find one that liked her back.

Volleyball wasn't her game. Neither was football, where she washed out
at safety, cornerback and guard.

Some of her first wrestling opponents -- and we're not making this up
--
were the sheep that her family owned.

She grew up strong in the wilderness and her compact build and
competitive nature were ideal for wrestling. Like so many women at this weekend's
Olympic Trials, she wrestled on high school boys teams.

O'Donnell has continued her career in college, first at Pacific
University and now at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, where she plays
guitar and studies biology.

She entered the Trials as an underdog to George. She leaves as an
Olympian, and for the record, the first women's wrestler to earn the honor.

``When I was little, I dreamed of being an Olympian in ice skating or
something like that even though I've never ice skated,'' said Tela,
which is Japanese for temple.

``I kind of forgot about that dream until I started wrestling and now
here I am.''

O'Donnell could not stop smiling. She could not stop giggling. Her
undistilled joy lit up the dome.

Someone asked her if she instantly becomes the biggest celebrity in
Homer. She shook her head no.

``Jewel (the singer-songwriter) is from Homer,'' she said. ``So is Tom
Bodett, the guy from Motel 6.''

Is America going to love this kid, or what?

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Okemos grad gets Olympic shot

By TERRY OLSON For The Towne Courier 6/13/04

INDIANAPOLIS — Former Okemos High School wrestler Lauren Lamb has toiled at her craft for 20 years. But not until last weekend was she finally rewarded with a chance to compete for a berth on the U.S. Olympic team. Women’s freestyle wrestling will be an official medal sport for the first time at this year’s Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, and the six-time U.S. National Champion wouldn’t have missed the first-ever U.S. Olympic Women’s Trials for the world. “It was very exciting,” Lamb said of the anticipation for the trials. “But it has also been a lot of pressure. All the years of work came down to one weekend. With the World Championships there is always next year, but with the Olympics coming only every four years, and the chance of being on the first women’s (Olympic) team, it was something I really wanted to be a part of.” The 26-year-old made an impressive run at the trials. Lamb, seeded sixth at the trials, beat Courtney Martell (Green Mountain Wrestling Club) 10-0 and then upset third-seeded Erin Tomeo (Sunkist Kids) 4-1 to advance to the semifinals at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis. Lamb, who had placed fifth three times at the World Championships, saw her run toward Olympic glory stopped short in a tough 3-2 loss to 2003 World bronze medalist Jenny Wong. “I am pretty disappointed,” said a composed Lamb after the match. “I really wanted to win it.” Lamb went on to a fifth place finish following the loss to Wong. Women’s wrestling has come a long way since Lamb got into the traditionally male sport. She started competing on boys’ teams at Kinawa Middle School and Okemos High School, and still had to work-out with the men’s team at Cornell University as she worked her way toward a degree in chemistry. Now, with Olympic medal status, the sport seems to be hitting its stride. “It has really been amazing,” Lamb said. “(Women's wrestling) has come a long way. To watch the talent among the women — the numbers and depth. It has really developed into a competitive sport.” For a pioneer like Lamb, the sport’s addition to Olympic competition might have come just too late. She remembers watching the Olympic Games in Atlanta when she was the number-one ranked wrestler in her weight class, just wishing she had gotten the opportunity to compete. And having come so close makes it a difficult dream to let go. “Before I went into this tournament I said, ‘After this is done, that’s it,’” said Lamb. “But now after its over, I don’t know. I am going to have to take some time off and make that decision with my family as to whether I have another four years in me.” While training for the trials, Lamb juggled her full-time job as a chemist with Johnson & Johnson, and her family responsibilities to her husband Casey and her 8-year-old stepson Austin. “It definitely made it difficult at times,” Lamb said, “having to decide between different things.” But, for Lamb, whether or not she is back for another try at the Olympics is secondary to her family. “They helped me keep my head on straight,” Lamb said. “Being able to go home to my family at night. Wrestling is just a game and there are definitely things that are more important.”

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Bowie's Mayes pins a goal

Wrestler wins middle school tourney 3 years in row

By BRUCE BECK 5/26/04
bruce.beck@amarillo.com

Olympic hopeful Tori Adams won four state wrestling titles and two national crowns while grappling for Caprock High School.
But even Adams didn't accomplish what James Bowie Middle School eighth-grader Tara Mayes did - win the Middle School Wrestling Tournament three years in a row.

"I'm the first girl ever to do that," said Mayes, 15, who also said Adams is her idol and has provided moral support. "This past summer, she sent me her red wrestling shoes from her first city tournament because she couldn't make it."

At the time, Adams was training in Colorado Springs, Colo.

"She said (with the shoes on Mayes' feet) she'd be with me," Mayes said.

Bowie's top female wrestler might never have stepped onto a mat if her father had had his way, she said.

Her father, Scott Mayes, former wrestling coach at the Maverick Club and now coach for River Road Wrestling Club, was against Tara getting involved in the sport.

"My dad didn't want me to wrestle because I'm his little girl," Mayes said. "When I went to him as my dad, he said no; but when I went to him as a coach and asked him what he thought of female wrestlers, he had to say yes."

Scott Mayes said he couldn't argue with his daughter's logic.

"She used my own words against me," he said.

When Mayes began wrestling in second grade, there were few girls involved in the sport.

"From second to sixth grade, I wrestled nothing but boys," she said. "Wrestling technique came naturally to me, but in my first match I got pinned in the second by Coy Grant (now a wrestler at Palo Duro High School)."

It was Mayes' younger brother Jonathan who first got her interested in wrestling.

"He's so energetic, he gets me going," she said. "He'd say, 'C'mon, let's try this; let's try that.' We'll practice together."

Learning to wrestle against boys, Mayes mastered moves that emphasized leverage and taking an opponent's legs out of the equation.

But when she finally faced girls in competition, she came up against techniques she wasn't familiar with.

"The first time I wrestled girls was at the Dallas Cotton Bowl Tournament in sixth grade," she said. "They were in high school.

"Girls are different. They go for the arms rather than the legs."

To stay successful, Mayes said, she had to master techniques to defeat opponents of both genders. And as the competition improves, Mayes said, she has to stay on top of her conditioning and training. She said she power-lifts, runs and bicycles with her brother.

"I have to stay in shape all year long," she said. "Before you set foot on a mat, you have to be able to run two miles."

Bowie wrestling coach Efrain Ramos said Mayes is serious about her conditioning and is aware of what it takes to succeed at the next level.

"She is an exceptional wrestler and she is very dedicated to the sport," he said. "Tara has excellent technique and fundamentals.

"I don't think there is a girl in the city in her weight class who can beat her. I'd put my money on it."

This summer, Mayes will attend wrestling camps at Caprock, Palo Duro and Tascosa high schools in preparation for trying out for the Caprock wrestling team in the fall.

"Coach (Scott) Tankersley hopes I can make varsity," she said.

With the stresses of training, competing and maintaining her grades to keep herself academically eligible, Mayes said she relies on her family.

"My mom, dad, grandmother and grandfather are my moral support," she said. "My mom (Annette Mayes) is so awesome and my grandparents (Harvey and Joyce Kennedy) go everywhere with me."

Mayes' support system is apparent to Tankersley.

"With Tara's intensive wrestling background, I have no doubt that she can make the varsity squad," he said. "Her dad has taught her well and he was her coach ever since she was little.

"She has a wrestler's mentality, or mat savvy, that most female wrestlers don't have. Her parents are deeply involved in the wrestling world, and they've done a wonderful job with her."

Mayes' enthusiasm for the sport spreads.

"Jennifer Williams, my best friend, I got started in wrestling," she said.

Mayes has her sights set on the first step in following in the footsteps of Adams, her idol.

"I'm hoping to win state next year," she said.