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Female wrestlers try to pin down respect
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Visit USA Wrestling // August 15, 2004
The wish list for the United States' first team of Olympic women's wrestlers: medals and respectability.
The latter is an extension of the battle that has been fought for decades in schools and universities for females competing in a traditional male sport.
"Athens is our opportunity, is our stage to say, 'Look at us for more than a sideshow, more than mud wrestling,'" said Patricia Miranda, who delayed entry into Yale law school for two years and became one of the United States' four qualifiers in the seven weight classes.
Wrestler Sara McMann noted that the newest Summer Olympics sport can be traced to ancient Greece. "The women actually wrestled to gain status," she said. "It was better for bearing children."
Miranda and head coach Terry Steiner said respect has been slow in coming, even from the men's national team.
"We can talk all we want about what we think of women's wrestling," said Steiner, a former NCAA Division I champion at Iowa. "But their actions both on and off the mat are going to move the sport forward." DMN
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REID LAYMANCE // The Boston Globe
August 17, 2004
Globe Newspaper Company
ATHENS - US wrestler Sara McMann is putting on a bright face here at the Olympic Games, something she has learned to do in the last five years.
It was January 1999, when her older brother Jason disappeared from a party at Lock Haven College in Pennsylvania.
It took police nearly three months to find his decomposed body in a wooded area in Logan Township, about 20 miles south of Lock Haven. Charges have been filed against four men, including a former Lock Haven football player, and the trial is supposed to begin this fall.
"It taught me how to be a stronger person," McMann told the Raleigh News and Observer before leaving for Athens. "I don't get down or pessimistic anymore."
Now, in Athens, she remembered her brother as the reason she got into wrestling.
"I followed my brother everywhere," said McMann, who will compete in the women's 63-kilogram competition. "When I was growing up, that was what we did. He went to wrestling tournaments and I followed him around. We wrestled at home. I just adored him."
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Even at Olympics, U.S. wrestler leans on incarcerated father for support
By Alan Robinson // Associated Press // August 17, 2004
ATHENS, Greece (AP) _ Toccara Montgomery is neither ashamed nor embarrassed about the imprisoned father who will be an ocean away when she becomes one of the first women to wrestle in the Olympics.
``I always was a daddy's girl and I always will be a daddy's girl,'' Montgomery said, her voice filled with emotion. ``He's always been a driving force in my life.''
Paul Montgomery of Cleveland was sentenced to 33 years to life for a 1998 double murder and is not eligible for parole until 2032 _ the year his daughter will turn 50.
Toccara occasionally visits her father at an Ohio prison, not all that far from where she attends classes and wrestles at Cumberland (Ky.) College. But she insists she doesn't need her father's physical presence to know he is with her.
``He may be incarcerated, but he's as much in my life as anyone can be. ... I know people who have both parents (at home), and they're not involved in their lives as much as mine are,'' said Toccara, whose mother Tara, a cook, essentially has been a single parent since Paul Montgomery went to prison. ``I'm grateful to have parents who are supportive of me.''
Less than a month after the October 1998 shootings, and with her father awaiting trial, Toccara's life was altered again when she learned Cleveland's East Tech High would sponsor its first wrestling team in 40 years.
Montgomery, then 15, had never wrestled before despite being very athletic, and the idea intrigued her; her mother once rejected her request to play football.
``I was only thinking about being (voted) most athletic at my school, and I needed another sport,'' she said. ``But when I tried it, it was different from the team sports _ I was always used to blaming someone else when something went wrong. It was very frustrating at first, and very difficult.''
But East Tech wrestling coach Kip Flanik found her to be a quick learner, someone interested in improving even as she constantly lost to male opponents. Wrestling also occupied her time and helped serve as a refuge from the trouble in her personal life.
Within months, she finished second at the U.S. girls nationals _ an extraordinary achievement for one so new to the sport _ and she was a national senior open champion before graduating from high school.
Her rapid progress continued as she moved onto the U.S. national team. She beat three world champions en route to placing second in the 2001 worlds, and was voted international female wrestler of the year.
As she advanced, Flanik assumed such an important role in her life that he accompanied her to Cumberland as the coach of one of only six U.S. women's college wrestling teams. He also worked with 2003 world silver medalist Tina George.
``Nobody knows you like your own coach,'' Montgomery said. ``He's always been there for me.''
The two have an emotional bond that is tightly tied to their similar backgrounds.
Flanik's father, who serviced vending machines as a side occupation, was shot to death during a robbery when Flanik was 14. Unlike Montgomery, Flanik intensely disliked his father _ a man he says physically abused him from an early age _ and he admittedly was not sorry to see him die.
Now, Flanik is helping Montgomery prepare for her first Olympics match Sunday.
One of three 2003 world silver medalists on the four-member U.S. Olympic team, Montgomery is among the favorites at 158{ pounds (72kg). She lost to defending champion Kyoko Hamaguchi of Japan in last year's world finals in New York and during an Olympic venue test tournament in Athens, but beat her in a World Cup match in Tokyo.
Hamaguchi, a five-time world champion, has already promised what will happen in Athens, telling Japanese reporters, ``I definitely will win the gold medal.''
What's intriguing is that Hamaguchi, 26, is a daddy's girl, too; her father, Heigo ``The Animal'' Hamaguchi is a former well-known professional wrestler who serves as his daughter's coach and guiding force.
Montgomery's father won't be in her corner, or even on the same continent, if she meets Hamaguchi, but he spoke with her four days before she left for Athens.
``We talk as much as possible, though there are certain times and circumstances when you just can't,'' she said. ``He was kidding with me the last time we talked, saying, `You're on the Olympic team, but you still can't beat me.' I said, `OK, old man, we'll see.'''
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