News

Plenty of wrestling to do in Fargo

By J.P. HOORNSTRA, Times-Herald sports writer7/31/05

After a humid Tuesday, it rained on Wednesday in Fargo, North Dakota.
"It's weird," Monica Gonzalez said. "It's cold one day, then hot the next."

Gonzalez, a Vallejo High sophomore, has been in Fargo all week to take the next big step in her wrestling career, and she's hoping to be more consistent than the weather.

By placing first in the 160-pound class at the state junior girls' freestyle final on April 17, Gonzalez qualified for this weekend's United States Wrestling Association Championships.

The individual tournament, among last year's 9th- through 12th-graders, begins today and concludes Saturday. It's the largest tournament Gonzalez has competed in since the United States Girls Wrestling Association championships in March, where she took ninth.

But freestyle tournaments - in contrast to the collegiate-style USGWA tournament - represent a different challenge, with different scoring, rules and strategies.

"This is much different, because you get to experiment with different moves," she said.

Her coach is Julie Gonzalez - no relation to Monica - who graduated from Vallejo High in 1996 and has since made her mark as a nationally-ranked wrestler.

In a short amount of time, Julie Gonzalez has been impressed with the work ethic of Monica, who arrived two days early to the state team's practices last week.

"She looks great," the coach said. "She wrestled well (against) both 160- and 175-pound competition."

On Thursday, Gonzalez went 3-1 in duals matches, which are separate from the individual matches that begin today.

Hosted by North Dakota State University, the tournament has traditionally attracted top competition on the boys' side. Girls competition began in 2002.

"It's really, really big now for girls," Julie Gonzalez said. "It's been big for the boys. It's still a work in progress because it just started."

Adding to the prestige of the event is the venue - the 18,700 seat Fargodome - and housing for the competitors in the university dormitories.

Said Monica, who turns 15 today: "It's cool, kinda like another experience, like you're in college."

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Athlete of the Week--Sara Fulp-Allen

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http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=99203§ion=Sports

Deanna Rix of Maine created a stir in the Fargodome earlier this week
when she won her first two matches in the Junior boys Greco-Roman tournament
by technical fall and pin. Her third match - a physical matchup against
North Dakota's Gus Lee that injured Rix and forced her to withdraw from her
next match - had everybody's attention.

Nobody came close to beating her in the girls freestyle division. Rix,
who finished second in the Maine high school boys wrestling tournament, won
her third USA women's freestyle title winning three matches by pin and
three by technical fall.

She was able to compete in the boys Greco tournament because girls do
not have a Greco division.

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Top female wrestler helping clubs train

By Mike English
staff writer July 27, 2005

Palm Beach County's Community Olympic Development Program wrestling
clubs are getting some world class help at their weekly practices at Jupiter
Christian School, William T. Dwyer High and Cardinal Newman High
School.

Australian female freestyle wrestler Lila Ristevska has been helping
program manager Shawn Sheldon, her fiancée, with club practices.

"I was in the world championships but I wasn't in the Olympics," said
Ristevska, who wrestles at 105.5 pounds (48 kilos). "I was shooting for
it.

"I was in the qualifying tournament but I finished 12th," she said.

Female wrestlers from 52 countries participated in the qualifying but
only the top five in each division wrestled in the Olympics.

"Before that, you only had to win your division, and I did that, but
they changed the qualifying rules just before the Olympics," Ristevska said.

Women's wrestling is getting bigger, Sheldon said, but there are only
four weight classes instead of seven "so it's a smaller group that goes to
the Olympics.

Sheldon, the manager and wrestling administrator for the CODP, is a
nine-time U.S. champion and a two-time Olympian.

He has coached at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs,
Colo.

Ristevska is busy training for the women's world championships in
Budapest on Sept. 27 to Oct. 7.

Overall, U.S. women's wrestling is pretty strong, she said. "The U.S.
team is in the top three in the world."

The CODP trains at JCS on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6 p.m., Mondays and
Wednesday from 3 to 5 p.m. at Dwyer and at Cardinal Newman on Mondays
and Wednesdays at 7 p.m.

The CODP is a joint venture of the Palm Beach County Sports Institute
and the U.S. Olympic Committee.

For details, call Sheldon at (561) 233-3179 or go to
www.ssheldon@palmbeachsports.com.

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Game for life
Triple amputee makes few concessions

By David Bruce 7/28/05
david.bruce@timesnews.com

Terri Lash is used to the stares.

They started almost 20 years ago, when Lash became Waynesburg Central
High School's first female wrestler. The redhead wrestled one boys varsity
match and could feel everyone's eyes as she walked onto the mat.

She didn't care.

"I liked wrestling," said Lash, 34. "They didn't have girls sports in
junior high, so I tried out for the boys team. My high school coach was good.
He didn't tolerate any bull. Eventually the other wrestlers respected me."

Lash still gets stares today, but for different reasons.

She nearly died in 1989 from a misdiagnosed bacterial infection.
Doctors had to amputate her legs, left arm and right fingertips.

"My husband, Bryan, and I will be out in our pool and cars will drive
by very slowly," said Lash, who has lived in North East Township since
1994. "I don't mind if people see me and take a quick look, but some folks just
stop and stare."

The stares bother Lash, at least a little, but they haven't stopped her
from enjoying her life.

She works 25 hours a week. She has climbed rocks and taken dancing
lessons. She plays softball once a week and helped design her dream house, a
Victorian-style home near the Lake Erie shoreline.

"I have a curiosity about things," Lash said. "I don't do them to try
and compensate for my disability. I just enjoy doing them."

A foe withinLash's medical problems started the day after she finished her freshman
year at Gannon University.

She had just returned home to Waynesburg in May 1989 when she developed
a nasty headache. Her sister, a nurse's aide, thought it was from
breaking up with a longtime boyfriend.

"I went to bed, but my sister said that I started moaning, and tossing
and turning," Lash said. "She put her hand to my forehead, and she could
feel the heat coming off of it without touching my skin."

Lash's family rushed her to Greene County Memorial Hospital, where
doctors first thought it was a stomach inflammation or toxic shock syndrome.

It was neither. Lash had meningococcemia, a life-threatening bacterial
infection in her bloodstream.

Had doctors given Lash the right antibiotics and steroids, she probably
would have recovered. Instead, she went into septic shock.

"Twelve hours after I arrived in the hospital, I couldn't talk, I
couldn't sit up, and my feet were turning black," Lash said. "Finally, a blood
specialist arrived and transferred me to another hospital."

Doctors saved her life, but had to amputate her legs just below the
knee, her left arm just below the elbow, and the fingertips of her right
hand.

"I remember a doctor coming into my hospital room and unwrapping the
bandages on my left arm," Lash said. "I saw the arm, and I just lost
it."Things in common
The HealthSouth Harmarville Rehabilitation Center isn't a hotspot on
the Pittsburgh singles scene. It's where people who have lost legs or
suffered strokes learn to walk again.

Lash transferred to Harmarville after spending six weeks at Ruby
Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va., recovering from her infection and
amputations.

She returned to Harmarville in 1991 to be fitted for new prosthetic
legs, and spotted the man she would marry.

Bryan Lash was struggling to walk, just weeks after being electrocuted
on a high-voltage tower and falling seven stories. The accident tore off his
right arm and left leg.

"He looked like a concentration camp victim," Terri Lash said with a
smile. "He was so skinny."

A mutual friend introduced the two, who began meeting for long talks at
the rehab hospital. Lash would schedule her fitting appointments for times
when she could see him.

"We talked about our disabilities the first couple of times, but then
we discovered that we have the same attitude on things," Bryan Lash said.
"I was an oddball, a standout. So was she."

"We both don't care what other people think," Terri Lash added. The
couple married in 1995.

Though Bryan and Terri Lash are both multiple amputees, they go about
their daily lives in different ways.

Bryan Lash uses a wheelchair most of the time, while Terri Lash gets
around with prosthetic legs and sits in a wheelchair only at the end of the
day when she is tired.

"People will see Terri on her prosthetic legs and see me in a
wheelchair and think that she is my nurse or attendant,"Bryan Lash said. "I can use
prosthetic legs, but all I can do is walk. I get around better in a
wheelchair."

Terri Lash wears an inexpensive gold band on the ring finger of her
prosthetic left hand, but it's not her wedding ring. That is safely
tucked away until the swelling subsides in her right knuckles.

"I wear a cheap band on my left hand because I've lost rings and not
even realized it," she said.

Urge to helpMoney isn't Terri Lash's main concern in life. She won a $4 million
malpractice lawsuit against Greene County Memorial Hospital and one of
its doctors.

The lawsuit is also one of the reasons she and her husband moved to
North East. Terri Lash fell in love with the Lake Erie shoreline as a child
during amily vacations in Lake City, and she was tired of everyone knowing
her business back in Waynesburg.

"People knew me as the girl wrestler, and they had read in the
newspapers all about my court case against the hospital,"Lash said. "I went back
to college in Waynesburg after my illness. One day I was walking to class
and a woman came up and told me to put on a sweater. I was like, 'You don't
know me.'"

The money from the lawsuit paid for Lash's house and some of her
medical expenses. Still, she works part time as a service coordinator at the
Three Rivers Center for Independent Living.

She helps other people with disabilities understand their rights,
including helping them register to vote, obtain needed services, and move from a
nursing home into their own house or apartment.

"I like helping people," Lash said. "I can understand some of the
frustrations they feel, that people don't view them as people."

When she's not working, Lash still has the same sense of adventure that
led her into the Waynesburg High School wrestling room. She once took
dancing lessons because she heard the instructor say she could teach anyone to
dance.

Now she plays softball once a week on a coed team. In one of her first
at-bats, she hit a grounder and started running to first base, but one
of her prosthetic legs fell off.

She tumbled to the ground.

"People stood there anddidn't know what to do," Lash said. "I was fine.
Now I take off my legs and dry them between innings so they stay on."

Focus on positive
The most difficult aspect of a life without legs is the lack of
spontaneity, Lash said. It's impossible to do anything on the spur of the moment.
Every trip has to be planned out.

"I can't jump out of bed and be ready in 10 minutes," Lash said. "If
we're going out, I have to pack extra medications, socks for my prosthetics."

"If we're going somewhere overnight, we have to make sure the motel is
wheelchair-accessible," Bryan Lash added.

"It's frustrating," Terri Lash said.

When the Lashes do go out, they sometimes encounter amputee fetishists,
men who are sexually attracted to Terri Lash because she is missing her
legs and arm.

When the Lashes took a vacation in Florida, a man followed them all
over Walt Disney World, taking photos of her on the sly.

"I went up to him when Terri was in the bathroom, and I asked what the
hell he was doing," Bryan Lash said. "He backed right down."

But the Lashes don't focus on the obstacles. Terri Lash underwent gall
bladder surgery in December and said she is feeling better than she has
in years.

Now she's talking about adding to their family.

"We're thinking about having kids," she said. "Maybe in the next couple
of years."

DAVID BRUCE can be reached at 870-1736 or by e-mail.

BY THE NUMBERS
1.3 million: Number of people living in the United States with a lost
limb.
70: Percentage of amputations caused by disease.
22: Percentage of amputations caused by trauma/injury.

Sources: National Center for Health Statistics, University of Virginia.

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