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By TERRY CARTER
For The Chronicle 12/7/06
The Waller girls' squad has quietly been preparing themselves for the district and region wars to come in February by winning tournaments in Austin and now at Cy Ridge on Saturday.
With titles at 128 pounds by Amanda Kelso, 138 pounds by Whitney Disotelle and 165 pounds by Maegan Fellers, Waller will be a power to be reckoned with against Katy ISD's powerful fivesome of Katy Taylor, Katy, Mayde Creek, Cinco Ranch, Morton Ranch and Seven Lakes.
Waller edged Klein, Cy-Fair and Brazoswood for the Cy Ridge Classic team trophy at an event with 17 girls' teams scoring, Ray said.
"The Waller girls have always had a strong team. With Kelso, Disotelle and others, they're now getting 3-4 years on the mat. That just means even more success," Cy Ridge coach Ray said.
Waller also won the team race at the Nov. 18 edition of the 2006 Capital Classic with more champions Natasha Balkum at 119 and Amanda Hicks at 148 added to Kelso's individual title there.
As a demonstration of depth, Waller entered two girls at 138 and 148 pounds. You guessed it as Kelso defeated Disotelle in the 138 championship, and Hicks beat Shelby Fellers at 148 for the crown.
Extra-curricular activities
Wrestling coaches tend to be less subdued than many teachers you'll see in the high school hallways. However, friends Tim Ray and Joaquin Bautista may push the adrenaline envelope to extremes more than most.
Bautista, a former Olympic contender in Greco-Roman wrestling at 152 pounds from the mid-'90s and through 2004, spends a great deal of his time coaching The Woodlands Highlander wrestling program.
He also invests time in the summer for Team Texas, which works with the state's elite grapplers in preparation for national competition in the spring and summer.
But beyond all that, Bautista is on the verge of wrestling another Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bout in March 2007 after initial success last March.
He fractured his wrist and little finger in training for the October event and had to reschedule his virtually no-holds-barred fight, he said.
"I have a name from my Greco wrestling, so I fought last March against (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu specialist) Renzo Gracie. I had him twice before a head butt stopped our fight. It was a no decision about seven minutes in," Bautista said.
"I don't plan on making it big in the UFC. I'm just doing it for myself to see what I can do," he added.
Ray, the Cy Ridge coach, nearly always brings his team's wrestling mats to tournaments. Even in stormy weather, Ray can deliver his school's mats due to an enclosed trailer.
Like Bautista, Ray has a hobby that keeps him busy in the off-season. That trailer is typically carrying his 2002 Chevrolet Camaro dragster when it's not filled with wrestling mats, the coach said.
"This year I won the track championship in the quarter mile," Ray said. "My car runs in the 10.2s at 130 miles per hour. My Camaro is pretty much stock if you cap the exhausts and put street wheels on it. It is tagged and has insurance.
"But the only time it goes on the street is when I pull it out of the garage and put it into that enclosed trailer," he said with a grin.
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Catalina Foothills female wrestler runs her record to 6-0
By Casey Crowe Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.07.2006
One of the night's slightest competitors left the grandest impression in Wednesday's quadrangular wrestling meet at Salpointe Catholic.
Catalina Foothills junior Andrea Hughes snared the spotlight when the 103-pounder kept her record unblemished with three more wins, two by pins.
Hughes improved to 6-0 on the season with a victory by forfeit before two dominating efforts against Salpointe Catholic's Andrew Erly and Flowing Wells' Chris Bostic. "I wrestled pretty well, but there are still things I'm trying to improve on; a lot to work on still," Hughes said.
"Right now, I'm just trying to stay undefeated longer than I did last year."
Hughes started 2005 with a 12-0 record before finally losing a bout.
She eventually finished second in the 4A Kino Region championships.
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by Veronica Cannon
December 07, 2006
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Wrestling is no longer a sport just for the boys. Increasingly, women are hitting the mat.
With moves that can intimidate the most skilled of men, female athletes are competing at world championship levels, national matches and now a new permanent part of the Olympics.
Clarrisa Chun, at 105 pounds, is a petite yet strong woman that won her weight class at the Sunkist Kids ASU International Open in October. As she sat among the audience at Wells Fargo Arena after winning her match, she talked about what she gains from being a wrestler.
“The training is twice a day, five to six days a week,” she said. “It gets tough, but what I have gained is friendships, travel experiences, and have overcome adversity, which I think makes you better.”
“For all of these years, girls have been forced to only compete with the boys,” Chun said. “With more programs available that separate the girls from the boys, it will encourage more (girls) to get into wrestling. Although some of them have the skill to compete with the men, it can be intimidating as a beginner to even get started.”
College programs for women’s wrestling are still very uncommon, though.
Only three institutions offer it and, at the high school level, female wrestling is almost nonexistent. Of the girls that choose to participate in wrestling, most do it as part of the boys’ teams. Some schools do not even permit that.
Four-time world championship winner Tricia Gray is a pioneer of women’s wrestling and has seen the trials of being an athlete in a mainly male-dominated sport firsthand.
“When I turned 12, the school board at the junior high I attended decided I could not compete; not due to a lack of ability, I was already a regional champ,” she said. “But because I was guilty of one thing: being a girl.”
“Girls wrestling needs to be a high school sport, but when offering it to girls is discouraged by the administration, even by coaches and parents … It’s not an inviting environment.”
The girls that are fortunate enough to have a format to compete in, such as the Sunkist Kids program, a non-profit wrestling club based in Scottsdale that promotes and supports national and international competition of wrestling for men and women, could only go so far in the past.
But for the first time in 2004, women were able to compete in the Olympics. This has led to other encouraging changes.
“Texas and Hawaii now have women’s wrestling at the high school level,” Gray said.
Chun said that with the Olympic victories she sees changes in the way people perceive women wrestlers.
“I’m now training at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado, something some women thought we would never see,” she said. “Even the guys we used to have to wrestle would look at us as junior high level. They now see we are able to compete at a world level.”
“We’ve come a long way,” Gray said. “Of course it will never move fast enough for me.”
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Asian Games: women's wrestling champion Hamaguchi follows father's footsteps
The Associated PressPublished: December 8, 2006
DOHA, Qatar: When Kyoko Hamaguchi was a kid, she had a different group of role models than most little Japanese girls. Her idols were people like "Cutie" Suzuki, "Candy" Sato and "Dynamite" Kansai, big names who could fill big arenas.
Her biggest inspiration of all was her father, Heigo "Animal" Hamaguchi, king of the pro wrestling ring.
"I used to tag along with him to his fights," she said. "It was my dream to be just like him someday."
Hamaguchi is now living the dream.
Hamaguchi headlines one of the toughest teams at Asia's premier sports event, the Asian Games — a Japanese quartet at the forefront of the relatively new sport of women's wrestling. The Olympic-style version doesn't quite have the color of its professional counterpart — no ring names, no chair-throwing or hair-pulling — but it has become immensely popular in Japan.
One of the reasons is the team. They just can't stop winning.
"We have four wrestlers here," said coach Kazuhito Sakae. "We will bring four golds back to Japan."
When women's wrestling made its Olympic debut, in Athens in 2004, the Japanese all won medals — two golds, one silver and one bronze.
Hamaguchi, at 28, is a five-time heavyweight world champion. But while she is the most popular member of the team, she may also be its weakest link.
In May, she defeated two-time world champion Kristie Marano of the United States on the opening day of the women's wrestling World Cup, but broke her nose in the process of losing the final to Canada's Ohenewa Akuffo. No matter — the team still won the title with ease.
Hamaguchi was the bronze winner in Athens, and the woman who beat her, China's Xu Wang, is here in Doha.
She hasn't forgotten the loss.
"I'm out to get some revenge," she said.
And, she added, the nose is better.
"I had surgery, but it's fine now," she said. "I'm wrestling just fine."
Finding revenge will be harder for teammate Saori Yoshida, a four-time world champion and Athens gold medalist.
"I've never lost a match," she said.
For Yoshida, even finding someone to train with is a chore. To prepare for the Asian Games, Icho had been wrestling with coach Sakae, but that had to stop after a few days.
"I think she broke one of my ribs," he said.
Filling out the Japanese wrestling team is a sister act — Kaori Icho, who has four world titles and an Athens gold, and Chiharu Icho, who has one world title.
Aside from the Chinese, they will be facing limited opposition in Doha.
As is the case in many other parts of the world, women's wrestling has yet to catch on in most of Asia.
In the Middle East, it is considered improper for women to wrestle. Though 10 Middle Eastern countries — including host Qatar — have men's teams entered in the games, the first ever held in the Arab world, none of them have sent women. Of the 45 countries at the games, 15, from Cambodia to Kyrgyzstan, have women wrestlers.
While women's amateur wrestling is still trying to win the respect the men get elsewhere, it is an established profession in Japan.
Earlier this year, retired pro wrestler Shinobu Kandori made it all the way to Parliament, filling a seat for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. In her fighting days, Kandori was better known for her spiky golden hair and her tag-team title match that dethroned "Harley" Saito and "Dynamite" Kansai in 1990.
She's the first woman wrestler to make it to Parliament, but two men have already done so. Another, in a local assembly, caused a stir by insisting on wearing his mask.
Hamaguchi, who started off with bodybuilding and switched to wrestling at age 14, has appeared in commercials for cell phone giant Docomo, carmaker Toyota and All Nippon Airways, and appeared together with her father in a TV ad for a popular discount store.
Though not looking at a political career just yet, Hamaguchi said she sees Olympic-style wrestling as a step toward the realm of her father, who will be here to cheer her on when the competition begins next Monday.
"I'm thinking of going pro after the Beijing Olympics," she said. "There's more freedom in professional wrestling, it's more expressive. And I'd like my father to be my second someday."
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Cheema to lead Indian challenge in wrestling
Posted by admin on 2006/12/8 8:42:58
Doha, Dec 8 (IANS) Palwinder Singh Cheema will lead the Indian challenge in the wrestling competition starting Saturday in the 15th Asian Games here.
India will field eight men and four women wrestlers in the continental games with Cheema, a bronze medallist in the last three of the Asian Championships, taking part in the 120kg freestyle category.
Among the women, Alka Tomar, a bronze medallist in the women's World Championships will be a bright medal prospect for the country in the 55kg category.
Apart from Palwinder, Vinod Kumar, Yogeshwar Dutt, Sushil Kumar, Narsingh Yadav, Anuj Kumar and Narender will take part in the freestyle event in different weight categories.
India's lone challenger in the Greco-Roman style event will be Ravinder Singh in 60 kg segment. He was sixth at the Asian Championships this year.
In the men's event, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan are expected to maintain their stronghold while Japan is tipped to dominate in the women's category.
The men's freestyle and Greco-Roman categories each have seven gold medals up for grabs while women's freestyle offers four gold medals.
For Japan, three of their five world champions will take part.
Even China will pose a tough challenge as they have World Championship silver medallists Xu Haiyan (67kg) and Su Lihui (58kg).
Kyrgyzstan's Iana Panova will be looking to better her 2002 Asian Games bronze in the 72kg weight division.
In men's Greco-Roman, reigning Asian Games champion and two-time world champion in the 55kg category Dilshod Mansurov of Uzbekistan will be looking to retain his title.
Uzbekistan have two Olympic gold medallists Artur Taymazov and Alexandr Dokturishivili. Taymazov is also the reigning world champion and a Golden Grand Prix winner in the 110kg division.
Another strong contender in the 96kg category is Kyrgystan's Aleksey Krupnyakov, who won the silver at the 2002 Asian Games in Busan.
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