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No quit in Watase
The Iolani wrestler goes for her fourth state wrestling championship Saturday
By Paul Honda 2/28/07
phonda@starbulletin.com
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IF the world were a captive audience and Carla Watase were told to be on stage, the curtain would never rise.
She doesn't want the glory. Grant the Iolani senior her wish, and it would be only about the mat, the competition and her team. On the surface, she is a three-time state wrestling champion, four-time Interscholastic League of Honolulu titlist. Her legacy continued with a 36-0 record this season. She is days removed from that fourth ILH crown, and just two days away from the final state tournament of her career.
In her gut is an immense will to win. In her heart, an unending desire to blend in with "One Team," Iolani's athletic motto.
She prays before hitting the mat. For a safe match, both upon her and her foe, friends and opponents. To give her best. Then comes the hum of an inner engine, revving to full volume. Minutes before each match, before all of her 136 head-butting, forearm-shivering duels in her storied high-school career, Watase loosened up with earphones plugged in. This season, her choice of audio adrenaline is Linkin Park.
Behind the sparkly smile, you would never know it. Watase is ready to mix it up.
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Why does it feel like night today?
Something in here's not right today
Why am I so uptight today?
Paranoia's all I got left
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"Paper Cut" by Linkin Park is mad noise that gets Watase amped up, but it's the 10 years of learning classical music on the piano that taught her discipline. She is a perfectionist to the core, and it is genetic.
David Watase, her father, was a young judooka who attended Our Redeemer School before transferring to Saint Louis in high school. He stumbled upon the wrestling program late, joining as a junior and learning the ropes. His senior season was a bust after he broke a leg playing a pickup game of tackle football.
It didn't matter. David had already become a wrestling addict, absorbing every nuance of knowledge, so much so that he helped younger brother Craig morph into a state-champion contender.
Carla had no idea, at 12, that she would become a dominant wrestler with a 134-2 record in Hawaii. She was immersed in soccer and basketball. Wrestling was that thing that Dad did back in the day.
He slowly talked her into it, picking her up every day from Kaimuki Christian School as a seventh grader. They drove across town to Iolani, Roosevelt, any place that would let the diminutive youngster work out after varsity practices were done. She learned the work ethic of Saint Louis' boys. Among them were Jonathan Spiker, Travis Lee and Brandon Low, not yet state champions, but working hard while almost nobody watched.
"Watching Saint Louis train and seeing how hard they worked, that rubbed off on me," Watase said, who wrestles in the 108-pound class.
By the state tourney of that year, something clicked in her mind. Tanya Miyasaki of Castle had taken the 98-pound crown.
"She says she doesn't remember telling me this," David said. "But when we were driving home after the state championships, she told me, 'Dad, I can do that. I can compete with her.' "
In time, Carla worked out with Miyasaki and did more. Extra running. Technique revisions. Video study. Competition in ILH open tournaments. National events. All to raise the bar long before she ever donned the uniform for Iolani.
"She'd work out with Iolani's intermediate team. (Coach) Carl Schroers had just retired from varsity," David said. "That's like Cal Lee coaching a Pop Warner team!"
Legendary names meant little to Carla back then. She went along with the workouts.
"I tell her, 'As long as you give your best, I'm happy,' " David said. "She says, 'Not, you're lying dad.' "
For all her early ambivalence, Carla developed a passion for the sport on her own. She carried a 4.3 grade-point average last quarter and is aiming to continue her career at Pacific University (Ore.). She can't bring herself to raise her voice much, even as a team captain, but leadership is in her bones.
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Everybody has a face that they hold inside
A face that awakes when I close my eyes
A face watches every time they lie
A face that laughs every time they fall
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"SHE SCARED ME," eighth-grader Rachel Ono admitted.
The former Kaimuki Christian student looked up to Watase years ago, amazed by the wrestler's ability and strength.
"I was smaller then, and she's so good," said Ono, who eventually became a wrestler as well. "Carla showed me how to have a good attitude. She's helpful and teaches us moves."
Watase doesn't know her win-loss record. It was coach Yoshi Honda and his staff who kept track of her string of success.
"She's such a humble, nice girl. It took a lot for her to step up," said Honda, now in his 10th year as head coach at Iolani. "She leads in a silent, effective way. When they're on the mat, they look for her.
"We're fortunate to have her. The only reason she and her younger sister (Kari) are at Iolani (instead of Saint Louis) is that they're girls."
Each Sunday morning, the Watase ohana is at Honolulu Christian Church. From Monday to Friday, they are out the door at 5:30 a.m., have breakfast at their grandmother's house on St. Louis Heights, then roll downhill to Iolani. Grandma, Gerri Watase, never wanted her girls to wrestle, but the ritual continues. Soon another ritual will end: Watase's career as a Raider will be complete on Saturday. Win or lose, she would like to end it as quietly as she started.
"She would rather not be publicized. Anything can happen, deep inside she's anxious," David said.
All the work warrants a little recognition, maybe. After all, nothing has been given to her.
"There were times when I wanted to quit," she said of those early years. "But I'm really glad I didn't."
Learning under Honda, a three-time state champion at Radford, has brought out the best in her.
Honda still delivers the moves that made him a champ, but the culture of wrestling at Iolani goes beyond technical mastery.
"Coach is one of the best in the state. He's really inspiring. He's a really cool coach and he makes wrestling fun. He'll joke and make us laugh," Watase said.
And she'd do it all over again in a heartbeat.
"You have to take opportunities wherever you can find them," she said. "And never quit."
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Athletes grapple with sport's image
Lack of female teammates puts wrestlers in a bind
By Tamar Lewin
New York Times News Service
Published February 28, 2007
UNCASVILLE, Conn. -- The takedown came after all of 12 seconds.
Jessica Bennett, Montville High School's 103-pound wrestler, waited until Rich Wood went down to try to grab her leg, then launched herself onto his back and got him down to his knees. After a brief stalemate later in the match, Jessica, 15, lifted him off the ground and took him back to the mat, for more points.
t that, several of Rich's teammates, from St. Bernard High School here, looked down at their feet. There is still some pain in watching a teammate being beaten by a girl -- even a girl like Jessica, who has won 23 of her 35 matches this season.
Wrestling may be the ultimate contact sport, and it can be a startling sight, teenage boys grabbing girls' thighs, girls straddling boys, boys riding girls' backs and trying to flip them onto their backs. For the most part, girls who want to wrestle -- and they are slowly moving into the mainstream -- must practice with, and compete against, boys.
Nationwide, about 5,000 high school girls wrestled last year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations -- nearly five times as many as a decade earlier. Those numbers are no doubt low because many states failed to report girls' wrestling participation, but whatever the full count, it is dwarfed by the quarter-million boys who wrestle.
Now that women's wrestling is an Olympic sport -- and on some campuses, a college sport -- girls wrestling is poised to take off. There is a Catch-22: Without many girls, there can't be girls' teams, and without girls' teams, wrestling can't attract all that many girls. The legal status of coed wrestling is not entirely clear, but in a few scattered cases, courts have ruled that if there is no girls team, girls should be permitted to join boys teams.
In Texas and Hawaii, and in some California schools, girls have their own teams. Girls invitational tournaments, where girls compete individually, are becoming more common.
"It would be nice if there were girls' teams," said Eleanor Lewis, a sophomore at Horace Mann, a private school in New York City, who wrestled two boys on the first day of the New York Mayor's Cup and two girls the second. "When you wrestle a girl, you're more equally matched and feel like you're respected," she said.
Roger Shaw, women's director for USA Wrestling Connecticut, said the spread of girls' teams would help wrestling's popularity.
"I believe we'll go on at the low level we're at if women don't get their own teams," Shaw said.
While he is all in favor of girls wrestling -- his daughter, Stefenie, started wrestling at 8 and now, at 20, is an Olympic hopeful -- Shaw said that for boys, coed wrestling can be disconcerting. "A boy who goes out on the mat against a girl doesn't win," he said. "If he beats her, he was supposed to, and if he doesn't, he's dead meat."
On the other side, mothers of girl wrestlers say they worry about the cauliflower ears, broken noses and concussions.
One thing that coaches, parents and wrestlers -- both boys and girls -- agree on is that sex is the last thing on wrestlers' minds as they pull and push and turn their partners, same sex or opposite.
"They're so pumped up with adrenaline when they're out there on the mat, they're not thinking of anything but wrestling and winning," said Gary Wilcox, Jessica Bennett's coach.
Girls' wrestling is not easy. The conditioning is grueling and intense, more so than for other sports. Since boys their age are usually stronger, only a few girls ever make varsity, let alone get to a state championship. And there is often parental resistance.
"I told her, it's all boys, you're going to get hurt," said Roseanna Di Benedetto, whose daughter, Lucy, a tiny 15-year-old at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, New York City, is determined to wrestle. "But Lucy's always loved a challenge."
Even her coach, Josue Herrera, has his doubts about coed wrestling. "I think it's better if it's girl and girl," he said. "If boys and girls wrestle together, it's physically harder for the girl, but mentally harder for the boy."
According to the New York state Education Department, the guidelines for mixed competition require schools to consider the girl's medical history and physical abilities but do not require that they pass a state test, which is intended for younger athletes who want to compete alongside older ones.
Even the mother of Jessica Bennett, the Montville High wrestler, had her doubts.
"When she was little, I told Jess that it's a little bit of a man's world, but you should never let anyone say you can't do something because you're a girl," Kim Bennett said. "When she wanted to wrestle, I was very skeptical. But she reminded me of what I'd said and told me that the first time she was hearing she shouldn't do something because she's a girl, she was getting it from me. And she was right."
Her coach, Wilcox, a former Marine, also wondered how the boys would behave when Jessica first appeared at practice. "I told them, if anybody does or says anything, they'll pay me," he said. "So there was fear."
But Jessica and her teammates say coed wrestling seems perfectly natural. In fact, Jessica says, the boys who have known her since she followed her brother into a local youth wrestling program in 4th grade "kind of watch out for me."
Jessica, a soft-spoken girl who braids and pins up her hair before each match, says wrestling has helped build her confidence, posing challenges for both her body and her mind. "Boys have a lot of testosterone and they're stronger, so when I win it's on technique," she said. "Hopefully, I can outwit them."
With the hairnet, the dark T-shirt under her singlet, and the headgear over her ears, there is something oddly demure about Jessica, even as she is on all fours with a boy riding her back. The onlookers yell "Lock in that leg," and "Keep pushing," and her mother yells "Come on, Jess, upsy-daisy."
When she gets on top, turns him and nearly pins him, the crowd explodes, stomping the bleachers. Her team cheers wildly. His team goes silent.
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Female wrestlers raise Olympic hopes
(28-02-2007)
HA NOI — Though the qualifying matches are a year away, the women’s national wrestling team is already preparing for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Wrestling stars like Nghiem Thi Giang, Nguyen Thi Lan Anh and Le Thi Trang are Viet Nam’s best chances for Olympic triumph, according to the team’s coaching staff.
Giang made a name for herself in 2005 when she pocketed a bronze at the Asia Junior Freestyle and Greco-Roman Wrestling Tournament in Wuhan City, China. Topping that achievement, Giang took the gold in the 55kg category at the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in the Philippines that same year.
Her teammate Trang is the 2004 Asian Wresting Championships silver medalist, while Lan Anh is the bronze medal winner in the event’s junior division.
National coaches said their Olympic strategy is to focus on training athletes competing in weight categories ranging from 48kg to 60kg. These are divisions the team has dominated in regional competitions, said team officials.
According to Le Ngoc Minh, vice chairman and general secretary of the Southeast Asian Wrestling Federation, Viet Nam’s women’s team have a good chance of making it to the Olympics.
"The number of medals won in regional competitions is evidence we have trained our wrestlers well over the years. The result will make wrestlers more confident heading to the Beijing Olympics in 2008," said Minh.
Currently, Viet Nam has one of the strongest women’s teams in Asia, behind China, Japan, South Korea, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Missing teammate
But the dream of Olympic gold may be a little less bright for the team. Medal hopeful Nguyen Thi Hang, who won a silver medal at the 2005 World Junior Wrestling Championships in Lithuania, retired from the sport last year to coach.
The athletes will test their Olympic preparation at the 24th SEA Games in Bangkok this December.
Team officials are confident the team will do well.
"Our target of winning several medals at the SEA Games is doable because women’s wrestling is only just taking off in some countries. So, Viet Nam will cruise through the competition," said Minh.
To get to the Olympics, all wrestlers will have to compete in two rounds of qualifying matches. — VNS
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HW’s Lum locks up gold at prep wrestling B.C.’s
Feb 28 2007
One gold, five silver, one bronze.
That’s what adorned the necks of Tri-Cities’ athletes in last weekend’s B.C. high school wrestling championships at Surrey’s Guildford Rec Centre.
J.J. Lum of Port Moody’s Heritage Woods Kodiaks put a headlock on the lone gold medal for the Tri-Cities in the boys 51 kilogram division, which featured 17 wrestlers.
Pinetree Timberwolves’ Soroush Khosravi lost only to Lovdeep Sandhu of Abbotsford Traditional in the final of the 15-athlete boys 41 kilogram weight class.
On the girls’ side, the Port Moody Blues’ Justina DiStasio and Christina Dias collected silver in the 64 kg and 75 kg categories respectively. DiStasio was second among 23 wrestlers, while Dias was amid on a small group of three in her division.
Also, Taylor Bergen of the Terry Fox Ravens nabbed second among six grapplers in the girls 40 kg class, while Pinetree’s Sana Rangwala took silver amid a 12-wrestler contingent in the girls’ 47 kg division.
There was one bronze medalist from the Tri-Cities and that was Terry Fox’s Teng Chiang, who was third in the boys 48 kg class.
Other local top-six finishers included the Gleneagle Talons’ Ross Strachan, fourth among 22 wrestlers in boys 84 kg; Pinetree’s Milad Hedge, fifth among 19 athletes in boys 48 kg; Pinetree’s Milad Mehrabi, fifth in a field of 13 in boys 74 kg; the Dr. Charles Best Blue Devils’ Ian Lee, sixth in a 22-wrestler pack in boys 54 kg; Terry Fox’s Drew Roots, sixth among 25 athletes in boys 70 kg; and Fox’s Mason Amlee, sixth in a 12-wrestler pack in boys 90 kg.
Pinetree led all Tri-Cities’ teams at the event, with the T-wolves’ boys tying for 12th among 48 squads and its girls knotting for 15th among 34 units.
The Port Moody girls’ team tied for 13th with Carihi of Campbell River to top all Tri-Cities’ girls squads.
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Top high school wrestlers here
: The Brampton Guardian 2/28/07
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The best high school wrestlers in the province descend on Brampton this week.
Tomorrow and Friday, about 800 wrestlers will compete at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) championship at the Powerade Centre.
This is the second time in three years that Brampton has hosted the event with the champions from each region in the province, both boys and girls competing.
When the champions are finally crowned on Friday night, there is a good chance that Brampton athletes will be among the winners.
Two Heart Lake wrestlers, Dustin Helwig and Tommy Carroll took gold medals last year and both have qualified again for OFSAA by winning Region of Peel Secondary School Athletic Association (ROPSSAA) titles earlier this month.
Besides a strong team from Heart Lake, there are competitors from Turner Fenton, Brampton Centennial, Central Peel and St. Augustine looking for OFSAA medals.
Ontario is one of the powers in wrestling in Canada and it is likely that over the next few years some of the wrestlers at OFSAA will be on Canada's national and Olympic teams.
Registration and weigh-ins are scheduled for tonight at Turner Fenton. Tomorrow, there is a full day of competition with action scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. and go until 5 p.m. with the first two rounds of championship side and the first round of the consolation draw. After a dinner break, things start again at 6 p.m. with the third round of the boys and girls championship rounds and the second round of consolation.
On Friday, competition begins at 8:30 a.m. At 4 p.m. the parade of athletes and the welcome of dignitaries is scheduled.
The gold medal bouts (on six mats) are scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m., going in order of weight class, starting with the lightest first.
Spectator admission is free.
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Coyote girls take on the competition
By Benton Smith
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
“I want to wrestle.”
Those words might not be too surprising if they came out of the mouth of a rambunctious young boy. But what if that statement was made by your daughter — at the age of five?
That’s what Amanda Morris told her father, Jeff, five years ago and she has been wrestling ever since.
It is not as though she conjured up this idea on her own. Jeff Morris was an avid wrestler as a youth and as he was enthusiastically discussed one of his favorite subjects, his daughter became curious and thought she might want to give it a try.
Her dad supported Amanda’s ambitions and now at the age of 10 she has been wrestling half of her young life.
Girls wrestling is not as widespread as wrestling for boys, but it is more prevalent now than it was a few years ago.
Amanda, her younger sister Jeanne, Victoria Sutton and Payton Covert are all novice wrestlers for the Lawrence Coyotes wrestling club.
All of them said their interest in the sport was piqued by a male family member or friend.
“My brother and his friends started wrestling and I thought it was pretty cool,” Sutton said.
Now all of them have made their way into the male-dominated sport and have found success. There are some all-girl tournaments, but they are few and far between, so many times the girls square off against boys in their weight class.
They’ve found that sometimes their male opponents enter a match overconfident. “They think that they can whoop me pretty bad,” said 9-year-old Sutton.
“Most of them are just like, ‘She’s a girl. I’m going to beat her quick,’” Amanda Morris said.
“I think they’re kind of surprised,” added Covert, 12. “I think sometimes they think they’re going to win automatically.”
However, the Lady Coyotes have held their own.
Sutton pinned her first male counterpart a few weeks back. Covert has notched five victories against boys.
Eight-year-old Jeanne Morris has beaten a couple and her sister Amanda has lost count of how many times she has faced a boy in the wrestling circle.
“I really don’t know,” Amanda Morris said. “Maybe like 50?”
She estimated she has won close to half of those matches to boot.
When the girls do beat the boys they are always proud of their individual achievement. And every once in a while they get added satisfaction from the reactions of their defeated opponents.
“Afterward, it’s kind of funny,” Covert said. “If you beat them (sometimes) they start crying.”
However, she acknowledged that all of her male opponents provide a challenge and give her great preparation for the girls-only matches.
“These last couple of weekends I’ve been getting a lot better because I’ve been improving by wrestling boys,” Covert said. “They’re a lot stronger.”
Jeff Morris, who helps coach the younger Coyote boys and girls teams, said the girls learn a lot about themselves by participating in this individual sport.
“You can’t say so-and-so didn’t pass me the ball,” Jeff Morris said. “I like it like that.”
He said they also learn about their physical ability.
“Amanda used to be so much stronger than even the boys that were in her division,” he said of his older daughter. “Now that the boys are catching up, she’s learning she can’t just rely on that strength. She has to use the moves properly and use balance and leverage.”
For photos and results of the Lawrence Coyotes, see pages 14 and 15.
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Osawatomie Girl Is 3-0 In Tournament
Wednesday, February 28, 2007 8:18 AM CST
Its been more than two years since Osawatomie Middle School student Tess Newport has competed on a wrestling mat.
She showed no signs of the layoff Sunday winning the USGWA state title in the middle school 76 pound division at McPherson, Kan.
Newport was 3-0 in the tournament winning all three matches by pins.
Her father, Randy Newport, said its possible Tess will compete in the USAWKS girls state championship in March but they have not decided for sure.
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By SHELLY LEWELLEN
Published: 02.27.2007
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GIVE US YOUR NOMINEES
Teams from all sports are welcome. With your nomination, include contact information for coaches and all players' proper identifications. Send to sports@tucsoncitizen.com or Tucson Citizen, 4850 S. Park Ave., Tucson, AZ 85714.
Please include your name, phone number and age.
Sabino High School student Bridgette Larsen won third place at a girls state wrestling tournament earlier this month.
Larsen, 16, wrestled for the first time at the beginning of this season. "I wanted to find a fall sport because I'm in track in the spring," she said. "I decided to try wrestling because I knew it would keep me in shape."
More than 160 girls competed in the tourney, ranging from elementary to high school.
Larsen, who competed in the 130-pound weight class, won three of five matches with two pins.
"There aren't that many girls in wrestling, I know," she said. "We have different strengths than boys. Girls are generally more flexible, so they are good at bridging to keep from getting pinned."
The boys on the wrestling team cheered her on to place at the tournament, Larsen said.
"Coach (Rich) Ortiz and the team really supported me," she said.
Ortiz said girls wrestling is gaining in popularity across the country.
"I think it's time for the girls to have a division all their own," Ortiz said. "Girls can really compete in wrestling, and there are more girls getting into the sport all the time. There are opportunities at the collegiate level. Arizona needs to take advantage of that."
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Wrestlers are CIS championship bound
Andrea Carisse
Issue date: 2/27/07 Section: Sports
On Feb. 17, when the majority of Brock students were heading home for some rest and relaxation, the women's and men's wrestling teams were just beginning to rev their engines. The two teams travelled to the University of Toronto where they competed in the annual Ontario University Athletics (OUA) Wrestling Championships.
By the end of the tournament, the men's team eased to the top and claimed their 13th OUA banner. The women's team fell 11 points short against the Western Mustangs, but still managed to capture an impressive second place.
Incredibly, Jamie Macari seized his fifth OUA title in five years, whereas senior Mike Neufeld and rookie Alex Brown-Theriault collected gold medals in their respective weight classes.
"We were extremely pleased with our athletes," said director of operations, Richard DesChatelets, about his teams' results.
"Going into the championships, even though we had won the OUAs twelve straight times on the men's side and six times on the women's, we were not favoured to win. It was going to be a battle between Lakehead, Guelph and McMaster, but we had some great performances.
"We had four individuals who placed second and that was a huge accomplishment for them. It was absolutely great to see that."
With their heads still held high from their OUA outcomes, both wrestling teams look forward to contending in the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) Championships. The national competition will be held in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan March 2-4.
The recent OUA results have contributed to a second place ranking for the men's wrestling team and put the women's team in fifth.
"Our team this year has been a rebuilding team, so we knew we had a challenge," said DesChatelets. "We've made some huge progress from September to where we are now."
"To be ranked number two, I think it's great."
This season-ending tournament will undoubtedly be both physically and mentally trying for the athletes. The men's team, who sits closely behind the number one ranked Simon Fraser University will attempt to reclaim the first place status they have had in past years. The women will strive to outdo the top seeded University of Calgary.
"We have an outside chance of coming first. Simon Fraser is going to be our main competitors on the men's side. We've got some of our guys that are ranked sixth and seventh and there is a chance that they could place as high as fourth. So if that happens then, we'll be beside ourselves and elated with the competition.
DesChatelets said he believes that, "... the guys are ready, and so are the girls. The team spirit and the team atmosphere is great".
As the underdogs at the upcoming 2007 CIS Championships, the team has all the more reason to prove why they have such an esteemed reputation.
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Featured Advertiser
DAYAN, ESTHER 2/28/07
It’s been a busy, yet successful past couple of weeks for area amateur wrestlers. At the recently held Greater Montreal Athletic Association annual high school wrestling championships, held at Kahnawake Survival School (KSS), several Pointe Claire-based John Rennie High School competitors showed their wares. Capturing gold were Anthony Pirocacos in the 87-lb, division, Joel Lanni in the 132lb., division, Kristopher Pirocacos in the 145lb., division and Derek Lanni in the 163lb., division.
In girls’ action, Kelsey Martin also won gold. Vincent Demarinis won silver in the 95lb., division, while Marc Wilson and Kevin Renshaw earned bronze respectively in the 153lb., and 173lb., divisions. As a team, John Rennie finished third, with KSS second and Selwyn House first.
Meanwhile, the annual provincial wrestling championships occurred last weekend in St. Cesaire with a strong representation from the Pierrefonds-based Riverdale Wrestling Club. Five returned home with gold, including Angus Cowell in the 55-kilogram benjamin and 56-kilogram cadet classes, Anthony Pirocacos in the 37-kilogram bantam class, Ryan Estwick in the 59-kilogram bantam class and Kristopher Pirocacos in the 63-kilogram cadet class. Meanwhile, Matthew Duford and George Akirov earned silver respectively in the 69- and 120-kilogram cadet classes.
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