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The Mining Journal 4/10/07
Editor’s note: This release was prepared by the United States Olympic Education media relations staff.
MARQUETTE — Twenty athletes from the United States Olympic Education Center’s Greco-Roman and women’s freestyle wrestling teams placed eighth or better at the Las Vegas/ASICS United States National Wrestling Championships in Las Vegas, Nev., last weekend.
On the women’s side, NMU graduate student Jen Pavlik (Lewes, Del.) was fourth in the 72 kg weight class when she was pinned by Stephany Lee of Missouri Valley College.
Freshman Alyssa Lampe (Tomahawk, Wis.) earned fifth place when she beat USOEC teammate Elizabeth Short (Lombard, Ill.) at 48 kg. Short finished the tournament in sixth place with a 4-2 record.
NMU seniors Amy Borgnini (Terre Haute, Ind.) and Whitney Conder (Puyallup, Wash.) battled for seventh place at 55 kg. Borgnini won by a 3-1, 1-0 decision while Conder’s loss gave her an eighth place finish.
Freshman Shyla Iokia (Maui, Hawaii) and graduate student Kierstn Hyatt (Carmichael, Calif.) also finished seventh. Iokia defeated Samantha Phillips (Spartan Wrestling Club) and Hyatt defeated Samantha Fee (Missouri Valley College).
At 55 kg, freshman Cherae Pascue (Oahy, Hawaii) went 2-2 while junior Dany Hedin (Kailua, Hawaii) finished with a 1-2 record. Sophomore Nicole Darrow (Lanesboro, Mass.) and freshmen Amanda Breezely (Midland, Ohio) left the tournament with 0-2 records.
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‘Ponytail Fury’ heads to Colorado
by Lanaly Cabalo - THE GARDEN ISLAND 4/10/07
Latisha Alo likes to grapple.
“I just think it’s a lot of fun,” the 11-year-old Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School student said.
Alo wrestles with the Westside Wrestling Club four times a week and the Kauai Police Activities club twice a week. She had been wrestling with Westside for two years and added KPAL to the mix last year.
“My mom said there were more guys who wrestle with KPAL so I could practice more with them,” Alo said. “It doesn’t matter if I wrestle boys or girls. To me, it’s the same.”
Next week, she and her two nieces, Teshya, 9, and Teniya, 8, from O‘ahu, will be competing in the all-woman Body Bar Competition in Colorado Springs, Colo. It’s a national competition for girls in third grade through the collegiate level.
Her Westside wrestling coach Ray “Mack” Piggott said he chose this tournament for her because it will help her develop in the sport.
“I believe if she sticks with it, she has an opportunity to excel in it,” Piggott said.
There are three types of wrestling: free-style, Greco-Roman and American Folkstyle. Because Alo wrestles for Westside and KPAL, she can do all three.
“I’ve been around youth wrestling for a long time and what’s really amazing about Tisha is her adaptability to be taught wrestling,” Piggott said. “She really understands what you teach. She understands the three different styles better than a lot of adults I know.”
Alo does American Folkstyle with KPAL, and at a recent USA wrestling sanctioned tournament on O‘ahu, she wrestled free-style.
“Some people have trouble with the two styles because the rules are different so your strategies are different,” Piggott said.
“It’s amazing how an 11-year-old child does so well at the different styles.”
Alo made her debut with KPAL at the opening night last week.
“She did so well that night,” said her mother, Tina. “She wrestled against this guy from Washington and after the match he said she was the best wrestler he’s ever gone against. Even his coach said she was good.”
That could be due to the fact that, in addition to the two clubs she wrestles for, Alo has been taking private fitness classes from Jack Leonard of the Kauai Gymnastic Academy.
She’d been working on her strength and flexibility, which Leonard said works to Alo’s advantage.
“When you’re more flexible, you could get out of holds better and it’s harder for another athlete to pin you down,” said Leonard, who has been working with Alo since January. “She’s improved greatly. For some of the joint strength exercises, before she couldn’t do any. Now she’s doing 10 sets or more.”
Leonard also said now that Alo has the skills she learned from the clubs and the flexibility and strength she learned from extra training, she is becoming a whole new kind of wrestler.
“She’s starting to be more of an offensive player now instead of a defensive one,” Leonard said.
“Being a girl, everyone has the perception that she can’t compete. But she’s getting respect.”
Leonard decided to give her a wrestling nickname.
“You know how those wrestlers all have some kind of show name?” he said. “She needed an athletic name so I came up with the “Ponytail Fury.” She’s always got her hair pulled back in this long, thick ponytail and she’s very deceiving and quiet in her talents and strengths. So I thought that was best.”
Alo’s portion of the Body Bar Competition is one day, but the tournament itself last several days.
Alo sounds off on:
Wrestler diets: “I don’t diet. I like fruits and vegetables.”
Her favorite snack: “I like Powerbars. They give me lots of energy.”
Favorite wrestler: “Brandon Slay. He came here one time and taught us some moves like shooting and double-leg and single-leg.” (Slay won the gold medal in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.)
On her siblings: “I have two brothers and three sisters. I wrestle my younger brother. Mostly I beat him.”
Her most memorable match so far: “I was at a tournament at Farrington High School on O‘ahu. I won one match and lost one. The one I lost was to this girl who was a judo champion. She was really good. I was almost close to beating her.”
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Grizzly girls wrestling team honored by state
By The Daily World staff
Tuesday, April 10, 2007 10:57 AM PDT
Hoquiam High School photo Members of the state champion Hoquiam girls wrestling team stand with Gov. Chris Gregoire.
OLYMPIA — The champions of the first-ever state girls wrestling tournament, Hoquiam’s Grizzlies received the red carpet treatment Monday at the State Capitol in Olympia.
The Grizzlies met with Gov. Chris Gregoire and state legislators during a 41/2-hour tour of the Capitol.
They were also honored for their accomplishments in a detailed resolution drafted by Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam. The Grizzlies captured the inaugural state girls title in February at the Tacoma Dome.
The Grizzlies met with Gregoire for about 10 minutes in the Capitol Rotunda.
They were also greeted by Hargrove, Rep. Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, and other state legislators and were given a standing ovation by members of the legislature during their appearance.
“It was way more gratifying than I ever thought,” said Hoquiam coach Kirk Hartzell.
Twenty-one of the 23 team members made the trip to Olympia.
In addition to meeting with the governor and other state officials, the Grizzlies toured the State Supreme Court building and even participated in a mock court demonstration.
“It was so well done,” Hartzell said of the day’s activities. “I can’t tell you how cool it was.”
Hartzell thanked Hoquiam School District administrators for allowing the team to make the trip.
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This pin down girl can take on the boys
WEEKEND EDITION, APRIL 7-8, 2007 Visit us online at smdp.com
MELODY HANATANI
Daily Press Staff Writer
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SAMOHI Wrestling is not just a man’s sport. Especially not at Santa Monica High School, where senior Jazzy Green has been tackling and pinning down boys for the past four years. A member of the boy’s varsity wrestling team, Green placed third in the United States Girls’ Wrestling Association’s 10th Annual national championship in Michigan last weekend.
“It’s a very emotional sport,” Green said on Thursday. “It’s hard to stay in the sport, but I love wrestling.”
Next Sunday, Green will fly out to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado to participate in the All-American Wrestling Camp before she competes in the Freestyle Nationals.
The two-time state champion for girl’s wrestling has competed in numerous competitions, including the 2006 ASICS/Vaughan Junior & Cadet National Championship in Fargo, N.D., where she placed eighth.
The tournament is considered to be one of the largest in the world, Green said. But the recent competition in Michigan was by far her biggest achievement.
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GO GIRL: SAMOHI’S Jazzy Green, senior, has been on the boys wrestling team for four years. I HAD ONE BOY WHO ACTUALLY SAID HE WOULDN’T WRESTLE ME AND I CHASED HIM DOWN AND WRESTLED HIM ANYWAY AND WON.” Jazzy Green Samohi wrestler |
It’s a pretty cool thing, especially since the girls who are always placing at the top are the ones who have been doing it their whole lives,” Green said.
The successful wrestling career started when Green was a freshman and was looking to join a sport similar to the Brazilian Jujitsu that she had studied during her middle school years. Coach Brent Wright remembers when Green joined the wrestling team four years ago and how he was struck by what he calls
“her amazing work ethic.”
“That’s honestly the only reason we stuck with her — her willingness to work harder than the boys every day,”Wright said. It was the first time that Wright had
coached a girl on his wrestling team and believes that her entrance into the sport at Samohi opened doors for all girls at the high school.
Four years later, Green is among three girls on the varsity wrestling team. “She’s definitely recruited and she’s tried to become friends with those girls and
pushed them to stay in it,”Wright said.
Neither the coach nor the boys ever resisted having a girl on the team, Wright said.
The other team members embraced Green because of her hard-working nature.
But not everyone is as understanding. While some competitors are humble and welcome the challenge of wrestling a girl, some “get huffy and cry,” Green said.
“I had one boy who actually said he wouldn’t wrestle me and I chased him down and wrestled him anyway ... and won,” she added.
For a boy, wrestling a girl can be a loselose situation,Wright admitted. On the one hand, if the male wrestler beats a girl, he will get heat from his teammates.
On the other hand, getting beat by a girl could do some damage to a teenager’s self-esteem.
“We’re talking about adolescent kids,” he said. “We told her that it should be a compliment. Someone refusing to wrestle you is not because they can beat you.”
Offers to wrestle at the collegiate level have come piling in from Menlo College, Pacific University, Oklahoma City University and Portland State University. At this point, Green is still undecided. For Green, whether she eventually competes in the Olympics will not determine if her wrestling career was a success.
“I want to do my best and if I do my best in college, that will be a big success in itself,” she said. melodyh@smdp.com
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YOU’RE THROUGH: SAMOHI senior Jazzy Green takes third-place at the Girl’s National Wrestling 