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Bend High sophomore Jerricha Haller placed fourth in the 130-pound division at the United States Girls Wrestling Association’s National Championships last weekend in Livonia, Mich.
Haller, who wrestled varsity for the Lava Bears this past high school season, was one of just three Oregon wrestlers to place in the top three at the USGWA national tournament. Lebanon’s Laura Gourley won the 146-pound division, and Misty Corwin of Waldorf placed third in the 124-pound weight class. Haller also placed at the USGWA nationa championships last year, when she took ninth at 144 pounds
Canada
Thu, April 3, 2008 Londoner Katie Patroch was greeted by
her dedicated running buddy Sasha and a decorated house> (Mike Hensen, Sun
Media)
|
Eleven years after her climb began -- and after two failed attempts at the summit -- Katie Patroch is standing atop the Canadian women's wrestling mountain.
Competing at 59 kilograms, the 25-year-old Londoner beat defending champion Amanda Gerhard of Burnaby, B.C., in a tiebreaker on the weekend to win her first national championship. That earns a trip to Tokyo in October for the worlds.
Gerhardt won the first round of the final 6-0, but Patroch won the second 5-1, then prevailed 3-0 in the tiebreaker.
"To be honest, it's been a very surreal experience," the Westminster secondary school teacher said yesterday. "It's something I've always dreamed about, but I never actually thought I'd get there."
Her gut told her something before the meet.
"I was sitting with a friend an hour or so before the meet started and I was saying, 'Third time's the charm.' I'm a big instinct person and this one felt good. It felt right."
Having lost the previous two national title bouts helped toughen her mentally, but at the same time took some pressure off, Patroch said.
"I'd prepared myself for both (outcomes)," she said. "I knew I'd trained to the best of my ability and I was more mature. I was ready to look back and say I'd given it my best shot and if it didn't come off, then at least I'd know I worked my butt off.
"Having been there a lot was also a factor -- your first nationals is a really nerve-wracking experience. I felt much more relaxed this time and I felt even more fit because of that."
Her resume is already full of experience -- and championships -- at the high school, club, junior national (2002) and Commonwealth levels, but nothing compares to her latest triumph, she said.
"When you win in junior, it means you're the best in your age group, which is nice. But to be the best in the country -- period -- is just great."
Patroch has seen some of the competition she'll be facing in Japan -- she's lost by a point to Germany's Stefanie Gross, last year's silver medallist -- and she's confident.
"I know I can hold my own against them. I think I'm fully capable of a medal, as long as I stay healthy and keep training hard."
An Olympic appearance isn't in the cards, at least not this year.
"There are four weight classes and mine isn't one of them, of course," Patroch said, adding she preferred to put all her focus on the 59-kilogram division instead of moving up to 63 for an Olympic attempt.
"But I'm fine with that. For 59 kilograms, the worlds are my Olympics."
She wasn't the only Londoner to win gold on the weekend. Olivia Gunnell, 18, won the junior 55-kilogram championship.
So what is she doing serving coffee at the South Fork Café in River Falls?
“I was getting ready for the world team trials and needed a place to work out,” she explained. “Kevin (Black) invited me here. I liked the place and I liked Kevin’s coaching style and I moved here in July.”
Berube met Black when he was coaching the U.S. women at the Pan American Championships in El Salvador last May. Black, a four-time state champion at River Falls High School from 1995-98 and All-American at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, owns and operates Victory School of Wrestling on Main Street in River Falls. He is also the women’s director for the Wisconsin Wrestling Federation.
Black was coaching the U.S. University women’s team in El Salvador when Berube, who was preparing to graduate from the University of Cumberland in Williamsburg, Ky., caught his attention.
“She was struggling to find a place to train so I extended the invitation,” he said.
So Berube moved to River Falls, found a job at the South Fork Café and an apartment, and joined the staff at the Victory School. Since then she’s also become involved with The River Church and the Wildcat wrestling program.
“I really like the community,” she said. “Being from a small town, I like the small town atmosphere.”
Berube has also enjoyed success on the mat. Since working with Black, she has won a gold medal at the Dave Schultz Memorial International Tournament at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., in February and gold at an international tournament in Minsk, Belarus, last month.
She competes for the New York Athletic Club, which Black also coaches, at 63 kg./138 pounds. The pair are currently preparing for the U.S. Nationals April 22-24 in Las Vegas and the Olympic Team Trials June 14-15, also in Las Vegas. She will also wrestle at the University National Championships in Chicago this month for a berth on the U.S. World Team that will compete in Greece later this summer.
She said traveling the globe has been just one of the spillover benefits of wrestling.
“It’s been a pretty neat experience,” she said. “I’ve gotten to go to a lot of countries through wrestling. I grew up in a small town and had never been out of the United States. It’s been an adventure.”
Berube has been wrestling since the fourth grade.
“My dad was a wrestler and my little brother wrestled. He went to a tournament and I told my dad I wanted to try wrestling,” she said. “That’s how I started.”
After wrestling on the boys’ team in high school in Escanaba, Berube moved on to the University of Cumberland, then known as Cumberland College, to wrestle on the women’s team in 2002.
“There were 12 girls on the team my first year. Now there’s like 50 girls,” she said. “More and more colleges are adding women’s wrestling.”
At Cumberland, she became the only four-time collegiate women’s national champion in history. She finished second in the 2004 Olympic Team Trials and was a 2006 U.S. National Champion.
Despite her pedigree, Black said there were challenges to overcome when he began working with her last summer.
“To be honest, when I worked with her in El Salvador I heard some different things about her from the people at USA Wrestling,” he said. “She was from a program that was successful developing college athletes. But USA Wrestling and Cumberland College are not always on the same page. That’s not a negative or a bad thing, but I told Alaina we’d be doing things differently. We’re going to make some changes to your style.
“It was a little bit of a battle,” he added. “I use the analogy that it’s like pruning a tree. Sometimes you have to cut some branches and at first it looks worse, but it’s better in the long term.”
Black said things didn’t go smoothly when he first started training Berube.
“She lost to a girl from Canada who she had beaten before, but she just had to trust the system,” he said. “We just kept working at it more and she started to see results. Since the Schultz Tournament, she’s shown exponential growth. It didn’t look very promising back in November and December but now there are real possibilities. It could have been very easy for her to get discouraged, but she stuck with it and it’s paying off.”
Despite some early setbacks, Berube said she remained faithful to Black’s plans.
“When Kevin said, ‘Do this,’ he also said, ‘And this is the reason why,’ and it made sense,” she said. “It made the transition pretty easy.”
Both have their eyes on the ultimate goal of representing the U.S. at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing in August. Women’s wrestling made its debut as an Olympic sport at the 2004 games in Greece.
New Hampshire
Angelica Levesque of Nashua Catholic turned in two solid
performances in two recent wrestling tournaments.
Levesque competed in
the US Girls Wrestling Association Northeast tournament in Rochester, N.Y.,
finishing first in the Middle School Division and second in the High School
Division. Levesque moved on to compete at the USGWA National Tournament in
Michigan last weekend.
On the first, Levesque wrestled five matches to
determine her seed, winning three matches to earn the third seed. In the
tournament, Levesque advanced to the finals of her weight class, before falling,
4-0.
India
Canada
4/3/08
Canada
4/3/08
Muslim women who are keen on sports may exercise their passion as freely as other athletes, or they may not even be able to watch men play. It has more to do with which country they live in than their religion.
That was the conclusion left by a symposium called The Role of Sport in Resisting and Accommodating and in Remaking Muslim Women, which drew a small audience to the Hall Building’s seventh-floor dining room on March 28.
Concordia anthropologist Homa Hoodfar presented a paper on the Muslim Women's Olympics, which was held in Tehran in 1993, 1997, 2001 and 2005 with enthusiastic participation; in the most recent edition, the women came from nearly 40 countries. The alternative games were launched by a combination of athletes and those we would call feminists, women determined to regain a presence in public life that was lost in the 1979 revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
When Iran’s soccer team beat the U.S. team in the 1998 World Cup series, the nation was ecstatic. Football, always a passion, became a focus of fierce national pride. Yet in Iran’s theocratic regime, women can’t even attend men’s games.
Nasrin Afzali, from the University of Tehran, said that as far as the mullahs are concerned, the gaze of women on men’s bodies appears to be just as dangerous as the reverse.
She described some of the subterfuges young women use to get into the ironically named Freedom Stadium to watch their brothers play and contest their exclusion from a major public venue. Girls have dressed as boys, a ploy so notorious that it became the plot of an Iranian movie.
Yoav Di-Capua, a scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, was unable to get to Concordia in person, but his paper, read on his behalf, told an entertaining story about an Egyptian aviatrix, as they used to be called.
Lutifa al-Nadi was the daughter of an effendi (upper-class) family in the 1930s. Egypt was run by the British then, and throughout Europe and the Americas, flying was all the rage. In fact, aviation was the pinnacle of technology, and embodied all that was dashing, modern, European and male — all that symbolically justified the colonization of Egypt.
Fascinated by the new sport, Lutifa hung out at Cairo’s elite aviation club, taking flying lessons on the sly and volunteering on the club’s telephone switchboard to disguise her real intentions. When an intercity race between Cairo and Alexandria took place, guess who came first? Lutifa emerged from the cockpit, her face wreathed in smiles, and was mobbed by adoring fans of both sexes.
Two other papers presented at the symposium looked at Muslim women and sport.
Hana Askren is an award-winning wrestler and a Concordia PhD candidate. She reminded the audience that not so long ago, football was closed to women in the West. In many European countries and for members of the national women’s baseball team in the United States, players were required to wear makeup on the field, presumably to reassure spectators that they were real women. Sociologists call this “feminine apologetics”.
Martha Saavedra, of the University of California at Berkeley, has compiled data on women and sport in Senegal, Sudan and Nigeria.
She found that the restrictions justified by religion and culture vary in these countries, and even in the regions within them. They appear to have more to do with the political and ideological context than with the way people understand their religion.
Canada
The 41st Annual Night of the Dino commandeered MacEwan
Hall for a night of shiny awards and smiling faces Tue., Apr. 1.
The
Dinos celebrated their various achievements this year, including CIS gold and
silver in men's and women's swimming, CIS bronze in women's volleyball, CW gold
in cross country, ACAC silver in women's hockey, CIS silver and CW gold for
men's and women's track and field and CIS silver in women's wrestling.
Graduating athletes and fifth-years were honoured for their continued dedication
to Dinos athletics and continued success in balancing their varsity careers and
scholastic endeavours. In addition to the teams' laurels, the athletes came
together to recognize their peers' various individual achievements.
Awards of merit were given to outstanding Dinos athletes Jared Aulin for
men's hockey, Justine Bouchard for women's wrestling, Courtney Coyle for women's
basketball Mark Dewit for football and men's wrestling, Sam Effah for men's
track and field, Chad Hankewich for men's swimming, Amonn Nelson for women's
track and field, Anthony Woodson for football and Julie Young for women's
volleyball. All of these Dinos were also considered for the Dr. Dennis Kadatz
athletes of the year.
Tyler Fidler from men's basketball and Breanna
Hendriks from women's swimming took home Bill Popplewell rookie of the year
honours. Fidler made a much-noticed contribution to his team averaging 22
minutes of play and 9.9 points per game and was considered the sixth man for
most of the year. In addition to his newly awarded title, he was named to the
CIS all-rookie team and holds CW rookie of the year. Hendriks followed the
tradition of female swimmers named as CIS rookie of the year, following
teammates Katy Murdoch and Kevyn Peterson. She was awarded two CIS silver medals
and made the CIS second all-Canadian team.
Another honour was given on
behalf of the Calgary Booster Club to give credit to students who excel both
athletically and academically. Dewit made another appearance accepting this
award after playing double-duty on the football and wrestling teams. His
involvement garnered him both a trip to the CFL combine in Mar. as well as
capturing the CIS heavyweight title. Tessa Gray represented the women's side for
the scholarship when she was recognized after her participation in the CIS gold
medal-achieving 4x400 metre relay team as well as CW bronze individual
medal.
The Dinos also took time in the ceremony to honour some
individuals and groups that, while not athletes, heartily contributed to the
teams' success this season.
The Murray Fraser student volunteer awards,
given in the name of the former university president, were presented to event
volunteer Shubham Tiwari and the NUTV Live! crew for their work during Dinos
events and promoting awareness for the program. The Dr. Lou Goodwin award was
presented to Tony Spoletini and Spolumbo's Deli for their continued support and
hosting of Dinos football hour every week during the team's season. CIS 2008
wrestling championships volunteer chair Irene Buchan received the Marg Southern
award, recognizing her achievements in bringing attention and acclaim to the
tournament, held at the U of C Feb. 28 to Mar. 1. The Vereburn Athletic Therapy
awards were bestowed upon Sarah Robinson and Tiffany Toombs for the excellent
care and physical therapy they provided for Dinos athletes all year in the field
and clinically.
Gauntlet sports editor Amanda Hu had the pleasure of
presenting this year's Gauntlet extra effort award to women's soccer player
Morena Ianniello and men's volleyballer Omar Langford. The extra effort award is
given to one male and female athlete to recognize their perseverance and
dedication to the pursuit of athletic excellence for the Dinos.
The last
awards of the night, the Dr. Dennis Kadatz athletes of the year, found
themselves in the hands of Young and Effah. Young captained the women's
volleyball team to another CIS bronze even in the wake of their coach, Kevin
Boyles, taking on the role of interim athletic director. Individually, she
tackled the roles of left side and libero and was named a first-team Canada West
all-star and second-team all-Canadian. Young was surprised by the award and
cited her win as a team and coaching triumph. Looking towards next year, with
Boyles' role as IAD taking up all his time and the team working with a new
coach, she sees the transition as a positive thing for the team.
"We
really don't want to see Kevin leave, but we know it's the perfect opportunity
for him," she said. "We're really happy with the new coach that's coming in, so
I think it's going to be a really good and smooth transition."
Effah blew
everyone away at CW and CIS this year, grabbing four gold medals at nationals
and taking the titles of CIS championship MVP, CIS track athlete of the year and
CW track athlete of the year. Though caught off-guard by the honour as well, he
said that he sees next year as having even greater potential for individual and
team success.
"It's been sort of a down year and it's been sort of
competitive because a lot of fifth-year athletes graduated and then it was just
me and the younger athletes," he said. "The team came second at Canada West
championships [this year], so definitely going for the gold [is a goal]. We just
need a lot more field guys. [On an individual level,] I'd just like to break a
record or two."
