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Women grapple for mat respect

06/24/01

By SUSAN VINELLA

CINCINNATI - Toccara Montgomery tucks her hair under a shiny blue skull cap, laces up her shoes and jogs onto the mat.

From a distance, with her shorts and T-shirt hanging loose, she looks like one of the guys. And that's fine with her.

"I don't like the attention much," the Cleveland wrestler said.

For Montgomery, a graduate of East Tech, attention is hard to avoid. She competes in a traditionally male sport and, for the past two years in high school, has wrestled against boys.

Against women, she is one of the best. She won this year's U.S. national championship at 149 pounds and today will wrestle for a spot on the U.S. World Championship team.

Montgomery and Cleveland Heights graduate Tina George, who will wrestle today at 123 pounds, are among a small but growing number of women participating in wrestling. Last year, more than 2,400 girls competed in high school wrestling, up from 112 a decade ago, according to the National Federation of High Schools.

USA Wrestling counts more than 2,500 females among its members. Ten years ago, there were too few to count, USA Wrestling spokesman Gary Abbott said.

Montgomery and George started out like most other girls do: wrestling with boys on their high school teams. They had no other choice because there was no girls team.

George, who won a spot on the varsity her senior year, said the guys on the team accepted her. Most of her opponents did not.

"I met guys who were just trying to hurt me and teach me a lesson,' " she said.

She said she was choked and slammed on the hardwood gym floor. She heard coaches tell their wrestlers, "Take her out real fast."

It was nothing personal, she said. It was just that no one wanted to lose to a girl.

"It's bad for their ego," she said of the boys. "I can understand that."

The boys' egos weren't hurt much; George won two matches in high school. But she never quit.

"Tina's one of the toughest kids I ever coached," said Kip Flanik, who coordinates the Ohio women's program for USA Wrestling and helped coach George at Cleveland Heights. "They threw everything at her to get her to quit. She wouldn't. She earned everybody's respect, including my own."

Flanik's admiration for George, the current national champion at 123 pounds, prompted him to invite girls to wrestle when he became coach at East Tech a couple of years ago.

"I didn't even know girls wrestled," Montgomery said. "I went down to find out what it was all about. Ever since then, the sport just kind of stuck."

Flanik started taking Montgomery to women's competitions across the country and in Canada, where the sport is further along. The experience paid off.

After finishing fourth at last year's national championship, Montgomery was selected as the Outstanding Wrestler this year after beating two world champions, Sandra Bacher and Kristie Marano, for the title.

"She's definitely getting stronger and stronger," Bacher said of Montgomery. "She has youth going for her. And she's not arrogant, she's not cocky. She just goes out and works hard."

Her female competitors respect her for that hard work. It's tougher to get men and other outsiders to do the same, Montgomery said.

"The biggest challenge for me is a respect issue," she said. "I say I wrestle and automatically it's a joke."

She said some even think she's a mud wrestler when she tells them she wrestles.

George, too, gets surprised reactions when she reveals she wrestles.

"They say, You wrestle? You're pretty short and small to be a wrestler.' Then you have to show 'em your guns," she said, gesturing to her muscular arms.

Women's wrestling is not yet an Olympic sport, although it could be added as early as the 2004 Summer Games.

George and Montgomery would love to compete at the Olympics, but for now, they're not making it their focus.

George will continue to train at the U.S. Olympic Training Center and attend college in Colorado Springs, Colo. Montgomery will attend Cumberland (Ky.) College in the fall on a wrestling scholarship. Cumberland is one of a handful of colleges that has a varsity women's wrestling team.

Montgomery said she's not looking to upstage her male counterparts or even beat them on the mat someday. She just wants to compete in a sport that she loves and be accepted for it.

"Wrestling by far is the hardest, most grueling sport I've ever taken part in," she said. "I work just as hard as [male wrestlers] do, so I deserve a little respect."

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Wrestling's not just for boys anymore

Anchorage Daily News

Ron Wilmot 6/24/2001

The inaugural Alaska Girl's State Wrestling Championship drew just nine
participants at Houston High School on Saturday. But don't tell director
Kent Bailo to stop promoting wrestling for girls. In part because of sunny
weather, and in part because top female Alaska wrestlers like Melina
Hutchison of Soldotna and Tela O'Donnell of Nikiski were attending events
Outside, the state championship was less than a rousing success. But Bailo,
a Michigan man who is the director for the United States Girls Wrestling
Association, was undaunted in stressing that wrestling for girls -- that's
girls wrestling girls, with full status as a varsity sport -- would be
successful in Alaska. Bailo derived his opinion after years of refereeing
state high school and college meets in Michigan. Bailo said boys and girls
wrestling each other can have detrimental effects to both sexes. "I saw
girls get clobbered by boys," Bailo said. "And junior high boys lose to
girls. At that age, that's not too good for a boy's psyche. They usually
don't come to school for a few days after that. They get teased and
ridiculed and want to quit. Older boys can handle it, but for a 12-year-old,
that's not too good." Bailo said he'd rather see girls wrestling boys than
girls not wrestle at all. But he sees no reason why girls-only wrestling
shouldn't be adopted. "If we really want to get into compliance with Title
IX, then we need to offer these sports to girls," he said. "Girls ice
hockey, girls wrestling, girls football." A bit of irony that Bailo didn't
mention is that just about every sport has separate competition for males
and females except the sports that are the most brutal and physical, like
hockey, football and wrestling. But those sports don't have enough girls to
support full-fledged programs. Still, Bailo believes if the opportunity is
presented, girls will respond. "The problem is we're asking the question
wrong," he said. "If you ask girls if they want to play on a boys team, most
will say no. But if you asked them to play on a girls team, they'd be out in
droves." Wrestlers like Hutchison and O'Donnell had to take their knocks
against boys. Both have been successful, becoming the first girls to place
at the state high school championships last fall. O'Donnell placed sixth,
while Hutchison took third. A former cadet (ages 15-16) national age-group
champion, Hutchison recently won her weight class at the Junior Women's
Nationals/World Team Trials. But now what do they do? Only one women's
college wrestling program exists in the nation. Bailo said more are on the
way, but none are sanctioned by the NCAA. So unless club teams start handing
out money, no scholarships. But that doesn't mean women's wrestling isn't
gaining popularity. According to USA Wrestling, in 1999 there were nearly
5,000 girls wrestling on high school teams. And in Michigan, a girls state
wrestling tournament that began in 1998 had more than 350 participants this
year. Bailo said Texas and Hawaii have girls wrestling programs. But Texas
didn't adopt girls wrestling until pressured by lawsuits after referees
there refused to officiate matches between boys and girls, he said. It
shouldn't have to come to that. Let's start with the Olympics. Bridge has
been proposed as an Olympic event. Let's hope women's wrestling will be as
well.