News Page

Olympics thrill female wrestler But is it too late for star?

By Jeff Metcalfe
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 21, 2001

The Olympics finally will hold women's wrestling, but perhaps one Olympiad too late for the American most deserving of the honor.

At age 35, Tricia Saunders of Phoenix has at least one more World Championships in her, providing the event originally planned for Sept. 26-29 at New York's Madison Square Garden is rescheduled.

To hold her body together, particularly given the action and leg attacks in the 101-pound weight class, until the 2004 Athens Olympics could be asking too much.

Saunders has undergone eight surgeries, half of them reconstructive. She broke a rib in June that left her feeling as fragile as a piece of china.

"Part of me wants to compete at the Olympics and part of me wants to be a coach on the sidelines having a sandwich, saying, 'Run, you cut weight,' " said Saunders, a four-time world and 11-time U.S. champion. "I'm real excited to see this, but I've had to train to find worth without the Olympics in my future. I've already spent 12 years brainwashing myself that it's not that important.

"The institution is so great; it gives credibility to the sport. That's what I'm most happy about. It gives a nod to countries to make an investment in more than just male athletes in our sport. For me, the rewards come for the principle and the sport."

The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday approved adding four women's weight divisions for Athens, but at the expense of two men's division (one each in freestyle and Greco-Roman) and one division in boxing. That would keep the size of the Summer Games at approximately 10,500 athletes and 300 events.

Final approval is contingent on an agreement with the International Wrestling Federation, which favors the inclusion of women but not further men's deletions. At the Sydney Olympics, four wrestling divisions were eliminated, two per style, leaving 16 total.

Saunders reaching the Olympics, where her husband Townsend wrestled twice and won a silver medal in Atlanta, would be a fitting culmination for the female counterpart of Alexander Karelin, the Russian super heavyweight who went undefeated for 13 years.

Saunders has never lost to an American opponent and is the only U.S. woman with more than one world gold medal. She champions her sport not only as a role model, but as the only woman athlete on the USA Wrestling board of directors.

The Saunders have two children - 6-year-old Tassia and 4-year-old Townsend III - and Tricia must squeeze training between motherhood and her clinical rotations to become a physician's assistant. Her husband has two new jobs: executive director of the Sunkist Kids Wrestling Club and assistant coach at Arizona State.

On Sept. 11, when terrorists attacked New York 20 blocks from where the World Championships are scheduled, Saunders was at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs watching on a big screen with 100 other athletes.

"There was dead silence," she said. "It was a hard thing because we're all trying to focus on a specific thing that had been reduced to being completely insignificant.

"I'd like to go and compete (in New York), but I'm also very aware that I have others hats as a health care professional and mother. No game to me is worth losing my life with two little kids. I just hope they find something safe where everyone can get there and have a fair chance to compete."

NYC2012, the organizing committee, and USA Wrestling are working on a plan due by the end of September to keep the World Championships, which with 693 wrestlers from 82 countries was to have been the largest ever, in New York

-------------------------------

Girls are moving into sports that once were boys-only

Pauline M. Millard
Associated Press Sep 6 2001

NEW YORK -- Logan Hall raced toward the end zone, her eyes fixed on the ball in the air. She took a breath, held out her arms and clung to the pigskin as tight as an 11-year-old can.

Touchdown.

Meanwhile in Toronto, more than 2,000 miles away from Logan's home in Tucson, Ariz., 18-year-old Christina Lee laced up her skates for her hockey game. She's been playing since she was 5, first with boys and then on a girls' league. She invests at least four days a week and countless hours on the ice, perfecting her wrist shot.

Thanks to the emergence of the Women's National Basketball Association, in 1997 and the Women's United Soccer Association this year, women have been inching their way toward the mainstream of sports.

But in traditionally male-dominated sports such as boxing, baseball, ice hockey and wrestling, women are still fighting for attention and respect.

Boxer Laila Ali and former pro hockey goalie Manon Rheaume have crossed the gender lines to follow their passions.

Now younger athletes are following suit.

Logan's mother, Kris Hall, says that Logan showed an interest in baseball at age 2, but couldn't join an actual baseball team until she was 5. "She's been playing with the boys ever since."

Flag football

Last year, Logan began playing NFL Flag Football, a coed national football league for kids 6 to 14. More than 250,000 children participate, 40 percent of them girls.

In addition to flag football, Logan is the starting shortstop on her recreation league softball team and wants to be a point guard on the basketball team when she starts junior high in the fall.

"Whenever I first get on a team with guys, there's always a little bit of talk about me being a girl," says Logan, who plays wide receiver in football. "But once they see me play, it usually stops."

Static from the guys is the least of the problems that some young female athletes face. In some communities, playing with the guys is the only option aside from not playing at all.

Lucky for Christina, she lives in hockey-loving Canada, where girls' teams do exist. Nonetheless, she decided to follow her brother's footsteps, spending the first eight years of her hockey career playing in boys' leagues. But when she turned 13, she switched to a girls' team.

"The guys suddenly got a lot bigger than me and started hitting a lot harder," she says.

Christina says she's happy that she found other girls to play with, and the sport has somehow become more elegant and enjoyable.

"Girls definitely play hockey with a lot more finesse than guys. There's no checking in girls' hockey, so it isn't as scrappy as when guys play."

In girls' hockey, the emphasis is more toward passing the puck than roughing up the other players, Christina explained.

Tricia Saunders, 30, started wrestling boys when she was 8. Now she's the top-ranked wrestler for the U.S. Women's Wrestling Team and is training for the World Championships this month.

After training with men, she says, it took a while to get used to finally wrestling women when she was 22.

While competing in a wrestling meet in 1990 in France, she noticed that the foreign women wore bright leotards instead of dressing in sweats and trying to looking like men.

This was a culture shock for Saunders, who felt that women in the United States were still trying to prove themselves in the sport while other countries had well-organized and well-trained teams.

Pink leotard

"You can still beat someone up in a pink leotard," Saunders says. "A point is a point."

Nancy Theberge is a sociol ogoist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who spent two years traveling with a women's hockey team. Her book "Higher Goals" (University of New York Press) explores how involvement in a male-dominated sport affects female players.

"Being involved in these sports is a way for women to be strong and have a sense of accomplishment," Theberge says.

The women featured in her book came from different backgrounds and represented different age groups. But because they all had hockey as a common denominator, they worked together to form a highly competitive team.

"These women weren't always given credit for what they were doing, but they were just as passionate about their sports as the men."

But despite the drive and talent to excel in their sports, many women and girls still face rough spots.

When Logan was 9, she was the only girl on an all-star baseball team. Before the first pitch to Logan, the opposing team's coach went to the mound and mumbled something to the pitcher. The young boy shook his head "no" vehemently, but it appeared the coach's insistence won out when the pitcher threw his fastball -- and hit Logan right in the back.

"If she wants to play with the boys, she's going to have to take the hits," the coach shouted as Logan cried at home plate.

Logan's mom recalls the uproar from the parents, but also remembers that Logan later got a hit and stole bases all the way home.

"And then when the game was over, everyone was shaking hands and saying 'Good game,'" Kris Hall says. "And Logan looked up at the coach and said, 'Good game.' He said nothing. She said it again, and finally he shook her hand."

Christina's problems involve more geography than physical risks. She has some relocation issues to sort out if she plans to continue playing hockey.

Although women's hockey in Canada is well organized for younger girls, if she wants to continue her passion once she is done with high school she will have to look for a college program in the United States.

She has been offered one hockey scholarship from the University of Wisconsin-Superior, but because she has another year of high school to finish, she is holding off and looking at other schools.

Logan already is hoping to play either softball or basketball in college, the University of Arizona being her first choice.

And no matter what the future holds, both girls say that being involved in their sports is the best thing they ever did for themselves, regardless of what sacrifices they made or the taunting they had to endure.

-------------------------------

Wrestlers prepare despite delay

September 21, 2001, in the Herald-Leader
OLYMPIC NOTEBOOK

In a perfect world, Dominic Black and Toccara Montgomery wrestle people.
Now, they wrestle thoughts.

Black, a 1986 state high school champion for Henry Clay, and Montgomery, a Cumberland College freshman, have spent the summer preparing for the World Championships of Wrestling.

The championships had been scheduled to run next Wednesday through Saturday in New York's Madison Square Garden.

USA Wrestling requested a postponement last Friday, three days after the terrorist attacks on the East Coast. The international wrestling federation FILA approved the request a day later.

FILA President Milan Ercegan said that ``the new place and date of the Championships will be decided at the end of September.'' Dates are likely to be in October or early November. USA Wrestling hopes that New York will be retained as host city.

Black, 31, is in the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program and trains at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. He is the U.S. representative in the men's 97-kilogram (2133/4-pound) freestyle division.

``I just think (postponement) was the appropriate decision to make considering the state that they're in in New York right now,'' he said during a phone interview. ``We should have postponed it for now and not try to go in there when they're still doing a lot of cleanup and everything. I think there's still a lot of bodies to be found. ... I just don't think that it would be a good time (to) be there trying to promote wrestling.

``And I know that one of the concerns that the other countries were having was that they wanted guaranteed security. I just thought that would be a difficult thing -- to ask some of the civil service workers there to come and guard some teams for an athletic event while some of their friends and colleagues could still be possibly buried in that wreckage.''

Montgomery, 18, ``definitely'' agrees that a delay was wise.

``I just think it was a terrible thing to happen,'' the 69-kilogram (1493/4-pound) Montgomery said of the attack. ``It was a real, sad tragedy.''

Her focus is to keep up with her studies in education while adjusting her training.

``It's kind of hard to fluctuate from being at your peak to just training, keeping your conditioning up, then rushing back up to that peak for a big tournament like the World Championships,'' she said.

Montgomery probably will miss Cumberland's opening tournament, the Keystone Open, Oct. 16-18 at Meadville, Pa. She'll continue training for the Worlds.

Black, who placed fourth in the 1999 Worlds, may benefit from the postponement. He had suffered a groin injury while practicing less than three weeks ago.

Black said he would have been 85-90 percent and ``would have been able to go out and perform well enough to medal'' if the Worlds were held on schedule. But he would have been in pain. Now, he has time to recover.

Mentally, he was as ready as could be hoped for this month's events. Even before the attacks, he had been schooled by sports psychologists at the Olympic Training Center on how to block out distractions.

Of course, the attacks were much more than distractions.

``I shared the same emotions that most people shared at first,'' Black said. ``Just the shock and sadness from what had occurred, then followed up by a lot of anger and wanting to retaliate immediately. Especially with me being a soldier.

``But as things start to settle and my head starts to clear, I just think that we need to take the right amount of time to do an adequate investigation so we can come back with the appropriate response.''

He says he does not fear for his safety. He just wants to focus on the business at hand.

``For people who are running the stock market right now, they need to concentrate on their goal of running the stock market,'' he said. ``Fortunately for me right now, wrestling is my goal and I have to be able to maintain the presence of mind to keep on track with doing that.''

Mixed emotions
The International Olympic Committee announced Wednesday that it has conditionally approved the addition of four weight classes of women's wrestling to the 2004 Olympic schedule.

FILA must agree to limit wrestling to 18 classes total, meaning that two men's weight classes (one each in freestyle and Greco-Roman) must be eliminated.

Montgomery calls that ``kind of sad.''

``We wanted to be in the Olympics, but not at the cost of losing other men's weight classes,'' she said. ``I mean, they cut four before, a couple years ago, in anticipation of women being in the Olympics. And now they're cutting it again.

``I think it's just giving a lot of negative eyesight on (women) right now. None of the women's wrestlers wanted anything taken away from the men for this to happen. But, I have to say that I am happy that we are going to the Olympics.''

------------------------------