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I lost to a girl'`No, you lost to Mary

'By Reid HanleyTribune staff reporter
December 9, 2001

It's no surprise that Mahomet-Seymour's Mary Kelly took up the family
business of wrestling.It's just that no one expected her to be so good at it.
"She's an exception," said Mahomet-Seymour coach Tom Porter, the former
Hersey and University of Illinois coach.
"The guys in her weight class on our team are underclassmen, and she's
stomping them.
"It's hard to think about her being a girl when she's pinning you."
Kelly is on the first team of TheMat.com/Asics girls high school
All-American wrestling team and is ranked fourth at 112.5 pounds in the USA
senior women's rankings, the highest category that includes members of the
world team.Yet there is still an undercurrent of trepidation for some at the
prospect of competing against Kelly. For those wrestlers, it is a lose-lose
proposition."It was not just another match," said Buffalo Grove senior Mike
Anderson,
who dealt Kelly her only loss last weekend at the Conant Invitational. Kelly
won her other two matches that day via forfeit and a pin in 22 seconds.
"This was a girl. There were a lot of things I was thinking because she was
a girl. Like if you lose, it will hurt your confidence level. If you beat a
girl, it's like `Oh, you beat a girl.'"
But, Anderson added, "She's definitely good."
Girls have been involved in boys high school wrestling for years, but few in
Illinois have received the acclaim that the oldest child of Richards legend
Jerry Kelly has."She works so hard, other guys look up to her, and she's a good
leader," said teammate Bobby Hill, a senior co-captain who has wrestled on the
same team with Kelly since their youth club days.
"When guys see a girl work that hard, they know they need to step it up too.
She pushes everybody.
"She's a girl in a man's sport, and she does it very well. If we go to a
tournament and anyone starts messing with her, she's got a whole team that
will back her up."
Mary Kelly started wrestling in the 3rd grade, and as the years went by her
love of wrestling grew. By high school she was still a wrestler--and a
pretty good one.
"When you're a little kid, you don't think that deep," said Mary, a senior.
"I grew up around wrestling, and I wanted to be just like my dad."
She has a chance to be the first girl to qualify for the state tournament at
Champaign's Assembly Hall. She has been training year-around, building
strength and endurance for a chance at history in February.
Last season she qualified for the Class AA sectional, where she won her
first match but lost her second. She finished with a 29-13 record as the
regular at 103 for one of the top programs in the state. In her last match,
she pinned Waukegan's Philip Webber to help her team finish third in the
Class AA dual-team tournament.
Qualifying for Champaign would continue the family tradition of wrestling at
the Assembly Hall, where her father and uncle Bill won championships.
Finishing in the top eight and winning a medal, no matter how improbable it
might have seemed four years ago, is a realistic goal.
"I really want to go to state and place," said Mary, whose younger brother
Chris is Mahomet-Seymour's 112-pounder. " I think I can do it. I've put in a
lot of work to get this far."
The Kelly family is a wrestling family. Four brothers--Jim, Jerry, Paul and
Bill--wrestled for Richards from the mid-'70s through 1981. Jerry Kelly was
a two-time state champion and three-time state semifinalist and then an
All-American at Oklahoma State. Paul was a state runner-up, while Bill was a
two-time state champion, four-time state medalist and NCAA champion at Iowa
State."I don't think I could be as good as my dad or my uncle," Mary said. "I
could never reach that level against boys, and I realize that."
Female wrestlers are more common in youth competition, but as children enter
their teens there is greater disparity in the level of upper-body strength
between the sexes. Kelly's determination never wavered, and once she entered
high school her parents weren't sure she could compete.
But she wanted to give it a try.
"She made a comment," Jerry Kelly said. "`Dad, I would've whipped you. You
taught me everything you know.'"And there was some concern for her safety.
"Guys come out and try to rough her up, beat her up," Jerry Kelly said. "And
she gives it right back. She knows what the deal is."
Mary, who will wrestle in college either on a men's or women's team, has a
chance to be successful in women's wrestling, which has been added to the
2004 Olympics. She has wrestled internationally in women's cadet and open
tournaments, winning two of six tournaments.
"We've kind of planned that competing against guys will take her to the next
level," Jerry said. "We have to do this."
Mary has attended her uncle Bill's wrestling camps since she was a
40-pounder. Providence coach Keith Healy, a family friend considered an
uncle by Mary, has had his "niece" at his camps. Illinois assistant football
coach Greg McMahon has designed a weight-training program for her.
"Having girls on the wrestling team has never bothered me," said Healy,
whose team forfeited a handful of matches--including one to Kelly--in the
state dual-team tournament after locking up the title. "We've had some at
Providence, but never at Mary's level. She knows wrestling."
Match by match, new opponents learn just that.
"I can't remember the opponent," she said, "but a year or two ago somebody
said, `I lost to a girl,' and another guy said. `No, you lost to Mary.'"

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Fulp-Allen wins lightweight MVP

By Richard Motroni 12/10/2001
CORRESPONDENT

MILLBRAE -- Approximately 40 teams from as far away as Monterey and Vacaville converged at Mills High School last weekend for the 35th annual Peninsula Invitational, one of the first big wrestling tournaments of the season.

One wrestler stood out.

Sarah Fulp-Allen of Half Moon Bay took complete command of the 103-pound division and won the championship match by a technical fall. Fulp-Allen's outstanding performance did not go unnoticed by the tournament's directors as she was named outstanding lightweight wrestler.

Fulp-Allen was at her most dominant in the championship rounds where she scored a second-round win in the semifinals, then overpowered Seaside's Jeff Gatdula 17-1 for the championship.

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Suit launched over mismatch

12/12/2001
By KEVIN MARTIN, CALGARY SUN

It was a mismatch of David and Goliath proportions: A 125-lb. teenage girl against her 300-lb. male wrestling coach.

And the results -- two broken bones, a separated wrist and shoulder injuries -- were inevitable, claims a $200,000 lawsuit filed on behalf of the High River girl.

Highwood high school student Shawna Noble is seeking the damages after she says wrestling coach Bill Young fell on her while demonstrating a move.

The lawsuit names Young, Foothills School Division, the Alberta Amateur Wrestling Association and the High River Amateur Wrestling Association as defendants. The document, filed in Calgary Court of Queen's Bench, says Noble was injured during a Dec. 2, 1999 practice of the Highwood wrestling team.

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Medals & Motherhood
Six-time world champ Nordhagen-Vierling grapples with family, Olympic dreams

Sean MyersCalgary HeraldWednesday,

December 12, 2001

The clock is ticking for Christine Nordhagen-Vierling and she knows it.
At 30, with six world wrestling titles to her name, the Calgary grappler is
moving inexorably toward the end of her career.
As a married woman who looks forward to motherhood, Nordhagen-Vierling also
is anxious to start a family.
But the inclusion of women's wrestling as a full-medal sport in the 2004
Summer Olympic Games at Athens, Greece, is a tantalizing goal she says she
can't walk away from.
So great is her desire to try for the first women's Olympic gold medal in
wrestling that she's planning to compete whether or not she and
husband/coach Leigh Vierling have a baby during the interim.
"I've seen women compete at world championships three months after giving
birth," says Nordhagen-Vierling, freshly returned from Sofia, Bulgaria, site
of her latest world championship victory at the end of November.
"If they can do it, I can do it.
"I've always wanted to have a family. It's hard because I don't want to wait
too long. I want to have more than one and I'm already 30. I'll be 33 by the
time I go to Athens."
Ideally, Nordhagen-Vierling would like to give herself at least a year
between bringing her first child into the world and wrestling at the biggest
competition of her life. Otherwise, the couple will wait until after Athens.
As for wrestling after having a child, there is plenty of precedent.
American Trish Saunders, a four-time world champion in the 46-kg division,
has had two children during her career and is still her country's No.
1-ranked wrestler in her class.
Another mother, Anita Schatzle of Germany, won bronze this year in Sofia in
Nordhagen-Vierling's 68-kg class.
Others have come back with varying degrees of success, but the chance for
Olympic glory is enough to make Nordhagen-Vierling try for both seemingly
conflicting milestones.
"My husband wrestled in the '99 Pan Am Games and I watched him as a fan,"
she says. "I've never competed at a big Games like that and, while I was
happy for him, I was sad I didn't have the same opportunity.
"Now, it's in the Olympics and it's in Greece where the Olympics began. It's
going to be amazing."
Born in Valhalla Centre, about an hour's drive north of Grande Prairie,
Nordhagen-Vierling won Canada's first world wrestling gold medal in 1994 at
Sofia as she finished her first season with the University of Calgary Dinos
wrestling club.The year before -- just two years after she first stepped on a
wrestling mat
at the University of Alberta -- Nordhagen-Vierling won the silver medal at
the 1993 worlds in Sweden, the first time Canada had sent a contingent to
the world women's championships.
Nordhagen-Vierling went on to win gold in '96, '97 and '98 before deciding
to step up in weight class.
She had to adjust to the larger competitors in the 75-kg class and took two
steps down the podium for a bronze at the '99 worlds before winning the gold
in 2000.Her victory on Nov. 24 against American Toccara Montgomery at the first
world event to combine the men's and women's competitions was her fifth in
the 68-kg class.
"They were all awesome, of course, but the first championship (in '94) was
the most exciting," says Nordhagen-Vierling. "I had this big grin stuck to
my face for two days. Nothing could get me down. I was on top of the world.
I had never experienced anything like that in my life -- knowing that I was
the best in the world."
Nordhagen-Vierling says she is starting to slow down after a decade of
grappling and a less-rigourous training schedule provides the evidence.
She has reduced the volume in her workouts and says she's started to rely
more on experience.
Still, despite her unprecedented success, Nordhagen-Vierling, who teaches
math, phys-ed and dance at Ernest Manning High School, is ever mindful of
young talent.
Shannon Samler of North Vancouver is a 20-year-old in the 68-kg class.
Samler won the senior national championships the two years
Nordhagen-Vierling competed at 75 kg, but settled for silver last May as the
Calgary grappler won her 10th consecutive national title.
Outside Canada, Montgomery also will likely be around for Athens. She has
beaten Nordhagen-Vierling -- in Phoenix just three weeks before Sofia.
But it is difficult to plan an Olympic strategy just yet. Olympic weight
classes were announced this week and there's only four as opposed to seven
at the worlds.
For the moment, this leaves a big question mark in terms of against whom
Nordhagen-Vierling may have to compete.
The 73-kg class is perfectly suited for her. She currently weighs 74 kg and
has won gold at 68 and 75 kgs.
"The new weight classes will make the competition a little tighter and
little deeper," says Nordhagen-Vierling. "But, no matter, I can't have a bad
day; I've got to be consistent and mentally focused because people know who
I am and want to step in and take my place."I still have to make the team."

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Enjoying the role of a pioneerCoach knows way around the mat

By Marlen Garcia
Tribune staff reporterDecember 9, 2001

It's not a big deal for a girl to join high school wrestling, but it's still
rare to find a woman within the sport's coaching ranks.
St. Viator assistant coach Kristi Grandt Hanna is among the pioneers. Hanna
is a 1987 Glenbrook North graduate who began coaching high school wrestlers
10 years ago in Florida. She spent three seasons at Proviso West and is in
her first year assisting St. Viator head coach Joe Brinkman.
The Illinois High School Association and the Illinois Wrestling Coaches and
Officials Association could not determine the number of female wrestling
coaches, but IWCOA treasurer and Fairbury Prairie Central coach Joe Cliffe
had not heard of any until he learned of Hanna.
Hanna is sometimes mistaken for a statistician by opposing coaches.
"I get looks at first," she said. "When they realize I know what I'm talking
about, I'm just another coach."
She gains acceptance from the wrestlers in the same way. Hanna is a
certified athletic trainer, and the sport piqued her interest when she
worked as a trainer with the men's wrestling team at Wisconsin-Parkside in
Kenosha."I've learned it as I've gone along," Hanna said. "I have found with my
athletic training background and knowledge of how the body works I can
analyze the moves. There are a lot of physics involved in wrestling."
Hanna has mixed feelings about girls' participation in high school wrestling.
"My old-school philosophy says boys should wrestle boys and girls should
wrestle girls," she said. "It's an uncomfortable situation for boys to
wrestle girls.
"My new-school philosophy is: It's a sport and it shouldn't matter if it's
male or female. It's just another wrestler. You shouldn't act differently
just because it's a female. I wouldn't want any other coach to treat me
differently."