Women's wrestling takes off for Olympics
Mollie Keith of Aurelia will be one competitor to step onto the mat Friday in Las Vegas.

By DAN McCOOL
Register Staff Writer
04/25/2002

Women's freestyle wrestling is expected to debut as a medal sport in the 2004 Summer Olympics.

Mollie Keith of Aurelia said that means her childhood prediction is no laughing matter.

"When I was first wrestling, I was like, "You wait, it will be an Olympic sport," and people would laugh at me," said Keith, a sophomore on the women's wrestling team at Missouri Valley College in Marshall, Mo. "It's never been a joke for me to wrestle."

Thoughts of an Olympic medal dance in Keith's head, but her focus is doing well in the 147-pound division of the National Open women's freestyle tournament, beginning Friday in Las Vegas.

Keith, ranked fifth at her weight nationally, said Olympic prospects will fuel the involvement of women in the sport.

"That's a lot more serious, a realistic goal now, and everyone wants to be a part of that dream," Keith said.

Four medal weights for women are scheduled for the 2004 Olympics, along with seven medal weights for both men's freestyle and men's Greco-Roman.

Keith is excited about chasing Olympic medals, but USA Wrestling - the national governing body of wrestling - said the number of medals is too low.

"Seven is not enough for men and four is not enough for women," said USA Wrestling spokesman Gary Abbott. "Obviously, nobody's really happy with this, but there is a great deal of excitement about women going to the Olympics in wrestling."

Abbott said the challenge is trying to convince FILA, wrestling's international governing body, and the International Olympic Committee that numbers need to be expanded.

Dan Gable, who will coach the Iowa City-based Hawkeye Wrestling Club in freestyle this weekend, said there was too much take and not enough give.

"It's a start, but it's at the expense of the total sport," Gable said. "We went from 20 medals, and we added another division, and we're down to 18 total.

"Even though we add another complete sport, we lost two medals in our sport."

There has been a 30 percent decrease in medal opportunities for men's freestyle and Greco-Roman since the 1996 Olympics had 10 weight classes in each style.

Gable said the cut was done with the idea of including women's freestyle in the 2000 Summer Olympics.

"The overall philosophy for the total Olympic Games is they want to have smaller numbers," Gable said.

"The problem is when you're adding and subtracting sports at times, with Title IX or gender equity catching up, it's pretty tough to make it smaller when you're adding a whole gender of people."

Addition is a key word in women's wrestling.

The number of women's intercollegiate teams is up by two and age-group tournaments have been added. Terry Steiner, an NCAA champion wrestler at Iowa, has been hired as the first national freestyle coach for women's wrestling. The Junior Nationals tournament will have its first girls' competition this summer in Fargo, N.D.

Breaking new ground has been Keith's mission for years.

"Mollie's just kind of a pioneering, frontier-type person," said Dee Keith, Mollie's mother

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