News

Out on Wrestling Mat, She's More Than a Match for Boys
Nicole Woody, 14, Seeks to Be Master Of Her Weight Class

By Angie Watts
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 20, 2002; Page SM10

Nicole Woody is a petite 14-year-old girl with dark brown hair that hangs down her lower back and periwinkle flip-flops that match her perfectly polished toenails and fingernails. She has a sweet smile, hosts tea parties for younger girls in her neighborhood and owns a large collection of dolls and Beanie Babies.

She also proudly sports a T-shirt that reads: I make boys cry.

"It's true, too," Woody said, starting to laugh. "Boys always cry if I pin them."

Woody, of St. Leonard, is a wrestler. And though she began the sport four years ago as a means of improving her judo skills, wrestling has since become a much bigger part of her life. The pale yellow bedroom that houses her doll collection is now also cluttered with nearly 50 medals, trophies and plaques, and one very large championship belt.

"A lot of times I just wrestle to get the medals," she said. "They're pretty."

This spring, Woody captured her biggest prize, a belt that is modeled after those worn by championship boxers, by winning the middle school division of the United States Girls' Wrestling Association belt series. The belt series champion was determined by combining the total points scored in 14 tournaments. There were 239 middle school participants competing for the title.

Woody, who finished first in nine tournaments and second in two more, was named Most Outstanding Wrestler five times. Even though she missed two tournaments, she had already earned enough points to secure the belt before the start of the 2002 Nationals held March 23 in Michigan.

Woody chose to compete anyway and placed fourth in the 82-pound weight class after suffering a separated left shoulder and torn right triceps on the first day of the two-day championship. Woody is undergoing physical therapy for both injuries but should be ready for the start of the club wrestling season in September.

"I've seen Nicole wrestle for the last three or four years, and the thing that has always impressed me watching her is that until she takes off her head gear and shakes out her hair, you would never know she was a girl," said Roy Hill, the coach at Hayfield High in Virginia, where Woody trains with the Southern Maryland Wrestling Club. "She trains extremely hard, and I've seen her fight through injury and pain. The way she works says a lot for her character."

Last season, Woody most often wrestled in the 82-pound class against girls and in the 75-pound class against boys.

Woody said she prefers wrestling boys, or all boys except her 13-year-old brother Stephen, whom she has faced three times in tournaments. All three matches have gone to overtime, with Nicole winning once and Stephen twice.

Nicole said she will stick to local boys' tournaments this fall instead of defending her title in the USGWA's belt series. Last year, Woody, who finished with a 52-11 overall record, took first in three local tournaments where she competed against boys. She placed second, third and fourth, respectively, in three other events.

Her only planned girls-only event next season will be the 2003 Nationals, where she hopes to dethrone this year's champion and her close friend, Joey Miller of Woodward, Okla.

"The boys give me a little more competition," said Woody. "Well, except Joey Miller -- I haven't beaten her yet in six tries -- but other than her, I would say I prefer to wrestle boys."

Some boys prefer not to wrestle Woody. Several have withdrawn from matches rather than face her.

"A lot of the boys say, 'I gotta wrestle a girl?' and sometimes even their dads and coaches don't want them to wrestle me," said Woody, whose family basement is being converted into a full-fledged wrestling room this summer. "But the ones who do then wrestle me twice as hard because they don't want to lose to me."

Ryan Buff, who will be a freshman at Calvert next year and is on Woody's Capital Area Beltway League team, said he hasn't been fazed by having to face Woody in tournaments.

"It's no different than wrestling a guy," said Buff, who pinned Woody just 33 seconds into their first tournament match four years ago. "You just have to watch out for her hair."

Though she weaves her long locks into her head gear for matches and sports a singlet that cuts higher across the neckline than the typical boys' singlets, some opponents of coed wrestling object to boys and girls mixing on the mat.

"I know some people question it, but that is just the sport of wrestling," said Mary Woody, Nicole's mother. "To me it's no different than seeing two boys in those positions. When she's wrestling a boy, all they want to do is not let her beat them. I don't think they're worried at all about where to touch or where not to touch . . . just about getting beat."

Women's wrestling is growing -- it will be included as an exhibition sport in the 2004 Olympic Games and is already a sanctioned sport at several universities that offer women's wrestling scholarships. But there is not enough interest to support a local girls' club. Woody is one of just three girls in the Southern Maryland Wrestling Club, which is made up of athletes from Southern Maryland and Northern Virginia.

She hopes one day to compete for her local high school team at Patuxent.

A rising eighth-grader, Woody has been home-schooled to date but might enroll at Patuxent in two years so that she can follow in the footsteps of her older brother, William McKinney, who was a second-team All-Met wrestler for the Panthers in 1998 (103 pounds) and 1999 (119) and is now a corporal in the Marines.

"I've already heard that some people at Patuxent don't want a girl to wrestle there, but that's why I want to go," Woody said with a laugh. "I want to go there my first year and beat everyone up."

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Today's regional tourney schedules

Saturday, June 8, 2002

GREG MANCINA
THE SAGINAW NEWS

Like many of her graduating classmates at Heritage High School, Gina Heinzelmann plans to work at a summer job to help pay for school in the fall.

Unlike many of her classmates, however, Heinzelmann also is planning her future as an Olympian.

"I'm shooting for 2004, but ... more for just the experience," said Heinzelmann, who attended commencements Thursday. "In 2008, I want to go for the gold."

That is not so much bravado from this 105-pound 18-year-old, but rather a realistic goal for the girls national record-holder with more than 100 wins in boys high school wrestling. Heinzelmann also is a two-time All-American in the United States Girls Wrestling Association and in April finished among the top 10 in the senior division of the 48-kilogram U.S. Nationals in Las Vegas, which was sponsored by USA Wrestling.

"I lost by three points to a girl who finished second," she said. "I was top 10 in the country."

Therefore, she is gaining a foothold in a sport that is doing the same on the worldwide scale.

The International Olympic Committee in October announced the addition of women's wrestling to the lineup of sports for the 2004 Games in Athens, Greece. Female wrestling also is one of 12 sports that the Michigan High School Athletic Association has mentioned that could become sanctioned as part of the fallout from the gender-equity lawsuit it is fighting in the courts.

"It is one of the 12 mentioned, and in my opinion, one of the easiest to administer," said Kent Bailo, director of the United States Girl's Wrestling Association.

"If the high schools did it, then the colleges would open up," said Heinzelmann, who plans to attend Delta College in the fall before a possible future at one of six small schools that have varsity women's wrestling teams. "There would be a domino effect."

The dominos may have begun to fall at the high-school levels, and at the high end with the Olympics, but the middle still is missing.

"The problem is that there are no sub-goals in between (high school and Olympics)," Bailo said.

Women already are infiltrating the ranks of the male-dominated sport in high school, with the USGWA estimating that 3,032 girls competed on 896 boys teams nationally.

Hawaii and Texas have statewide high school association-sponsored girls wrestling tournaments, although 31 states reported female wrestlers to the National Federation of State High School Associations.

California leads the nation with 752 female wrestlers, Texas is next at 485, then Washington at 256, Hawaii at 239 and Michigan with 153, according to the USGWA.

Heinzelmann has won two national crowns in the girls wrestling association and once was named one of the MVPs of the meet.

Both times she has beaten West Virginia's Erica Dye in the national finals. Dye placed second in the West Virginia boys state high school finals.

The girls wrestling association, which is based in Ortonville, Mich., had its first statewide tournament in Michigan in 1997 with 116 girls.

This year, the meet drew 546 athletes. The association sponsors state meets for girls in 24 states, which will expand to 35 next year, Bailo said.

After high school, though, girls have little opportunity to compete except at the Olympic level through USA Wrestling.

The group that puts together the men's wrestling teams will take over the women's selection process, which will include the U.S. Nationals, where Heinzelmann was a top-10 performer.

In the meantime, Heinzelmann works out at Montrose and Bay City Western high schools four times per week.

She plans to keep up with the sport through workouts and tournaments while she attends Delta, before she takes the next step to one of the collegiate programs.

"There are so many different options ... it's up in the air still," she said. "I'll find somewhere to wrestle."

Heinzelmann plans to participate in the world's largest wrestling tournament in Fargo, N.D., later this summer, which is another national meet.

"The Olympics will create a big interest," said Heinzelmann, who must be considered one of the sports' pioneers. "There'll be a lot more women's wrestling teams."

Bailo is banking on it. The girl's wrestling association director, who is a longtime referee and fan of the sport, said his organization is expanding quickly and likely will grow into a full-fledged collegiate sport.

"I tell people I'm in business to put myself out of business," he said.

By then, Heinzelmann hopes, she'll be an Olympian.

"I just hope it becomes its own sport," she said. t

Greg Mancina covers sports for The Saginaw News. You may reach him by calling 776-9670.

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No holding back from U.S. hopeful

USA Today , Gary Mihoces; 06-06-2002

Motivated by her usual urge to experiment, Patricia Miranda joined the
boys wrestling team as an eighth-grader in Saratoga, Calif. The more she was
tossed around, the more another of her traits took over.

She loves a challenge.

"I was a curious kid. I tried a lot of things. But things I was good
at, I tended to get bored with," she says. "Wrestling was something I
definitely was not good at. . . . I was so bad it kept my interest."

She showed the same tenacity the last five years as the only woman on
the Stanford University wrestling team, finally cracking the lineup last
season as an undersized 125-pounder when the starter was hurt.

She's graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford, but she's put Yale Law
School on hold. Her big matches now will be woman vs. woman.

This month in St. Paul she'll compete in the 105.5-pound class in the
U.S. team trials for the women's freestyle world championships. Her ultimate
wrestling goal: to be in Athens, Greece, in 2004 when women's freestyle
makes its Olympic debut.

"Just so many things have worked out," says Miranda, who'll be 23
Tuesday. "I recognize how lucky I am. . . . I didn't really believe they were
going to put us in (the Olympics) until they did."

There have been women's world tournaments in wrestling since 1987
(Miranda took silver in 2000). U.S. senior nationals for women have been held
since 1990 (Miranda, who's wrestled at nationals since she was in high
school, won her first U.S. title this year).

While the timing of the Olympic breakthrough is fortunate for Miranda,
she typifies females who've had to scramble for opportunities to train and
compete in a historically male sport.

The National Federation of State High School Associations says more
than 3,000 girls participate in high school wrestling. That's up from about
200 a decade ago. Yet while some schools have separate girls teams, most
girls compete against boys.

Five U.S. colleges have varsity women's wrestling: Minnesota-Morris,
Cumberland (Ky.), Missouri Valley (Mo.), Menlo (Calif.) and Neosho
County (Kan.) Community College. A dozen or so have club teams.

Earning respect

In eighth grade, Miranda contacted the coach at Saratoga High School,
Lloyd Asato, and asked to train with his team the next summer. He obliged.

"He didn't give me any special privileges, but he also said, 'I'd love
for wrestlers to be as excited as to call me the season before they start,
boy or girl,' " she says.

She says some high school teammates initially didn't want her on the
team: "It was novel back then. Guys were younger, and they had more
insecurities."

She was a captain her junior and senior years.

"I just felt I really belonged. The team was great," she says. "It was
very, very common for me to beat guys. . . . I probably won as much as I
lost."

When she was a Stanford freshman, then coach Chris Horpel welcomed her
to the team.

"Having a female on our team was a non-issue," he says. "She quickly
earned the respect of everybody by how hard she worked . . . how good she
became."

At Stanford, Miranda took her lumps. "No matter how tough things were,
even if she just got thrashed in practice, she never complained once, "
Horpel says.

Steve Buddie became the Stanford coach last season (Horpel is now
Stanford's director of wrestling and coaches the Dave Schultz Wrestling Club,
Miranda's amateur team). Buddie on Miranda: "She had to work harder than
everybody
else. . . . She's as tough or tougher than anybody in our room."

Her boyfriend, Levi Weikel-Magden, was Stanford's senior 157-pounder
last season.

"Everybody who wrestles has to hold themselves to a certain standard, "
he says. "I've seen some guys who can't do that. Patricia certainly is one
of the people who holds herself to that standard."

Cracking the lineup

Last season, Miranda finally got her shot as a starter. The regular
125-pounder was hurt, another couldn't make weight and another had
grade troubles.

"She was the last person on our ladder, but her perseverance paid off,"
Buddie says.

Miranda was 1-7. Her victory was by forfeit, and she had some lopsided
losses, but she wasn't pinned.

"She's so flexible and tough mentally," Horpel says. "She won't quit no
matter how tortured she is."

Says Buddie: "There were times you wanted to avert your eyes because
she was smaller than some guys, but she was more resilient than most."

Wrestlers typically cut weight. At 5 feet, Miranda struggled to bulk up
to 125, the lowest college class. She never weighed more than about 120.

Her overall record last season was 3-13. The other matches were in open
tournaments, where she beat a woman and had an 8-3 victory against a
male from a community college. "It took me four years to beat my first guy.
. . .
That was a huge goal," she says.

In college, she continued to compete in women's freestyle. She took
second in the world at 112 pounds in 2000 as an injury sub on the U.S. team.

She's also won over a fan -- her father, Jose, a physician. "He wasn' t
happy when I took up wrestling," she says. "I don't think it was so
much a female-male thing. It was more that it was going to interfere with my
education."

But her father came to watch her wrestle for the first time last year.
"My stepmother tells me he was way into it. He was banging his knee on the
seat in front of him. That was really cool."

This month at Stanford, Miranda will receive a bachelor's degree in
economics and a master's in international policy. She says a career in
international arbitration would be a "dream come true" after she gets a
law degree. But her goal now is the Olympics.

She has a letter from Yale Law School giving her a two-year deferment.
In longhand, the dean of admissions added, "Go for the gold. We'll see you
in 2004."

World team trials set

USA Wrestling holds its 2002 world team trials June 21-23 in St. Paul
with competition in men's freestyle and Greco-Roman and women's freestyle.
Current U.S. champions are seeded first in the trials.

In each men's style there are seven weight classes. The same weights
will be wrestled at the world championships and 2004 Olympics. There had been
eight since 1996. Women also will compete at seven weights in the trials and
worlds. But when women's wrestling makes its Olympic debut in 2004,
there will be four classes.

Top seeds in the U.S. trials for women:

105.5 pounds* -- Patricia Miranda, Stanford, Calif.

112 -- Jenny Wong, Stillwater, Minn.

121* -- Stephanie Murata, Minden, Nev.

130 -- Lauren Lamb, Farmington, N.Y.

138.5* -- Sara McMann, Lock Haven, Pa.

147.5: -- Toccara Montgomery, Cleveland

158.5* -- Iris Smith, Colorado Springs

* weights to be wrestled at the 2004 Olympics

This year's world championships:

Men's freestyle: Sept. 4-7, Tehran, Iran

Men's Greco-Roman: Sept. 19-22, Moscow

Women's freestyle: Nov. 2-3, Halkida, Greece

Gary Mihoces, No holding back from U.S. hopeful. , USA Today,
06-06-2002, pp
08C.

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