Ancient sport comes to grips with change
Women's freestyle only addition to '04 Summer Games

By Paula Parrish, Rocky Mountain News
October 26, 2002

Photos By Dennis Schroeder © News Patricia Miranda, right, one of the top-rated female wrestlers in the United States, mixes it up during practice against Katie Kunimoto. Miranda wrestled for five years on the Stanford men's team before winning a match, but to her, winning wasn't everything. "It's that every day, whether it's in competition or practice, I get to find out something about me."

COLORADO SPRINGS - Patricia Miranda wrestled at Stanford University on the men's team for almost five years before she won her first match.

In June, she graduated with honors, with a degree in economics and a master's degree in international relations.

Invited to join the new women's wrestling residency program at the Olympic Training Center, she obtained permission to delay her entry into Yale Law School for two years while she tries out for the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Her father has been asking her since high school when she is going to give up her hobby.

"What wrestling gives me - and I knew this through the five years that I was losing - it's not the wins and the losses," said Miranda, 23, of Saratoga, Calif. "It's that every day, whether it's in competition or practice, I get to find out something about me, a look inward that people usually only get in extreme situations. Did I fight or did I run?"

It is for Miranda and others like her that Terry Steiner - he's a former national champion at the University of Iowa under legendary Dan Gable - decided to accept the job as the first full-time U.S. women's national team coach, responsible for training athletes in the newly created women's freestyle wrestling residency program at the Olympic Training Center.

The wrestlers train twice a day, live in dorms on the complex, eat in the athletes' cafeteria and receive medical attention and advice on their training regimens.

"A lot of the wrestling community thinks it should be a man's sport forever," said Steiner, an assistant coach at the University of Wisconsin the past six years. "But when I started asking questions and meeting some of the athletes, my attitude definitely changed a lot. I realized they were every bit as serious about what they were doing as I was.

"Most of these athletes have never been coached by someone. Most come from high school or college programs and only got attention after the men did. They've never been in a female wrestling room."

Women's wrestling will make its debut at the 2004 Athens Games as the only new Olympic sport. Four weight classes of women will compete, though seven classes compete in the world championships.

Though new to the Olympics, women's wrestling has had world championships since 1987 and U.S. national championships since 1990.

But the sport still is in its infancy. Only five colleges field varsity women's teams: Minnesota-Morris, Cumberland (Ky.), Missouri Valley (Mo.), Menlo (Calif.) and Neosho County (Kan.).

About 3,000 girls compete on the high school level in the United States, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, but USA Wrestling, the national governing body for the sport, puts the number closer to 5,000. Most girls must compete against boys because Hawaii and Texas are the only states with separate girls and boys divisions. In Colorado, 15 girls competed in the 2000-01 school year, according to the Colorado High School Activities Association.

With the creation of the residency program, the boost that Olympic status has given the sport domestically is evident. Internationally, in past years, only 20 to 30 countries sent women to the world championships. For the worlds this year - Nov. 2-3 at Halkida, Greece - at least 43 countries are sending athletes.

Everyone asks Steiner, 33, what the differences are between coaching male and female wrestlers.

"Actual on-the-mat coaching isn't different at all," he said. "Two things - women have more flexibility in their shoulders than guys, and the proportion of upper-body strength to lower is exactly the opposite."

He admits to experiencing a little awkwardness during his first few on-the-mat demonstrations.

"For me, it was, 'Uh, where do the hands go?' " Steiner said. "I'd say, 'You have to lock your hands . . . under the chest' and they'd kind of say with a look, 'You can say breast.' "

Working with female wrestlers was a matter Steiner had to first discuss with his wife Jodi. The couple have a daughter, Raven, who is almost 2 and who sometimes attends wrestling practice - another reason Steiner decided to accept the job.

"If we weren't secure with each other, if my wife didn't believe in it, it would have been hard to accept a position like this," he said. "But she was behind it from Day One and probably more than I was. When she was growing up in a real small town, females playing basketball was not accepted. So what will happen when Raven wants to wrestle?"

While considering the job offer, Steiner worried about what other wrestlers and coaches would think. "Then I decided it didn't matter; these women deserve this," he said.

"These women are coming from situations where people only cared about them 50 percent or less. They deserve better."

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Female athletes going to the mat to get what they want

San Francisco Chronicle. 10/27/02

Last week a photographer and I were on an assignment in a tiny town up north, population about 500. We were talking to a mom at a food booth about things in general, and she mentioned one of the dilemmas her son was facing.

He's a high school wrestler, she said, and there are several times each year when he is matched up against a girl. You don't know what to do, she said.

You're afraid to touch them, but if you go easy on them, some of those girls will "beat your butt." So what do you do?

Better get used to it. It is one thing to find a single high school girl who is courageously fighting a lonely battle against discrimination. We're way past that. Quietly, with little fanfare, girls have started wrestling. There were an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 in high schools last year, and the number is only going to increase. In case you missed it, women's wrestling will be a full-fledged Olympic sport in 2004.

In fact, our very own Menlo College is one of the first schools to field a women's varsity wrestling team. And you might want to keep an eye on it. The squad is coached by former Olympic coach Lee Allen.

But only two states -- Texas and Hawaii -- have girls' wrestling programs in high school. The rest of the girls have to wrestle boys. For example, Heather Martin, a sophomore from Penfield, Ohio, went 4-5 against the boys last year as a tuneup for winning the national women's title.

Why wrestle the boys? Why put yourself through the abuse and the catcalls and the embarrassment? It reminds me of something the late, great Chronicle columnist Art Hoppe once wrote. He said people sometimes asked why people "chose" the gay lifestyle. Hoppe agreed, he said. He also wondered why some people chose to be African American or poor, when they would face so much less discrimination if they chose to be rich and WASP.

The girls are doing it because that's who they are. And if they are wrestling up in small towns where the encouragement has to be minimal, the chances of putting a stop to this have long since vanished.

Now, are there problems? Oh, you bet. Over at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, N.Y., David Woolf has put on a skirt (that's the official uniform) and is playing on the girls' field hockey team this year. At 5 feet 7, 145 pounds, Woolf is reportedly not an especially dominant player. But what about, as a reporter from the area suggests, a 6-foot-5 boys' basketball player who decides he could get a college scholarship in volleyball? And what if there is no boys' team, so he decides to play on the girls' team?

You've got me. But at least we are asking the tough questions. Take, for example, the curious case of U.S. Olympic Committee Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Ward. Ward is one of six African American members of the Augusta National Golf Course, which does not admit women. How can Ward represent a policy of equality when he belongs to a club that refuses to admit women? Lloyd? We're waiting.

Ward probably feels a little like Tiger Woods, who has been forced to respond to the Augusta question repeatedly.

"Yes, I've always wanted to affect lives in a positive way," Woods said last week, "but I wanted to pick my own causes, not be forced into something."

Sorry. That's not how it works. One day you walk out on the wrestling mat, and you are confronted with an opponent who is a girl. What do you do about that?

As always, things don't change in an orderly, measured way. It just happens.

"The Bachelor" is one of the most popular shows on television, so maybe you already saw this, but something interesting happened on it last week. At the Rose Ceremony, when the studly bachelor tells some of the tearful girls that he has decided not to pick them, one of the women reversed the field. She told the bachelor she wasn't interested and walked out.

"My feeling," said Anindita Dutta, a Manhattan attorney, "was the Rose Ceremony was where he tells us if he wants us to stay or not, so I felt it was the perfect time for me to do the same."

Assertive, unapologetic girls. Kind of looks like a trend, doesn't it? Wrestle with that.

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Opinion - A league of their own?

By Davin Coburn October 25, 2002

There's a double standard around these parts. A big one.

A shade over seven years ago, Erika Woods locked her chin-strap in place, marched into Mechanicsburg's Friday night football game against Carlisle and lofted an extra point through the uprights. It was a momentous occasion.

Five years ago, Julia DeLuca wrestled against boys in Carlisle's 100-pound weight class. It was a major step for girls looking to compete in sports where there are no viable female equivalents. Proponents of Title IX -- which partially calls for equal athletic opportunities for students, regardless of gender -- saw a dramatic victory.

This season, as has been the trend for the last decade, a couple of local boys suited up for their schools' field hockey teams. And some people absolutely hate it.

"[I will never play a boy] as long as I'm here, and if the school board says I have to let a boy play, that's fine -- I'll have coached my last game at Camp Hill," Lions coach Anna Baldini said.

Problem is, the boys playing in The Sentinel's coverage area -- Mike Acela, Travis Dechene and Adam Alexander at Big Spring, and John Schwartzer at Cedar Cliff -- are completely within the rules.

A 27-year-old injunction against the PIAA prevents the association from "establishing any rules or regulations that would prohibit boys from playing or practicing on girls' teams, or girls playing or practicing on boys' teams."

Not only that, but the Title IX provisions prohibiting sex discrimination in athletics, which have done so much to advance women's opportunities to play sports, apply here, too.

Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 says that "No person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal aid."

Local high schools receive federal funds for special education programs. But that applicability only makes it doubly frustrating for opponents.

"Title IX is there for a reason, and it wasn't meant for the advantageous affects of guys," Baldini said. "I, and other coaches that don't want boys playing (field hockey), are not pro-women. This isn't some giant women's-lib issue. We're pro-right."

Which is why there should be a boys' high school hockey league.

Baldini is uncomfortable with boys taking away girls' spots on the field, and she's right. Any boy playing in a game is one less girl running around.

So give the boys their own league.

Some coaches are upset about the boys' physical advantages, and they're right.

Neither Big Spring nor Cedar Cliff made districts this season (the Bulldogs finished eighth in the Keystone, the Colts fourth in the Commonwealth), but Central Dauphin fared better.

Behind the play of goalie Gabe Grab, a member of the U.S. National Men's under-16 team, the Rams finished 12-5-2 overall and grabbed the third Commonwealth playoff spot for districts. Central Dauphin lost in the first round of the District 3-AAA playoffs Tuesday.

"CD had an average team, but a fabulous goalie," Cedar Cliff coach Cristal Price said. "It's not like the coach went recruiting or anything, but when the girls saw him diving to stop balls in practice, they said, 'We want him!' "

So form a new league. Let boys throw themselves in front of other boys' shots.

Today, some female players feel intimidated by the boys.

"I don't like playing against them, and I don't know how I'd feel playing with one," Camp Hill junior Jess Hollinger, who was felled by a boy's shot in a game, said of the boys. "I know I don't like playing against them."

In September, Carlisle's school district decided not to let an eighth-grader at Lamberton Middle School play field hockey because he posed a danger to the girls.

A new league would let boys muscle each other for position and splinter each other's shins on followthroughs.

Every year, the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association hears more and more about the evils of boys playing "girls'" field hockey, and every year the organization thinks less and less about helping create a place for the boys to play.

"This issue (of cross-gender sports) only comes up around field hockey season," PIAA spokeswoman Melissa Nash Mertz said. "But when it comes up, a new league isn't ever brought up."

That stinks.

Worldwide, field hockey may well be more popular than soccer. Men's field hockey was introduced into the Olympics 72 years before women's field hockey was. The game is played extensively by men almost everywhere but in the United States, where male players are siphoned into sparse co-ed community leagues.

There were only seven boys' high school field hockey teams in the country this season, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. There were 1,646 female teams in the U.S.

The federation recognized only 194 male high school players -- in California, Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont -- exactly 60,543 fewer than the number of recognized girls.

Unfortunately, the Mid-Penn is not likely to help change those numbers any time soon. A boys' league here faces stiff opposition from people like Carlisle High School Athletic Director Dave Eavenson, who was reluctant to even discuss the avenues through which a new league might be formed.

"I don't want to give anybody ideas about how to even do that," he said. "There is no boys' (high school) field hockey in Pennsylvania."

Baldini, for one, would love to knock that on its head.

"My brother was a heck of a field hockey player, and I have coached guys' field hockey -- all the way to the Keystone gold medal," she said. "I am not opposed to boys playing in their own leagues. And I would be so helpful to any guys wanting to form their own league. I'd think it was great."

Hey, every guy playing in his own league is one less disrupting the girls' game.

And Cumberland Valley coach Patrick Weigle is sure that the participation numbers would be there.

"Right now there are not enough boys for a league, but if you just said, 'Hey, we're starting a team next year,' and put up some fliers, at a school like CV you'd get 50 or 100 boys come out. And I guarantee you that some of them would like it.

"It would be like lacrosse -- in five years every school would have a boys' field hockey team."

Acela said that he would happily leave the girls' team for one of his own, and he agrees that the participation would be there -- assuming slight alterations to the attire.

"I'd definitely like to see a boys' league," he said. "I think there would be enough guys who'd want to play.

"I think the uniform would make a difference, though. Guys wouldn't want to wear the skirt."

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