Wrestler Julie Gonzalez is trying to earn a spot on the U.S. Olympic team.
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Women Will Wrestle for Gold at 2004 Olympics
fox News , May 19, 2004
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Wrestler Julie Gonzalez is trying to earn a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. |
MENLO PARK, Calif. — Women will wrestle at the Olympics for the first time this year.
And wrestlers like 26-year-old Julie Gonzalez (search) and 18-year-old Sarah Allen (search) are among the several dozen American females fighting to earn one of four spots on the debut team. The contenders will be chosen this week in Indianapolis.
But the introduction of female Olympic wrestling isn’t without controversy: Some women will have to gain or lose weight to qualify for the games, since only four weight categories will be competing.
Lee Allen, who is Gonzalez’s coach and Allen’s father, said the sport has already been criticized for promoting weight loss, and he doesn’t think the new Olympic rules will help.
But having competed as an Olympic wrestler himself, Allen is thrilled to see women get their chance to go for the gold in a sport dominated by men.
Click here to watch a report by Fox News Channel's Claudia Cowan.
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Intriguing competition on the mat
Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer 5/19/04
Years of sweat, headlocks and bruises have come down to this: one mat, one opponent and one shot to make it to the Olympics.
After the nation's top wrestlers battle in Indianapolis this weekend for a spot on the Olympic team, only the winner in each weight class will go on to feel the roar of the crowd at the opening ceremonies in Athens.
The trials, always tense, this time promise some extraordinary moments:
-- The cartwheeling Greco-Roman Olympic gold medalist Rulon Gardner will have to fight through an injured wrist and 2002 world champion Dremiel Byers to make it to Athens.
-- Freestyle wrestler Stephen Abas of Fresno, who came in fourth at the Olympic trials in 2000, is hoping the hard lessons he learned will pay off on his second try.
-- For the first time, women will vie for places on the Olympic stage, where they will debut in the only new sport added to the 2004 Summer Games.
Front-runner Patricia Miranda of Saratoga, in the 105.5-pound weight class, will wait to see who emerges from the preliminary rounds Friday and Saturday before competing in the best-of-three bout championship series Sunday.
Miranda is one of 19 gold-medal winners from the U.S. Wrestling National Championships in Las Vegas in April who advanced directly to the finals.
Challengers in Miranda's weight class include her Colorado Olympic Training Center teammates Clarissa Chun of Hawaii and Mary Kelly of Illinois, as well as Sara Fulp-Allen, who wrestles for Menlo College in Atherton. Misty Stalley, also out of Menlo, is competing at 158.5 pounds.
On the sidelines will be Malinda Ripley of Antioch, who dislocated her right elbow last week during practice at the Olympic Training Center, when her larger opponent executed a move known as an "elbow breaker."
Ripley, who has been training for the 2004 Games since graduating from Deer Valley High in 2002, will shift her focus to the 2008 Games.
In the lightest men's freestyle division (121 pounds), Abas is taking his second shot at the Olympic team. Since his fourth-place finish at the 2000 trials, he's upped his game and won the World Cup twice and nationals twice. But he lost in the quarterfinals of the 2003 world championships and wound up fifth.
"Anytime you have a loss, you have things to work on,'' he said. "I was turned in the match and I lost. I have had to work much more on my par terre wrestling (down on the mat)."
Gardner was the 265-pound upstart from the 2000 Games. He has since endured a frostbitten toe, a motorcycle crash and a basketball injury.
He's fully recovered from his 2002 snowmobile accident that left him stranded for 18 hours in a Wyoming valley and claimed the middle toe on his right foot.
But last March, a car driver turned into his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and sent him somersaulting over the hood, injuring his heel. Three days later, while playing a pickup basketball game at the Olympic Training Center, he crashed into the bleachers while trying to catch a ball and dislocated his wrist.
Doctors pulled three stabilizing pins out of his wrist just last week. "My wrist is at about 50 percent right now," he said.
Gardner will be wrestling to win at the trials, but he is also looking at the larger picture. If he doesn't win, he says he will retire.
"As you look back, you have to remember what we are here for," he said. "People tend to put too much pressure on sports. I really want to make the team. I have worked hard to get there. If I don't, I will go on. I'll help Dremiel Byers or whoever makes the team to win that gold medal. That is what we are here to do as a team."
Wrestling trials
Who: Elite U.S. freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestlers
What: Competition for single Olympic berth in each weight class. The winner of the "challenge" rounds faces the national champion in a best-of- three championship series.
When: Friday-Sunday
Where: RCA Dome, Indianapolis
TV: June 5, 7 a.m., USA (taped U.S. nationals air Friday at 8 p.m. on ESPN2).
Ones to watch: Men -- Cael Sanderson (freestyle, 185), '03 world silver, undefeated (159-0) at Iowa State, '99-'02; Kerry McCoy (freestyle, 264.5), '03 world silver; Dremiel Byers (G-R, 264.5), '02 world gold. Women* -- Patricia Miranda (105.5), two-time world silver; Kristin Marano (138.75), two- time world gold; Toccara Montgomery (158.5), two-time world silver.
*-There is no Greco-Roman competition for women
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Woman juggles family, work, training
May 19, 2004
BY JO-ANN BARNAS
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER
If she were only an athlete, then it would be different. Then Lauren Lamb wouldn't have been at her job at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, doing lab work at Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics in Rochester, N.Y.
If she were only an athlete, then she might have stayed longer in the gym. Instead she pedaled seven miles on her mountain bike Monday night to watch her 8-year-old stepson play baseball for the Canandaigua Cardinals.
Lamb is among the dozens who have qualified for this weekend's U.S. Olympic wrestling trials at Indianapolis. For the first time, the tournament will include women's freestyle wrestling; the event makes its Olympic debut in Athens this August.
At 26, Lamb is one of the oldest and most experienced female wrestlers in the tournament. Known as Lauren Wolfe before she married Cornell classmate Casey Lamb in August 1999, she won five senior national titles (and was a member of six world teams) between 1991 and 2002.
At Okemos High, where she graduated in 1995, Lamb is remembered by athletic director Keith Froelich as a "courageous groundbreaker" for the years that she competed on the varsity boys wrestling team at a time when few girls did.
"She overcame a lot of obstacles," Froelich said. "But she kept setting a positive example."
Today, she still is.
Lamb has dreamed of competing in the Olympics in wrestling longer than most of her competitors. But this is the thing: She has been trying to do it on her own terms.
That has meant staying put in Farmington, N.Y. -- not quitting her job or leaving her family to live and train full-time with other elite athletes at an out-of-state training center.
It hasn't been easy. But for Lamb, whose parents, Alan and Gail Wolfe, still reside in Okemos, it can't be any other way.
"It has meant less sleep," Lamb said with a laugh. "For me, it's the right thing to do."
So Lamb trains when she can. Five days a week, she's up before 6 a.m. to work out at her home before her 35-minute commute to the lab. Lamb, who's a chemist, has worked in research and development at the diagnostic facility for almost two years.
Tuesday, she rode a stationary bike for 20 minutes, punctuating the workout with 10-second bursts of sprint speed.
"Sometimes I pretend I'm down to the final 10 seconds of a match," she said. "Other times, I use training to let my mind wander and relax, thinking things like, 'OK, how much milk do we have? And don't forget that load of laundry to do.' "
Lamb typically tries to go for a run during lunch -- Tuesday, she put in 4.2 miles along the Erie Canal -- before picking up Austin after school and heading to wrestling practice.
These days, Lamb trains at a middle school in Canandaigua with a group called the Titan Wrestling Club. The club doesn't forbid visitors; Austin sits just off the mat.
"Some people have the luxury of being a full-time athlete," said Casey Lamb, Lauren's husband, who wrestled at Cornell. "But a lot of them still don't work as hard as Lauren does. She's committed to the dream. She's a mother, a wife and a full-time chemist in addition to wrestling. I'm her biggest fan. I only wish I could support her more."
Lamb knows she has a tough road ahead. She placed second at nationals to Na'Tasha Umemoto in the 59kg (129.8-pound) weight class. But that weight doesn't exist for senior women at the Olympics.
For the Athens Games, the weight classes for women were reduced from seven to four, which means that Lamb must wrestle at trials in a heavier (63kg/138.6 pounds) or lighter (55kg/121) division. Lamb, who's 5-feet-1, said Tuesday she would attempt to wrestle down, at 55kg.
Only the national champion in each weight category is exempt from having to compete in the two-day challenge tournament that starts Friday. On Sunday, the challenge tournament winners in women's and men's freestyle, and men's Greco-Roman, will meet the national champ of each class in a best-of-three finals event. Winner goes to Athens. The reigning national champion at 55kg is Tina George, who also happens to be the reigning world silver medalist.
"It's a real shame they've cut the numbers, but that's how it is," Lamb said. "But I've known all along, if I want to make the Olympic team, this is what I had to do."
In 2002, Lamb traveled to Greece as a member of the U.S. world team. On the train back to Athens, she snapped a photo of the Olympic Stadium.
"It's a little fuzzy," she said.
One thing for sure, her priorities aren't.
"In the end, no matter what happens this weekend, I have (Casey) and Austin to go home to in the end," Lamb said. "I wouldn't trade that for an Olympic gold medal anytime."
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Wrestling with Success
Stephany Lee is one of six Hawaii
athletes vying for a spot in the Olympics
By Dennis Anderson 5/19/04
Special to the Star-Bulletin
For the first time in the 108 years of modern Olympic Games history, women's wrestling will be an official sport when the Games return to their birthplace in Athens, Greece, this August.
There will be only four weight classes and the United States will send one entrant in each. A tournament to determine those four pioneers will be held in Indianapolis next weekend.
Six of the 53 women who qualified for the tournament -- more than 11 percent -- are from Hawaii, the ninth smallest state.
"Hawaii is a leader in women's wrestling in our country because of the effort put toward it and resources put toward it," said Terry Steiner, coach of the U.S. National Team.
Hawaii is one of two states in the nation (Texas is the other) that has a sanctioned high school state wrestling championship for girls.
"Hawaii made an earlier commitment and has developed a foothold in girls wrestling because they jumped in faster and harder than the rest of the country," USA Wrestling spokesman Gary Abbott said.
"It has opened up a lot of doors for these girls," Steiner said.
One of those for whom wrestling has opened doors is Stephany Lee, a three-time high school champion in Hawaii and national girls champion who graduated from Moanalua High in 2002.
"I was not sure about what I was going to do" after high school, Lee said. She had surgery on a shoulder and took a year off to rehabilitate.
In March 2003, Lee tried freestyle wrestling -- the Olympic style that is significantly different from the folk style of high school. In her first freestyle tournament, she won the Canadian-American collegiate championship.
Lee soon accepted a scholarship to Missouri Valley College, one of the pioneers of women's collegiate wrestling. She has thrived there, athletically and academically.
After Lee won the gold medal at last weekend's Pan American Championships in Guatemala, the national team coaches invited her to move to the Olympic Training Center as a permanent resident.
A year ago, Lee would have packed her suitcase immediately. But there has been a change in her outlook.
"School has become more important to me," said Lee, who is a freshman majoring in exercise science.
"I will get my degree in 2007," she said. "If they still want me, I will move to the OTC in time to train for the 2008 Olympics."
Lee's chances of making the U.S. team to compete in the inaugural women's wrestling Olympics this year are not strong. Toccara Montgomery of Cleveland, seeded No. 1 in next weekend's trials, is a two-time World silver medalist and Lee has never beaten her.
Roosevelt High grad Clarissa Chun, like Lee, is ranked No. 2 in her weight class, but she has never beaten No. 1 Patricia Miranda.
"It isn't the end of the road if they don't make it. Watch for them the next Olympics," Abbott said.
"Clarissa and Stephany have done everything right to earn the chance to pursue their dreams."
Will Hawaii fade as an incubator for Olympic wrestling contenders like it has in swimming?
Abbott says no. "As long as girls have role models -- as long as there are Chuns, Lees and (Katie) Kunimotos -- it would not surprise me to see more outstanding girls coming out of Hawaii," he said.
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Clarissa Chun
Age: 22
High School: Roosevelt '99.
Residence: Kapolei.
Chun was among the charter group of about 20 women invited to the U.S. Olympic Training Center when its women's wrestling facility opened in 2002.
Consistently ranked No. 2 by USA Wrestling behind Stanford alum and OTC resident Patricia Miranda.
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Kristen Fujioka
Age: 20
High School: Castle '01
Residence: Ahuimanu
A junior at Pacific University in Oregon, she earned All-America honors by finishing second at the Women's Collegiate National Championships in March.
Earned invitation to the Olympic Trials by finishing eighth at the USA Wrestling Senior National tournament.
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Kapua Torres
Age: 18
High School: Kahuku '03
Residence: Kahuku
A freshman at Pacific University in Oregon, she had a team-best record of 17-9 with five pins.
Qualified for Olympic Trials by winning the South Regional Trials at 121 pounds (55kg). She won the 2003 state high school championship at 108 pounds.
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Katie Kunimoto
Age: 23
High School: Castle '99
Residence: Ahuimanu
After one year as a cheerleader at the University of Hawaii, she chose to pursue wrestling.
She was an All-American at Pacific University in Oregon in 2002; qualified for Olympic Trials by taking sixth place in USA senior nationals this year.
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Debbi Sakai
Age: 18
High School: Mililani '03
Residence: Mililani
Has to come down from 112 pounds, where she finished second at the USA Nationals because there is no 112-pound weight division at the Olympics. Won this year's University Nationals championship at 112, beating Kapua Torres.
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Stephany Lee
Weight class: 158 1/2 pounds
Age: 19
High school: Moanalua '02
Residence: Salt Lake
Notable: The Missouri Valley College freshman has an invitation to become a resident at the Olympic Training Center but says she will get her college degree first.
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A Tiny Female Pioneer for Olympic Wrestling
By JUDY BATTISTAPublished: May 16, 2004
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Tom Kimmell for The New York Times |
COLORADO SPRINGS — She stood in a bathroom stall weeping. Patricia Miranda had ignored the sexual innuendo from the boys she wrestled against, withstood her father's relentless attempts to thwart her interest in the sport, absorbed the cheap shots from opponents, the rolled eyes of opposing coaches, and even a scolding from one opponent's mother, who complained that her son was in a no-win situation wrestling against a girl.
But after a particularly bad beating in a high school tournament, three dismissive words staggered Miranda. The determination that the darts would only strengthen her commitment slipped away and she was just another teenage girl racked by self-doubt.
"You're a joke."
Suppose this pursuit of a brutish man's sport by a diminutive girl was just folly. Miranda was no natural athlete, no fitness nut. She used to con her family into giving her extra French fries at McDonald's. But when someone walked into her eighth-grade weight-lifting class and announced that wrestling tryouts were that day, she followed the boys and never left. She negotiated a pact with her father that if she got straight A's in high school she could wrestle, subverting his threat to sue her school if it let her participate.
This was long before 2002, when women's wrestling became the only new sport at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Until then, the only reason to continue what seemed a fruitless quest was a chubby kid's attraction to something she was especially bad at, and to seek the uncomfortable in a comfortable life. But Miranda had made it to her junior year of high school before she cried that first time over wrestling.
"That really set my resolve to try to answer that question — maybe I am a joke," Miranda said. "But I'm at least going to find out. Even if I've been delusional for six years, I'm not going to walk away not knowing that this whole thing was a joke. I had to keep going and had to know if effort and focus and belief and training could somehow legitimize me as a wrestler."
It has. Miranda — still small at 5 feet but now a 24-year-old with the broad shoulders and muscular legs that mark most wrestlers — will be the overwhelming favorite to win the spot for 105.5-pound women on the United States Olympic team at the trials in Indianapolis on May 21-23. She is the top-ranked American woman in her weight class and she won the silver medal at the 2003 world championships. The main competition in the Olympics will most likely come from Japan, Ukraine and Canada, where women's wrestling has a longer history.
Success for Growth
For Miranda, her rise to the top of her sport is something like Cinderella in a singlet, but there is much more riding on the success of Miranda and the other American women who will go to Athens.
Supporters of women's wrestling hope this is a chance for the smallest of niche sports to gain a toehold in the American consciousness, to dispel the ick factor that seems to dog it, in much the same way women's soccer and hockey used Olympic success to generate grassroots interest.
The National Federation of State High School Associations said that 3,769 girls competed in high school wrestling in 2003, a blip on the sports radar. Only two states — Texas and Hawaii — hold separate girls wrestling state tournaments. In 47 other states, girls wrestle against boys.
Just six colleges have varsity women's wrestling teams — Stanford, where Miranda started in her senior year, is not one of them — but the N.C.A.A. does not yet recognize it as a sport.
Terry Steiner, the national women's coach, believes acceptance of women's wrestling by coaches remains less than 50 percent. "I think they're starting to understand they can't keep shoving it under the rug," Steiner said.
Mike Moyer, the executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association, added: "It's going to require some flexibility on behalf of coaches. Where it is an issue is when boys are wrestling girls."
When Miranda, who wrestled at 125 pounds at Stanford, finally beat a man — during a college tournament in Reno, Nev., she held on to win while shaking from exhaustion — it was such a signal moment that people asked for her autograph.
"It was punctuated well by the fact that there were a couple of people who were like, `Geez, that girl just beat a guy,' " said Levi Weikel-Magden, Miranda's boyfriend and a former Stanford wrestler
One of Steiner's goals for Athens is to uncover heroes who can catapult their sport forward, the way Mia Hamm did for soccer.
In Miranda he has an articulate advocate.
Memory of a Young Mother
As the daughter of a Brazilian father, who was a doctor, and a Japanese mother who emigrated to California from Brazil, Miranda lived in a home with an emphasis on academics, to the exclusion of athletics. The only responsibility the four children had was their homework. They did not even have to make their beds. It was a smooth, easy life.
But when Miranda's mother, Lia, died of an aneurysm at 40, her 10-year-old daughter, unusually mature and driven even then, forged a philosophy that would shape her life.
"The way I was raised was devoid of challenge," Miranda said. "Then we're hit by a parent death. She died at 40 and I'm thinking, `I'm a fourth of the way done with my life if I go when she went.' I came up with a principle: when you're lying on your deathbed, one of the cool things to say is, `I really explored myself.' This sense of urgency was instilled when my mom died. If you only go through life doing stuff that's easy, shame on you.
"When wrestling presented such a challenge, I was primed to accept it."
Her father was not. José Miranda is an amiable man, but when his daughter told him she was studying wrestling, his reaction was swift. It would interfere with schoolwork. She would get hurt. He didn't want her wrestling with boys, anyway. Patricia held up her end of the pact to get straight A's, but her father remained ambivalent, sometimes reading during her matches.
"Patricia did everything herself," José Miranda said. "I may be important as a Freudian figure, maybe it was: `I'm going to beat my father on that.' In reality, I feel ashamed that I see parents do much more for their kids in terms of practice. I never did anything."
In high school, the older boys on the team taunted her, the normal insecurities between the sexes during adolescence writ large. The coach, Lloyd Asato, allowed Miranda on the team but did not shield her. "It was rough for her," Asato said. "I wasn't softening the blow a lot of times. But she's the kind of person if you say no, she says yes and she's going to make it yes."
Miranda would regularly go home with a black eye or bruises on her arms and legs after a rough match or practice. "That's the worst thing they could have done, given my personality," Miranda said.
After practice every day, Miranda sat at her family's table studying until 1 a.m. It was, she says ruefully, the start of her nonsocial life. But her pursuit of wrestling followed a familiar pattern: when she decided to tackle something, she overwhelmed it with a determination that left resistance in tatters. In the classroom, she was the student who sat in the front of the class and asked a lot of questions. She started a conflict-management team at school that was given authority over on-campus incidents. She was a member of the student government. She became the wrestling team captain as a senior.
In high school, before boys are completely grown, Miranda was able to occasionally defeat them in matches. Not in college. She would spend more time lifting weights and running stairs and extra time practicing on the mat, but she could not overcome the greater strength and quickness of young men. She would sometimes go three or four days in a row at Stanford's three-hour practices without scoring a point.
"It was heartbreaking," Miranda said. "That killed me."
One Stanford coach, Chris Horpel, allowed her to join the team as a freshman, but she never got into a match until midseason of her senior year. After one member of the team got hurt and another quit, Miranda became a starter, provoking more consternation from opposing coaches. Although she beat a man just once in competition, in that Reno tournament, it was enough to validate what she had gone through.
"She led by example," said Steve Buddie, another Stanford coach. "What kind of excuse can you come up with if you're a having a bad day or starting to feel lazy to see this woman, and you feel like you've done enough push-ups for the day and she's still doing them? You had a bad day? And you look over and she's getting the crap kicked out of her and she gets up again and grabs another partner and says, `Let's go again.' "
Miranda thrived on the interplay of academics and athletics at Stanford, graduating with honors in five years with a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's in international policy. Her thesis was on the economic causes behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She has deferred an acceptance to Yale Law School until after the Olympics.
Tiring Days and Challenges
Since graduating, Miranda has lived in a spartan dorm room at the Olympic Training Center, and her detailed notes are devoted to her training and her food consumption (2,500 calories a day).
During one grueling practice, she wrestled with the team for 90 minutes, working against a bigger woman who dominated her physically. By the time the session was over, Miranda's hair was dripping with sweat.
Later that day, she jumped rope in sweats before joining the other women for an exhausting session of circuit training in the gym. On some days, she does a light workout in a sauna, to train her body how to sweat profusely when she must drop water weight before a weigh-in (Miranda weighs about 115 pounds, so she must lose 10 pounds before a meet).
She will occasionally train with high school boys, to get used to wrestling someone her own size.
"She wants to fall into bed every night," Steiner said. "Otherwise, she feels like she's wasted time."
Miranda is aware of the role she could play in her sport if she wins — and she figures she will know whether she will retire when she steps off the mat in Athens. Her father admits he does not believe her story himself. "I hope it's not like Orson Welles with `Citizen Kane,' " he said of the director who may have made his greatest film as a young man.
That seems unlikely. Even as she curled in a chair after dinner with some teammates at Steiner's home, still three months removed from the Olympics, she is already pondering the next challenge. On the cusp of achieving one goal, the sense of urgency drives her forward again — this time toward law school.
"I'm excited to start at the bottom somewhere, excited to see if I can graduate at the top of my class," Miranda said. "People say, `Why not stay and enjoy the view and stay on top?' Of the limited time I have here, it's less worthy than going somewhere else and starting at the bottom and seeing if I can get to the top again."
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5/20/2004
Gary Abbott/USA Wrestling
A total of 188 athletes weighed in to compete at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Wrestling in Indianapolis, Ind. on May 20. This included 74 men’s freestyle wrestlers, 70 men’s Greco-Roman wrestlers and 44 women’s freestyle wrestlers.
The biggest news came in the women’s division, where two-time World Champion Kristie Marano (Colorado Springs, Colo./New York AC), the 2004 U.S. Nationals champion, did not make weight at 63 kg/138.75 lbs.
With Marano out of the weight division, U.S. Nationals runner-up Sara McMann (Colorado Springs, Colo./Sunkist Kids) moves into the top seed at the division. That means that McMann will not compete in the Challenge Tournament portion of the competition, and moves directly into the Championship Series portion of the tournament on Sunday.
Marano did weigh-in at the next Olympic weight class, 72 kg/158.5 lbs. Early in her career, Marano competed at the highest women’s weight class at the time, 75 kg/165 lbs., where she won four World silver medals. Marano has won the most World medals of all U.S. women wrestlers with seven.
All of the other top seeded wrestlers in the competition made weight and advanced directly to the Championship Series on Sunday. The top seeds were all the 2004 U.S. Nationals champions, except for McMann and Oscar Wood (Fountain, Colo./U.S. Army). Wood was second at the U.S. Nationals at 66 kg/145.5 lbs. in Greco-Roman, and was moved up to the top seed after U.S. Nationals champion Faruk Sahin accepted a provisional suspension from the U.S. Anti Doping Agency on Tuesday and did not enter the competition.
All of the other athletes who weighed-in were placed in the Challenge Tournament portion of the tournament, which will be held on Friday and Saturday. The winner of the Challenge Tournament at each weight class, which completes on Saturday evening, advances to the Championship Series on Sunday, to face the No. 1 seed in a best-of-three series on Sunday.
There are 17 positions on the U.S. Olympic Team at stake in the Olympic Team Trials (seven men’s freestyle, six men’s Greco-Roman, four women’s freestyle). The U.S. did not qualify for the Olympic Games at 74 kg/163 lbs. in Greco-Roman. That division will be contested in Indianapolis, and the winner does not make the Olympic team, but the results will determine the U.S. national team for the 2004-05 season.
A seeding meeting was held for the Challenge Tournament portion of the competition, and all of the athletes entered were given a seed. This determined the pairings for the tournament for the competition.
There were a few athletes who made changes in their weight divisions, and were placed in the new weight class and seeded accordingly.
The most prominent wrestler to change weight class was T.C. Dantzler (Colorado Springs, Colo./New York AC), a two-time U.S. World Team member in Greco-Roman at 74 kg/163 lbs. Dantzler dropped to 66 kg/145.5 lbs. and received the No. 2 seeding in the Challenge Tournament.
Also dropping down from 74 kg/145.5 lbs. was 2000 Olympian Heath Sims (Huntington Beach, Calif./Dave Schultz WC), who received the No. 4 seed in the Challenge Tournament. Sims competed at 74 kg/163 lbs. earlier this season.
Other prominent wrestlers to drop in weight in Greco-Roman were James Shillow (Quantico, Va./U.S. Marines), who received the No. 3 seed at 60 kg/132 lbs. and Keith Sieracki (Colorado Springs, Colo./U.S. Army), who received the No. 2 seed at 74 kg/163 lbs.
In the women’s division, six-time World Team member Lauren Lamb (Farmington, N.Y./Michigan WC) dropped down to 55 kg/121 lbs. after placing second in the U.S. Nationals at a non-Olympic weight division (59 kg/130 lbs.) Lamb has not competed at this weight level for many years. She received a No. 6 seed in the Challenge Tournament.
There were three weight classes contested at the U.S. Nationals for women’s wrestling that are not included in the Olympic Games. A number of athletes who wrestled at that tournament qualified for the Olympic Team Trials, and had to select an Olympic weight class to wrestle in this weekend. Some of these women dropped down in weight, while others chose to move up.
In men’s freestyle, very few athletes chose to change weight class. Moving down in division was Celso DeAnda (Colorado Springs, Colo./Team Excel), who moved into 60 kg/132 lbs., where he received the No. 9 seed.
Competition on Friday will include the preliminary round, and the quarterfinal round of the Challenge Tournament, along with some consolation rounds. The Challenge Tournament semifinals and finals will be held on Saturday.
Sunday is the Championship Series, with the top seed facing the Challenge Tournament champion in a best-of-three series, with the winner earning a position on the U.S. Olympic Team (at every weight class except 74 kg in Greco-Roman).
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5/21/2004
Indianapolis, Ind.
Entered by Meredith Wilson
Team Scoring
Results By Weight
48 kg/105.5 lbs.
Preliminaries
Julie Gonzalez, Vallejo, Calif. (Dave Schultz WC) vs. Caitlyn Chase, Hanover Park, Ill. (Mat Rats)
Hana Askren, Los Angeles, Calif. (Santa Monica Bay WC) vs. Elizabeth Torres, Kahuku, Hawaii (Pacific Univ.)
Kristen Fujioka, Kaneohe, Hawaii (Team Hawaii) vs. Miriam Jenkins, Quantico, Va. (U.S. Marine Corps)
Quarterfinals
Clarissa Chun, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Gator WC) vs. Gonzalez/Chase winner
Laura Felix, Bakersfield, Calif. (Dave Schultz WC) vs. Katie Kunimoto, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Gator WC)
Sara Fulp-Allen, El Granada, Calif. (Menlo College) vs. Askren/Torres winner
Mary Kelly, Mahomet, Ill. (New York AC) vs. Fujioka/Jenkins winner
55 kg/121 lbs.
Preliminaries
Danielle Hobeika, Forest Grove, Ore. (Dave Schultz WC) vs. Grace Magnussen, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Dave Schultz WC)
Lauren Lamb, Farmington, N.Y. (Michigan WC) vs. Courtney Martell, New Haven, Vt. (Green Mountain WC)
Tina Pihl, Colroado Springs, Colo. (New York AC) vs. Cheryl Wong, Croton, N.Y. (Dave Schultz WC)
Quarterfinals
Tela O'Donnell, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Dave Schultz WC) vs. Hobeika/Magnussen winner
Marcie Van Dusen, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Sunkist Kids) vs. Stephanie Murata, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Sunkist Kids)
Erin Tomeo, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Sunkist Kids) vs. Lamb/Martell winner
Jenny Wong, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Sunkist Kids) vs. Pihl/Wong winner
63 kg/138.75 lbs.
Preliminaries
Tina Arnds, Marshall, Mo. (Missouri Valley) vs. Leigh Jaynes, Burlington, N.J. (New York AC)
Stefanie Shaw, Waterford, Conn. (New England Elite) vs. Mollie Keith, Aurelia, Iowa (Missouri Valley)
Vanessa Oswalt, Mount Vernon, Ohio (SW Force) vs. Iris Mucha, Anchorage, Alaska (Cumberland College)
Tori Adams, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Gator WC) vs. Suekoila Shelly, Hurst, Texas (Cumberland College)
Brandy Rosenbrock, St. Clair Shores, Mich. (Rosenbrock WC) vs. Shelly Ruberg, Ueras, Ohio (Cumberland College)
Quarterfinals
Sally Roberts, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Gator WC) vs. Arnds/Jaynes winner
Shaw/Keith winner vs. Oswalt/Mucha winner
Kaci Lyle, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Sunkist Kids) vs. Adams/Shelly winner
Alaina Berube, Escanaba,Mich. (New York AC) vs. Rosenbrock/Ruberg winner
72 kg/158.5 lbs.
Preliminaries
Ali Bernard, New Ulm, Minn. (Minnesota Storm) vs. Kelly Branham, Apache Junction, Ariz. (Missouri Valley)
Quarterfinals
Stephany Lee, Honolulu, Hawaii (Missouri Valley) vs. Bernard/Branham winner
Iris Smith, Colorado Springs, Colo. (U.S. Army) vs. Nina Vernon, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Gator WC)
Katie Downing, Colorado Springs, Colo. (Sunkist Kids) vs. Randi Miller, Arlington, Texas (Dave Schultz WC)
Kristie Marano, Colorado Springs, Colo. (New York AC) vs. Elena Mena, St. Paul, Minn. (West Side/West End)
