News Page

Wrestling with her Olympic dream

Stanford grad Miranda hopes to grab gold medal in Athens before entering Yale Law School

By Jeff Faraudo, STAFF WRITER 8/1/04

When her career began way back in middle school, Olympic freestyle wrestler Patricia Miranda learned to cope with all the rest of what came with the sport. She convinced her father that her grades wouldn't suffer, and that neither would she.
She gradually came to grips with the fact that the sport hurt, and featured a level of aggression she had never encountered. She reconciled herself that on school teams she would have to compete against boys and, eventually, men because there were no other girls or women willing to try.

There were taunts, of course, and Miranda learned to dismiss them. All except one -- the accusation that she was a joke.

That one she couldn't let go because it made her wonder.

"It was the type of thing that could have damn well been true," Miranda said. "It didn't make me want to quit. It made me want to figure it out. Yeah, I was delusional for 10 years."

Miranda, 25, who grew up in Saratoga and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford, is a joke no more. She will wrestle in the 105.5-pound weight class in the first Olympic women's wrestling competition at Athens, and the punch line she delivers may be a gold-medal performance.

Irini Merleni of Ukraine, who defeated Miranda 5-4 for the title at the 2003 World Championships in New York City, is considered the favorite. But Miranda beat her 7-1 just a few months before and ranks as no worse than a close No.2 contender for the gold.

"Her weight class is probably the deepest. She'll have to be on, no doubt," USA women's coach Terry Steiner said. "But given

how history will kind of repeat itself, she usually peaks at the right time."

Miranda embraces her role as something of a pioneer in women's wrestling, someone who may inspire young girls to try something new. And she is more than comfortable with the lofty expectations others project on her.

"For so many years I went to a match, and people would look at me like I was about to die," she said. "Now people say, 'You can win.' It's a much more happy attitude. That pressure, those expectations ... I'm totally excited. It doesn't feel like a burden to me."

Even from the start, facing fears of the unknown and tackling something for which she had little natural aptitude never was so much a burden for Miranda as it was a seductive challenge she could not resist.

That day she followed a group of her friends -- all boys -- to a seventh-grade wrestling tryout at Redwood Middle School, it didn't take her long to feel out of place.

"At the time, I really don't think it was more than I was a real curious kid," Miranda recalled. "As kids, we weren't that violent or aggressive. It really did shock me.

"But I responded well to challenges. And if something scared me, it was obviously something that was going to give me the chance to improve myself. I knew I had to go back at least until I learned how to fight."

Jose Miranda wasn't so sure. Patricia's father, an immigrant from Brazil and a physician, cultivated a different atmosphere in his home. Education was Priority 1, and that didn't change when his wife died, leaving him in charge of four young children.

"My wife took care of everything," he said. "Whatever the kids had to do, I was completely unrelated to it. So I didn't know anything."

Certainly he didn't know wrestling, and he wondered how Patricia -- "she's the least

athletic of the four" -- would fit.

Even Steiner, the USA coach, suggested that Miranda is an unlikely star.

"Wrestling's a blue-collar sport," he said. "Patricia grew up in a luscious life, a very affluent family. She had the softest pillows, the thickest steaks.

"It's that thing she is not comfortable with. She doesn't want to live her life like that. She wants to live on the edge, wants to be constantly expanding herself."

Jose Miranda came to understand that quickly.

"She's a very focused person and has this capacity of selecting a few things and going and doing it," he said. "I think wrestling attracted her because she had to prove herself. When she showed me she could go to wrestling practice and keep her grades up, I couldn't much oppose."

Typically wrestling against boys at least 10 pounds heavier than her, Miranda won as often as she lost at Saratoga High. Then came Stanford, where her testing ground most often was in practice. Rarely did she break into the men's lineup for matches -- and she never won.

"College was very trying because I didn't have a whole lot of success," she said. "The boys hit maturity, and they're amazingly strong. They get that man strength.

"My emotions never wavered. I knew I wasn't going to walk away. But getting my body to respond to what my mind told it, that was pretty difficult for me."

Finally, as a senior, Miranda had a breakthrough -- a 7-3 victory over a male opponent.

Now she had an answer to the question that so long had haunted her: Was she a joke? Apparently not.

She recalled it as "a neat moment," but her celebration was muted.

"I had a humbling respect for this because I did lose so often," she said. "I had people celebrating (victories over her). Losing in wrestling sucks. The loss is enough."

Miranda's father confirmed that was the moment his daughter finally felt justified as a wrestler. It wasn't enough, he believes, that she already had built a legitimate international rsum as a female wrestler, earning a silver medal at the 2000 World Championships.

"More than that was the

respect she was looking for ... I

think from herself," her father said.

The education continued after Miranda received her bachelor's degree in economics and a master's in international relations from Stanford. She won the 2003 Pan Am Games title, then grappled briefly with self-doubt after losing in the finals of the World Championships late last year.

"Maybe I'm not meant to do this," she told her coach afterward.

Steiner knew it was little more than frustration in the heat of the moment. Miranda has put too much into this, he said, to surrender now.

"I heard her say one day, 'I never want to go to bed and be staring at the walls.' She wants to fall into bed exhausted," he said. "She's lived her life to excellence, and it'll be no different in her relationships, her career, as a mother someday.

"I told her, 'If you're not meant to be an Olympic gold medalist, no one at this (Colorado Springs, Colo., training) complex is.'"

In Athens, Miranda will wrestle matches in her preliminary pool Aug.22, hoping to advance to the semifinals and gold-medal match the following day. By Sept.3, she must be in New Haven, Conn., to register for the start of law school at Yale, with classes beginning Sept.7.

Jose Miranda worries that the Olympic coaches might try to convince his daughter to stay with the sport, perhaps part time. "They don't understand that Patricia never does anything half time."

It will be time to move on, Patricia confirmed. "It's part of my personality to try to climb one mountain, then throw myself to the bottom of another," she said.

--------------------------------------------------------

A surprise from Alaska
Homer wrestler O'Donnell is an unexpected contender

By MERI-JO BORZILLERI 8/1/04
The Gazette (COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Wrestler Tela O'Donnell lives in a dorm room at the U.S. Olympic Training Center, a long way from home.

Home is Homer, Alaska, where gender barriers are as rare as sunshine in winter.

"There's nothing you can't do," said Tela's mom, Claire O'Donnell.

Including be a woman and wrestle.

Tela has made Homer, a place where the sun shines five hours a day in winter, feel warm all over. She's the first Summer Olympian in Homer's history, making the 2004 Olympic team in late May, about six weeks before fellow Homer resident Stacey Borgman made the Olympics in rowing. Women's wrestling makes its Olympic debut in Athens.

Her high school principal, who doubles as a wrestling coach, and her mom are among those planning the trip from Homer.

"Of course I am," Claire said. "I would go in a casket if I had to."

To get there, Tela pinned national champion and world No. 2 Tina George twice in one of the trials' biggest surprises.

Another surprise - Tela did it in her first year on the U.S. national team.

Don't expect her to follow the crowd. She learned by example the value of going her own way. Homer can do that to a person.

It's a town of 5,000 about 200 miles south of Anchorage, where Alaska Highway 1 (the Seward Highway) dead-ends in a five-mile sand spit that pokes into Kachemak Bay, part of the Gulf of Alaska.

Homer is known as the place "where the road ends and the sea begins," said Susan Cushing, wife of Homer's mayor.

It's also where Tela got started, born to a single mother who spent five years clearing her own land and building a two-story house for the two of them.

"My mom's really tough," Tela said. "She doesn't do things conventionally."

Pregnant with Tela, Claire O'Donnell lashed a pillow to her belly to keep the chainsaw's growl from causing harm to her child's ears.

"You need a house, you build it," Claire said by phone from Homer. "You're a woman, so what? So wrestling wasn't an appropriate sport for women. So what? You just follow your heart's desire. That's what I liked about Homer."

Their homestead, shared with chickens, horses, turkeys and sheep, is one of two homes on a shared 40-acre parcel of land 10 miles from town down a dirt road.

It's so remote, Claire has to think a moment before remembering the house number in her address. When she went into labor with Tela, Claire had to change a flat first before driving herself to the hospital.

Wilderness was the back yard. One afternoon, Tela watched a grizzly climb up their porch and peek in the window.

Before Tela started wrestling in eighth grade, she tussled with sheep so her mom could shear them.

"The poor sheep," Claire said. "She would wrestle it to the ground and would hold it there. I was terribly slow, but I didn't hurt the sheep."

Fences were few. If Tela wanted to ride her pet horse, Wingo, she'd have to yell and maybe hike for a couple of hours to find him.

Tela worked summers at Tutka Bay Lodge, a wilderness lodge where she was a groundskeeper and cook. Sometimes she'd work a salmon drift net.

"It was a nice place to grow up," said Tela, who started high school in Homer but later graduated from Nikiski High School.

Homer runs in her veins. It is present in her dorm room, where her guitar is just a request away, and Alaska figurines occupy conspicuous posts on her countertops.

It's present in her photo album, eagerly produced to show a visitor pictures of a remote community with a stunning shoreline and big sky.

"She's a free spirit," U.S. women's coach Terry Steiner said.

It's there too, in the haunting despair of one of her oil paintings, a portrait of an elderly man working as a janitor because he can't afford to retire.

A sign proclaims Homer the "Halibut Fishing Capital of the World." Salmon fishing is big, too, and tourism. It is located on Kachemak Bay.

"I'm not used to cities," Tela said. "I like the woods. I'm pretty independent."

O'Donnell hadn't been back in almost two years, until a celebration in mid-July. But Homer had not forgotten her.

A bouquet of flowers, sent by the town's city council, sat on a table of her dorm room in June. Days before, Homer's chamber of commerce sent a big envelope with Homer promotional materials, a newspaper clipping of its recent high school graduation (she knew some kids getting diplomas), and a Homer hat and pin.

"That's so sweet," she said, opening the package in the training center dining hall.

"We follow our children closely, and when they make it this far we certainly want to make them recognize they're exceptional," said Jack Cushing, Homer's mayor.

When asked, Tela points out she's not Homer's biggest celebrity. There's singer Jewel (Jewel Kilcher), and Tom Bodett, the Motel 6 guy.

Claire was a mime in Chicago who studied under Marcel Marceau before moving to Homer.

"Homer's a good place to raise a kid but not to be a mime," Tela said.

So Claire switched to landscaping and dried flower arrangements. She didn't utter a peep when her daughter played junior varsity football, or started wrestling in eighth grade.

Tela washed out at football, where she played safety and some guard, and didn't do well at soccer either. In fact, she didn't like sports in general.

"I'd try to hide during recess," she said.

Junior high teacher Deb Lowney knew how to reach Tela. Compete against yourself, she said. Find a sport where you can express your individuality.

First it was running. Then it was wrestling. Now she's going to the Olympics, and taking a big chunk of Homer with her on her odyssey to Athens.

Said the mayor: "We're proud of her."

------------------------------------------------------

Wrestler Toccara Montgomery can visualize gold medal presentation

M.R. KROPKO 7/31/04

Associated Press

CLEVELAND - When Toccara Montgomery first became intrigued with wrestling as a sophomore in high school, her goal was to eventually be good enough to stop losing matches against boys.

Now the 21-year-old senior at Cumberland College, in Williamsburg, Ky., doesn't mind saying she often visualizes herself at a medals ceremony in the Summer Olympics in Athens.

"It's been playing back in my head, me standing on the podium, with my medal on, maybe holding flowers and just the anthem playing with the flag over my head," she said recently in Cleveland, her hometown. "It's something I'm looking forward to."

Montgomery, one of four members of the first U.S. Olympic women's wrestling team, is widely considered to be a strong contender for gold. She won a championship in the 2003 Pan American Games. She has lost some matches but also has won at least once over each of her main competitors in international events for her weight class, up to 158.5 pounds.

"It's really a tough weight class, but I feel confident. We'll see," she said.

USA Wrestling's National Women's coach Terry Steiner, responsible for training America's best women freestyle wrestlers, has no doubt that Montgomery will be focused and ready.

"Toccara has proven herself as a definite gold medal contender. She was second in the world championships last year. She just beat a six-time world champ from Canada. I don't know if she is a gold medal favorite, but she is definitely highly regarded," Steiner said.

"I think her biggest asset is her demeanor, how calm and collected she is even under the most stressful circumstance," he said

This year's Olympics is the first to include women's wrestling.

"If you don't follow women's wrestling at all, there would be a lot of people who don't know it exists," Steiner said. "There have been world championships for about 20 years. So the Olympics was bound to happen sooner or later."

The opportunity has inspired Montgomery.

"It was about two years ago women's wrestling was accepted to the 2004 Olympic Games, and I thought, 'Wow, I might have an opportunity to compete!' So I started to get my training centered on Athens as my primary goal," she said.

At Cleveland East Tech under coach Kip Flanik, she tried out for the wrestling team as a personal challenge she thought might be fun. There were few if any other girl wrestlers on opposing teams. Losing to boys did not dim her spirit, and by her junior year she started winning.

By her senior year, Flanik found national girls' wrestling competitions for her to try.

"He told me I had a talent, and if I wanted to pursue something greater in the sport he would help me get to as many women's tournaments as possible. I still wrestled about eight matches my senior year against guys and I won all of them," she said.

After high school, she went to Cumberland on scholarship. Soon after she made that decision the college's coaching job for women's wrestling opened up, and Flanik was hired.

The team had about eight girls her first year and about 27 last year. "Everyone at Cumberland has been really supportive," Montgomery said.

She is majoring in elementary education.

"I really like kids, and I think second grade is really when they have learned the basics and are really starting to use more learning skills and abstract thinking, and I really want to work with them," she said.

For now, she educates her three pet pit bulls, Coco, Xavier and Vegas.

"They are my babies. They are sweeties," Montgomery said, breaking into a wide grin. "Pit bulls in a way are a lot like women's wrestling. You hear so many things and you don't know what to believe. A lot of times you get just the negative. I believe pit bulls are a great dog.

"They will grow up the way you raise them. I raise my pit bulls to be gentle, kind and loving dogs, and that's just what they are. Wherever I'm at, they're at."

But they won't be with her in Athens, although she lobbied to take at least one. The dogs may have to stay in Cleveland with her parents, Paul and Tara Montgomery.

Her mother said she was worried about Montgomery's safety when she started wrestling.

"I've always been proud of her, no matter what she has done," Mrs. Montgomery said. "I'm glad she is blessed to have gotten as far as she has gotten in this sport."

-------------------------------------------------

Women's wrestling has firm hold

By Heath Hotzler
The Forum - 07/30/2004

Caitlyn Chase has always dreamed of competing for an Olympic gold medal
in women's wrestling.

Even as her sport -- long considered a side show to men's competition
-- wasn't considered for Olympic inclusion, Chase held out hope she could
one day represent the United States.

However, the reasons for the 17-year-old's undying devotion to the
sport are a bit surprising.

"When I was young, I didn't even realize it wasn't an Olympic sport,"
said Chase, who will compete today in the USA wrestling junior-level women's
freestyle tournament at the Fargodome. "It's just always been a goal
for me."

Women's wrestling will finally be recognized as an Olympic sport during
this summer's games in Athens, Greece.

So, Chase's naivety saved her years of torment.

Not that her devotion would have ever been shaken by her sport's prior
Olympic standing.

"I was always one to look for a challenge," Chase said. "I tried all
the other sports and wrestling, it was the one thing that was hard for me."

Chase, who began wrestling at 10, is just one of several girls
competing at the USA wrestling tournament who could one day make the U.S. Olympic
team.

Stephanie Shaw, a 17-year-old from Connecticut, finished fourth in her
weight class at the U.S. Olympic Trials earlier this year.

Shaw, whose father and brother both wrestled, started wrestling against
boys at age 7.

Being the only female on the team took some getting used to, Shaw said.

"It was real rough," she said. "Now, everyone of the team is like my
brother. They take care of me."

Shaw said she hopes to make the U.S. Olympic team in 2008.

Amberle Montgomery also has the Olympic dream.

"I think (women's wrestling in the Olympics) is the beginning of
women's wrestling," she said. "I think it is going to open a lot of doors and
hopefully open up a lot of college opportunities."

There are currently just a handful of college women's wrestling teams
in the United States.

Mary Kelly, a assistant women's coach for Team Illinois and a former
competitor at the USA tournament, said an Olympic presence should help
increase the popularity of the sport.

Even more important, people will see just how intense women's wrestling
can be, Chase said.

"I think people will eventually understand how hard women work," Chase
said. "They will understand that we work just as hard as the men out there."

---------------------------------------------------------------

BY SEAN JENSEN

Pioneer Press 7/25/04

Briefly: Woodbury High School graduate Jenny Wong lost in the challenge tournament at the women's national team trials this week for non-Olympic weights. Coupled with her finish at the Olympic trials, Wong is not eligible for national team funding anymore. Ali Bernard of New Ulm (Minn.) High School lost to former Minnesota-Morris wrestler Katie Downing in the final of the 147.5-pound weight class. Downing won the first match 7-0, then the second by pinning Bernard.

------------------------------------------------------

Wrestling in family's blood

By Brian Cox, Staff Writer 8/1/04

Pinning opponents is a way of life for Victor Caballero and his kids,
Nikki and Adam.

Nikki has been wrestling since she was 7; Adam since he was 4.

"I’ve always had my kids wrestling," says Victor. "Even in the
off-season."

Their experience has paid off over the years.

Nikki took fourth place in the nation as a high school freshman the
same year then 14-year-old Adam placed first in the state in freestyle and
Greco-Roman wrestling.

Wrestling is something of a family tradition.

Their father wrestled when he was in high school, as did his four
younger brothers. One of Victor‘s brothers recently won a national wrestling
tournament at the age of 30.

That the sport is a passion in the Caballero family is evident by the
trophies from past wresting tournaments that line two shelves in Adam’s
room and by the medals that fill a top dresser drawer and the wrestling
magazines piled on a living room table.

In one of the magazines, the May 30, 2004, issue of Wrestling USA,
Nikki, who just graduated from Milan High School and was a co-captain on the
varsity wrestling squad, is pictured after being named to the
magazine’s 2004 All-American Wrestling team.

"It was a surprise," says Nikki.

Recently, Nikki earned a berth on the Michigan Wrestling Federation
Junior National Women’s team, which will travel to Fargo, North Dakota, next
week to compete in the national championships. Only 18 wrestlers made the
team. Nikki will wrestle at 128.

It’s an opportunity Nikki has awaited all her life.

"We’ll be wrestling the best from each state," says Nikki. "Only the
best wrestlers in the state go."

Being a female wrestler has not always been easy, says Nikki. Some male
opponents have laughed at her; some parents have said "pretty mean
things." But she has persevered through it all, wrestling all four years in high
school as a Milan Big Red.

"It can be frustrating being a girl on the wrestling team," says Nikki.
"You’re wrestling guys in practice that are 160 and you’re 130. But
having my brother on the team inspired me to keep going."

Nikki and Adam wrestle "all the time," says Nikki. She and her brother
wrestled at the same weight class last year; they wrestled each other
in practice.

"Adam makes me a better wrestler," says Nikki.

At a tournament in Cincinnati in late May, Adam took third overall
while Nikki placed first in the girls division. Her medal is almost four
times the size of Adam’s, but he doesn’t seem to mind – too much.

After all, he’s got dozens of medals. He is currently the only Milan
High School wrestler to have won the league championship three years in a
row. This year, he’s "gunning" for his fourth, he says.

But he wants more than that, too.

"I want to be the state champ," he says. "The school’s never had one."

If the opportunity presented itself, Nikki says she would consider
wrestling in college. Missouri Valley College called a few weeks ago to see if
she would be interested. That might be a possibility, but the options for
collegiate wrestling for women are not many.

"Women’s wrestling is growing," says Nikki, "but it’s still got a ways
to go."

"There’s not enough opportunities in women wrestling," says her father.
"But right now we’re taking a wait-and-see attitude."

Who knows, he says, something might happen.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Minnesota native takes charge of SGP's wrestling program

05:11 PM CDT on Saturday, July 24, 2004

By RANDY JENNINGS / The Dallas Morning News

Shawn Hoover takes over the South Grand Prairie wrestling program with
a five-year plan in mind.

"I truly believe within five years, we will be competing for a state
title," Hoover said by telephone Thursday from Minnesota as he prepared for the
move to Texas.

He traded in a job as a wrestling assistant in Eden Prairie, Minn., to
come to the Grand Prairie ISD.

The decision to leave his native Minnesota wasn't an easy one. Tough
economic times for teachers in his native state caused him to widen his
search for a coaching job.

"I'm giving up a lot, but I look at this move as a challenge," said
Hoover, who will leave behind an 11-year-old daughter from his first marriage.
"It is pretty stressful, though."

After talking to his South Grand Prairie predecessors, Clyde Sebastian,
who resigned after one season to accept a job in Hawaii, and Mike Eaton,
the coach for six years, Hoover said his biggest challenge is to increase
the number of wrestlers in the program.

"If you have a successful program, kids want to be involved," Hoover
said. "The athletes have to respect the coach. The kids I've coached in the
past would run through walls because they knew I cared about them."

In March, the wrestling program had its best showing at state, with one
champion (Crystal Molinar) and two state finalists. The South Grand
Prairie girls finished fifth in the state in the team division.

"Shawn was a wrestling All-American in college, which gives him a lot
of creditability," South Grand Prairie campus athletic coordinator David
Fisher said. "He's a very good addition to our faculty, too."

Coaching, Hoover said, is his way of giving back to the sport that he
loves.

"I'd do it for free," he said.

Driving 45 miles one way to Eden Prairie from his home in Hanover for a
minimal salary last year was proof of that, Hoover said.

Hoover said he doesn't anticipate coaching in a new state to be a
problem.

But there will be one big change. In coming to South Grand Prairie,
Hoover will be in charge of a girls wrestling team for the first time. There
was no irls division in Minnesota, and the girls he coached wrestled in the
same division with boys.

Hoover is a believer in the benefits of wrestling.

"It really isn't about winning as much as what is gained by
participation," Hoover said. "After going through wrestling, any job that comes along
later in life looks like a piece of cake."

SHAWN HOOVER

Job title: South Grand Prairie wrestling coach

Age: 33

College wrestling experience: Arizona State, Anoka-Ramsey (Minn.)
Community
College, Mayville (N.D.) State

Masters: University of Minnesota

Coaching experience: 12 years, two as head coach

Hobby: Competitive bodybuilder