Toccara Montgomery wrestles at the Olympic Games in Athens
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By Robin Hindery 12/20/04
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Toccara Montgomery wrestles at the Olympic Games in Athens |
In Toccara Montgomery's opinion, female wrestlers are a lot like pitbulls.
"People have images and perceive them a certain way but don't really know a lot about them," she said. "And they just base their judgments on negative things they've heard or seen."
Montgomery knows what she's talking about. The 21-year-old is not only the fiercely devoted owner of three pitbulls — Xavier, Vegas and Coco — but, more importantly, she is also a member of the country's heavily scrutinized, first-ever women's Olympic wrestling team.
Sitting in the Waldorf=Astoria hotel in New York City one afternoon in mid-October, Montgomery still had a glow about her left over from the Olympic Games in Athens two months earlier where she and three other young women represented the United States in a sport that was until recently almost exclusively male. Though she didn't go home with a medal, she has fond memories of the experience.
"You know, leading up to the Games you just sort of imagine how things are going to turn out," she said, "but it wasn't close to how I had pictured it. It was so much more."
The idea of women's wrestling has yet to gain wide acceptance in the United States, where only two states — Hawaii and Texas — have created women-only high school teams and only six colleges offer women's varsity wrestling. Though Montgomery said the sport has been embraced more and more as time goes on, there is still a long way to go.
"I've traveled to Canada, I've traveled to Japan, and the fan base and support for women's wrestling — in Japan, it's bigger than men's wrestling!" she said. Back in the United States, she said, people often have "some derogatory or stereotypical idea" of women's involvement in the sport.
She felt the reception she and her teammates received in Athens was warm, however, and she hopes those first women's Olympic competitions opened some doors for future female wrestlers.
"I think I'm going to try to keep going to 2008," she said, referring to the next summer games in Beijing, "but hopefully after that I can sit back and watch and see how women's wrestling is growing. It's something you're happy to see: you're not the only one anymore, and it's just a little bit easier for those girls who are getting involved now."
Montgomery's path to the top echelon of women's wrestling was somewhat accidental. She was always active in sports, and when co-ed wrestling arrived at her Cleveland, Ohio, high school when she was 16, she decided on a whim to "go down and give it a shot to see what it was about," she said.
Montgomery battles it out on the mat. |
Her coach immediately recognized her potential, and with his encouragement, she decided to make wrestling her focus. The team consisted of about eight girls and 20 boys, and she partnered with and competed against males, since only one other team in the league had a female member.
"At that time I didn't know it was a big deal for girls to be wrestling," she said. "Those first couple years were really trying because a lot of people didn't like the idea of females wrestling males. But I definitely got to a point where I was like, 'I may be able to do something great in this sport.'"
Since then she has steadily progressed toward the pinnacle of her 158-pound competition class. Her family and friends have been hugely supportive along the way, she said, though it took some of them a little while to come around and accept that she was sticking with wrestling in spite of the obstacles.
But there is still one face missing in the crowd at every match: that of her father, Paul, who is serving 30 years to life in an Ohio prison for a double murder in 1998. Montgomery was only 15 at the time and had yet to discover the passion that would come to define her young life.
"He still to this day hasn't seen me wrestle," she said, a cloud passing over her normally shining brown eyes. "That's kind of disappointing, because you know I was always kind of a daddy's girl growing up, and so I've always wanted him to at least see a match."
For now, she settles for sending him postcards from the various destinations she visits with her Cumberland College (Ky.) team. And she credits him for helping shape her into an athlete who knows how to push herself, thanks to both his constant encouragement and also his guidance in all of her childhood activities.
Of course, even top athletes need an extra boost of support from time to time, and for Montgomery that comes from her four-legged companions. The pitbulls are spoiled, she said, but, like her, they understand all too well what it's like to be prejudged and misunderstood.
"They're just the greatest dogs," she said, the sparkle returning to her eyes. "They just accept you, good days or bad days, and I think that's something everybody needs."