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Wrestler her own toughest competition

Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Lorri SughroueMc Cook Daily Gazette

Jeanie Bayliss, a senior at Southwest High School in Indianola, said competing on the high school wrestling team is challenging mentally as well as physically. The only thing she doesn't like, she said, is what the head gear does to her hair.

"I'm picky about my hair, " she said, "but that's about as girly as I get."

As the only female at her school to play the sport, Bayliss joins a handful of other Nebraska high school girls who are taking to the mats in growing numbers. And they're not alone: nationwide, more than 4,000 girls in the 2003-04 season competed in high school wrestling, according to statistics from the National Federation of High School Associations, the 15th straight year that the numbers have increased.

With the debut of women's wrestling at the 2004 summer Olympics, the sport appears to be gaining in popularity with girls, said Bayliss' coach, Jay Helberg, who said his team has no problem with Bayliss wrestling.

"There's been enough of them wrestling girls from other teams for them to get used to it," he said. "She's just one of the team."

Most of her teammates have grown up knowing her since kindergarten, she said.

"I was playing tag football with them at recess, instead of swinging on the swings with the rest of the girls," she said.

Bayliss first wrestled last year as a junior as a way to stay in shape for track. During that year, she said she had to endure some heavy handed ridicule from a teammate who made it known he didn't like having a girl on the team. But ultimately the harassment had the opposite effect on her, she said, as it made her more determined not to quit and to finish the season.

"I thought I could do everything my brother did," Bayliss said, who grew up substituting as a "practice dummy" when no one else was available, or watching her older brother wrestle.

"I never got the concept that this is a 'boy thing,' or this is 'a girl thing.'"

This year, Bayliss holds a 7 - 7 record but admitted "I'm not really that good -- I get more credit than I deserve because I'm a girl."

Still, she enjoys wrestling because "I'm competing against myself. I let my self down if I lose, instead of the whole team."

And wrestling is not just brute strength, said her coach.

"A lot of wrestling is from the heart," Helberg said. "You may not be the strongest wrestler, but if you can still win matches if you are mentally prepared."

Her opponents usually react to her in one of two ways, Bayliss said: either they wrestle harder than usual, or go easy on her.

"I know what's involved," Bayliss said. " Just 'cause I'm a girl, don't go easy on me." And if she finds herself in an particularly embarrassing position, "I work even harder to get out of it," she said.

"I'm thinking how to get out of a move and to just keep moving," she explained. "I'm not thinking about anything else."

Bayliss said her boyfriend has no problem with her wrestling, as he wrestled in high school and sees it purely as a sport. Plus, "he's not the over-protective type," she said.

Ranked first in her class academically, Bayliss has been offered a Regent Scholarship and would like to study health medicine at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. But for now, she'll finish her second season of wrestling and hope other girls will follow next year.

"It's a Catch-22," she said. "Girls won't try out unless there's a team, but you have to have some girls try out before you have a team," she said.

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Megan breaks into prep wrestling world

By MARK ALTSTAETTER
419-993-2085 12/26/2005
limanews@limanews.com

SPENCERVILLE — A lot of children strive to compete with their older siblings.
In the case of Megan Russell, it was a matter of getting her parents’ permission first.
Russell, a sophomore at Spencerville, is the only female on the Bearcats’ wrestling team. Her brother, Zack, a senior, also competes on the wrestling team and is a two-time district qualifier and a 2005 Northwest Conference champion.
At this past Saturday’s Allen County Wrestling Tournament, Zack Russell garnered a second-place finish in the 125-pound weight class.
His sister, who competes in the 103-pound class, won one of her four matches in the round-robin format. The Bearcats finished third in the 10-team field.
Russell said it took a while before she was granted permission to compete on the boys team.
“My mom finally told me that I could after saying no a bunch of times,” Russell said. “She said it was not a girls sport, but then realized that I could do it.”
Zack said his sister was very persistent on making wrestling her sport.
“She kept asking mom about it, but she thought that it wasn’t a girls sport. She finally gave in to her and let her wrestle this year,” he said.
Megan said she’s been exposed to the sport for quite some time, since her brother frequently used her as a partner when it came time to practice at home.
“He uses me as a dummy at home to practice his wrestling moves,” she said. “That kind of got me motivated.”
Russell has won only three matches so far this season, but she is optimistic that victories will come more frequently as she gains experience.
Russell says she receives a lot of support from her friends, family and even opponents.
“My friends joke around with me and tell me that I’m going to die,” she said. “But they really don’t mean it. They support me. They actually think it’s a good thing that I’m in it. Sometimes people from other teams will wish me good luck.”
Russell competes in the lightest weight class (103), which seems to be the ideal class for her at this point in time. It allows her to lead a near-normal diet — something that is sometimes rare in the sport of wrestling.
“I pretty much can stay with my weight,” she said. “I really don’t have to watch what I eat, but I do kind of watch it. I like the weight class I’m in right now.”
Her brother said it seems odd to see his sister on the team with all of the other guys.
“It’s really different,” he said with a smile. “I’m sure it’s different for them (teammates) too. I think this is the first time we’ve ever had a girl on the wrestling team. But it’s a good experience. Hopefully she’ll learn more along the way.”
Despite knowing how tough conditioning was going to be, Megan still welcomed the challenge with open arms.
“Me and my dad told her that it wasn’t going to be any cakewalk, but she still wanted to come out,” Zack said. “My dad said that if you come out, you can’t quit. You have to stick with it.”
Megan was determined not to give in to the high demands of the sport, as she made it through conditioning.
“Some of my classmates thought I would quit within a couple weeks of practice, but I showed them that I could stand it,” she said.
Spencerville head coach Tom Wegesin said, “Megan originally came out to pick up voids on 103. Usually there are a lot of them (at 103). This year there aren’t very many of them. She’s been learning as we go. So we just have to keep building on it each week and keep getting better, so by the end of the season we will be where we need to be.”
Wegesin said the team has accepted Megan, but at the same time, they haven’t made any exceptions for her.
“She’s not taking anybody’s spot,” Wegesin said. “It’s a thing where they accept her, as far as that goes. They know she has to work on things, (and) they have to work on things. When she’s on the mat, they wrestle hard with her, like they would with anyone else.”
For Megan, it’s an opportunity to do what she’s always wanted to do.
And that’s going out and competing.
“I just want to go out there and have a good time,” Megan said. “It doesn’t matter if I win or lose, as long as I try my best. If I try my best and I can’t win, I’ll let it go. I won’t let it get me down.”

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Female wrestler earns spot with Camels

The Cincinnati Enquirer 12/24/-5

Campbell County wrestling coach Mike Bankemper had no problem putting Priscilla Brownfield in the Camels' starting lineup during the Northern Kentucky Athletic Conference Championships last weekend.

The 18-year-old senior won a wrestle-off in practice for the starting spot, and she proved it wasn't a fluke by placing fourth in the 103-pound weight class at the conference tournament with a 4-2 record.

"Technically, she's sound," Bankemper said. "She's more attentive than most of the guys are in practice. She knows her stuff."

Last year, Brownfield became the first female to break into the varsity starting lineup in the history of the Campbell County wrestling program. She finished the regular season with a winning record, but she lost a wrestle-off in practice to teammate Cory Shotwell for a berth in the regional tournament.

Brownfield has been working hard not to let that happen again this year. If she makes it to the regional tournament and places among the top four in her weight class, she'll set another precedent by becoming Northern Kentucky's first female state qualifier in wrestling.

"My sophomore year I went down and watched (the state tournament) and I saw myself out there," she said. "Ever since then I've been pushing as hard as I can to reach that goal."

Brownfield started wrestling when she was in the seventh grade and came up through the Campbell County feeder program. She never had any qualms about participating in a highly physical contact sport against boys.

"It just feels natural to me and I love the competition," she said. "It's not just a sense of going out and beating boys. It's the satisfaction of knowing I can win against another person."

Last summer, Brownfield competed in a state wrestling tournament for girls. She won the 103-pound weight class and earned a berth in a national tournament.

But she prefers wrestling against boys in high school matches, and she's off to a very successful start this season. She said her current record is 19-4.

"I do like wrestling against boys more because they go harder," she said. "With girls, it's kind of laid back and soft."

Brownfield had to sit out her sophomore year because she dislocated her elbow so badly in a summer wrestling match against a boy.

But she came back to claim a spot in Campbell County's starting lineup, and she's not going to give it up.

"She's a pioneer," coach Bankemper said. "Some of the boys had a hard time handling that at first, but she stuck with it and earned her spot.

"When she injured her elbow some of the boys felt like, 'She's done now. She learned her lesson.' But she came back and proved them wrong."

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U.S. Olympians treated to best technology

By ANN TATKO-PETERSONContra Costa Times 12/26/05

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The video image showed two Alpine skiers speeding down Austria's famed Hahnenkamm course side by side.
Then came a turn and suddenly one skier veered wide to take a slight advantage. Less than a foot separated the skiers on the turn, but Daron Rahlves knew it could make a significant difference in who finished first in the 2004 World Cup event.
Rahlves used the video technology to compare his run against the fastest skier during a practice session. The next day, adjusting his approach on that crucial turn, Rahlves became the first non-Austrian to win a super-G on that course.
"The technology basically lets you put your run under a microscope," Rahlves says. "It's just one of the ways our training is constantly evolving."
More than 5,000 miles from where Rahlves won, that evolution takes place every day at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, the headquarters among five U.S. Olympic training centers, which has stood for 27 years as the cornerstone of success for U.S. Olympians.
It is here that even now, with 47 days until the Winter Games in Turin, Italy, that the Olympic Training Center staff works to provide a multifaceted training ground that may allow the U.S. team to top the 34 medals it won at the 2002 Olympics.
Nestled in a residential area north of downtown, the training center looks like a small college campus, spanning 35 acres with offices, dormitories, gymnasiums, even an upscale cafeteria.
But the signs that this place is different surround those buildings, from the sculpture garden to the lit cauldron that sits on the roof of the visitors' center overlooking Pikes Peak.
The training center houses about 120 resident athletes and nine sports programs, including wrestling, cycling, men's gymnastics, short-track speedskating and volleyball. To be eligible for residency, athletes must rank in the top 10 to 15 percent of their sport.
More than 15,000 athletes -- including some international, through a foreign-exchange program -- pass through the facilities annually for training purposes, said U.S. Olympic Committee sports performance director Steve Rowe.
Elite national team athletes have their board, training and other services fully subsidized by the USOC.
"There's just a feel to this place that's hard to describe," said Malinda Ripley, who trains at the center with the U.S. women's wrestling team. "You know this exists for you, for your goal, and everyone here is aiming for the same goal -- to be an Olympian and hopefully an Olympic medalist."
To that end, the training center is built around its athletes.
Take the dining hall, for example.
Each food station has a sign with colored stars to indicate fat content, as well as breakdowns of carbohydrates, sodium, dietary fiber and protein. That's because different athletes have different nutritional requirements. While a synchronized swimmer and curler has an average daily calorie intake of 2,400, a rower needs 4,200.
Such individual attention is seen throughout the training center:
• At the Athlete Performance Lab, researchers study how to minimize exercise-induced asthma, which affected 25 percent of U.S. medal winners at the 2004 Olympics. They simulate the competitive conditions, such as temperature and humidity, that an athlete may face. They also train athletes using supplemental oxygen to negate training at Colorado Springs' high altitude.
"That's how I gauged the recovery time I needed," said Mark Fretta, a triathlete and resident athlete since 2001. "I used the supplemental oxygen a week before a race and nailed the time I wanted. The workout was great, but I needed more recovery time. I was toast by the race."
• In biomechanics and engineering, researchers use thermal imaging to help athletes deal with inflammation. They also shoot high-speed video so athletes can analyze their performances, such as an archers' release.
• On the shooting range, tech coordinator Tim Conrad can fit a laser on the end of an athlete's rifle to monitor shot progression.
• The sports medicine clinic has all the bells and whistles: a rehabilitation room -- known as the "Big Playroom" -- with wall-to-wall therapy equipment; a vision lab, where elite athletes receive free contact lenses; a dental lab, where athletes are fitted for custom mouth guards; and an aquatics rehab room with a cold-plunge pool and Swim Ex, which allows injured athletes to conduct low-impact workouts in a warm-water pool.
In January 1996, Greco-Roman heavyweight wrestler Matt Ghaffair fractured his tibia. He used the Swim Ex for all of his training until a week before he competed in the Olympic trials.
Olympic speedskating gold medalist Apolo Anton Ohno has enough funding from endorsements to live and train wherever he chooses. He remains at the training center for the privacy and services.
"Everything you need is a short walk away," he said. "The only downside is that it's like living in a college dorm."
Most rooms are double-resident suites, with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a sitting room with a television, couch and refrigerator. Recently, Hilton Hotels remodeled the rooms with its patented sleep system full-size beds, darkening blinds and ergonomic desk chairs.
"It's more homey now," Ohno said, "but it's basically like a sleeping chamber."
The high altitude deters some athletes from living and training at the center, but even at other locations, athletes such as Rahlves still benefit from the in-competition technology perfected at the center. In 2006, the USOC also hopes to open a recovery center to further help athletes with rehabilitation.
And at the 2006 Winter Olympics, the U.S. athletes will have access to the on-site training center staff, including at least seven sports psychologists and 30 medical staff members.
This is the kind of centralized training that Rowe is trying to instill in the U.S. program. He credits that type of training for the rising Olympic success in the Asian countries.
"Centralized training doesn't necessarily mean you have to train on-site at the Olympic Training Center seven days a week, 12 months a year," Rowe said. "A lot of our high-performance training takes place here and then is utilized by athletes outside the center. Centralized training really means that all athletes have access to the same services if they want them."

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