News Page
Hutchisons could make history
Area athletes eyeing glory at state wrestling championships
By WILL MORROW
Peninsula Clarion 2/3/06
|
|
The biggest wrestling meet of the year kicks off today, and there could be big things in store as the state’s top 4A wrestlers meet at Chugiak High School for the state championship tournament.
“We’re real excited,” said Skyview coach Neldon Gardner. “We’re getting ready to head up there and end the season in a positive manner.”
The Panthers certainly have plenty to be excited about. Skyview is one of the top teams in the state and is in the running for a top-three finish, and a pair of Skyview wrestlers, 103-pounder Michaela Hutchison and 135-pounder Eli Hutchison, are on the verge of some remarkable individual accomplishments.
Michaela, a sophomore, has the potential to become the first girl in the country to win a state wrestling title competing with boys while Eli, a senior, is poised to become the first wrestler in state history to finish his high school career without losing a match in Alaska.
Gardner said his team wasn’t focused on individual records as much as individual performances. Everyone in the mat room will be pulling for the Hutchisons, but each wrestler also will be working toward his or her own goals.
“Wrestling is such an individual sport. We’re there for the team, and we really focus on the team aspect, but we also tell the kids it’s an individual sport. You have to be there for yourself as well. You put too much into it, too much blood, sweat and tears, if you’re not in it for yourself, you’re in it for the wrong reasons,” Gardner said.
Kenai Central High School will send six wrestlers to the meet after the Kardinals didn’t qualify a single wrestler a season ago. Leading the way for Kenai is Michael Dormady, who scored a major upset to win the conference title at 189 pounds last week.
“We had just a terrific region tournament. We’re still riding high,” said Kenai coach David Boyle.
While Dormady and 275-pounder Mitchell Canavan enter the tournament as conference champions, the rest of Kenai’s qualifiers are young and still gaining experience.
“We’ll get in there, see what we can do, go have some fun and look ahead to future years,” Boyle said.
Soldotna has three wrestlers making the trip to Chugiak, and Homer will send five.
Gardner said that while Wasilla and South Anchorage have an edge in the team competition due to their depth, at the state meet, anything can happen. When the Panthers won a state title in 1999, the team had placed second in the region.
“Odder things have happened in the past. There’s 18 or 19 other teams. We could knock them off if we hit it just right. If we place eight to 10 kids in the top six, we could be in the top three,” Gardner said.
“Sitka has a good team, so does Colony and Chugiak. Kodiak is looking as strong as I’ve seen them in years. West Valley is about like us, with 11 or 12 going to state and four or five really good kids ranked No. 1 or 2 ... I just don’t know how it’s going to shake out.”
Alaska School Activities Association/First National Bank State 4A Wrestling Meet
Friday and Saturday at Chugiak High School
Kenai Peninsula Qualifiers
103 — Michaela Hutchison, Skyview; John Hughes, Kenai.
112 — Alex Janorschke, Skyview; Chris Osbekoff, Kenai.
119 — Robert Brymer, Homer; Tom Appelhanz, Homer.
125 — Simeon Daigle, Homer; Luke Morse, Skyview.
135 — Eli Hutchison, Skyview.
140 — Shane Strausbaugh, Skyview; Cody Booth, Kenai.
145 — Clark Buffington, Skyview.
152 — Michael Burlison, Skyview; Erick Morris, Soldotna; Tristan Brymer, Homer.
160 — Eddie Buffington, Skyview; Jaron Dambacher, Kenai.
171 — Eric Rodgers, Skyview.
189 — Michael Dormady, Kenai; Josh Carlon, Skyview.
215 — Nick Hann, Skyview; Jose Gomez, Soldotna.
275 — Mitchell Canavan, Kenai; Matt Strieby, Soldotna; Michael Fielding, Homer.
--------------------------------------------
Grappling for respect -
All-girls tournament in Sitka shows growing impact of women in sport
ALASKA GIRLS WRESTLING 1/19/06
Every year students at Sitka High are required to create senior projects before graduating.
But this year, Abby Gillaspie's project means more to her than just a routine senior assignment -- it's a call-out to all Alaska girls who wear singlets, thrive for mat respect and compete in the only high school sport where girls physically battle one-on-one against boys.
Gillaspie, who wrestles at 119 pounds for Sitka, dubbed the project, "How to create an all-girls wrestling tournament."
She has logged more than 50 hours since taking on the task in November 2004.
And now Gillaspie will determine her project's success by how many girls visit Sitka, a Southeast town of 8,835, next month.
"This has been really hard," Gillaspie said. "How do you get girls to show up on an island out in the middle of nowhere?"
That's easy. Invite two 2004 Olympians -- Tela O'Donnell and Sara McMann -- and provide classic Southeast entertainment, such as wildlife boat cruises in Sitka Sound and tours at the Alaska Raptor Center.
"It's not all about coming to Sitka to wrestle," said Sitka athletic director Steve Gillaspie, Abby's father. "It's about coming to visit Southeast Alaska."
O'Donnell and McMann, who are scheduled to host a wrestling clinic Feb. 10 at Sitka High, inspired America and many of its female wrestlers at the Summer Games in Athens, where women's wrestling made its Olympic debut.
McMann of Chicago became the first woman to record an Olympic pin for Team USA.
And O'Donnell of Homer was one of the first girls to break the girls high school wrestling barrier in Alaska.
When O'Donnell reached the Olympics, she inadvertently encouraged girls, like Gillaspie, Audri Pleas of Eagle River and phenom Michaela Hutchison of Skyview, to strive for their best.
"We're starting to see more girls wrestling," said Skyview head wrestling coach Neldon Gardner. "Especially when you have an Olympic team."
The Alaska School Activities Association is not sponsoring the Feb. 10-11 event, but the United States Girls Wrestling Association is, Gillaspie said.
The organization is calling it the USGWA Alaska Girls State Championship Open.
"I wasn't in charge of the name," Gillaspie said, laughing. "Otherwise I would have tried to come up with something a little cooler and easier to say."
GIRLS WRESTLE TOO
Gillaspie expects 50 to 60 girl wrestlers, from kindergarten to college, to make the trip to Sitka. Last year, 19 showed up at Homer's all-girls tournament.
The wrestler Gillaspie most wants to make the trip is Hutchison, the 103-pounder who as a freshman was the first girl in Alaska to make it to the final round in the Class 4A state championship.
Hutchison's impressive finish and O'Donnell's Olympic appearance have helped put girls wrestling on the map. They give girls hope that they can compete in a sport that has been dominated by boys.
"It's naturally a guys sport," Gillaspie said. "The majority are boys, but it's slowly beginning to turn into a girls sport."
These days, females go toe-to-toe more often against their counterparts.
Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie have golfed on the men's PGA Tour, Danica Patrick races cars in the male-dominated Indy Racing League, and Giuliana Mendiola plays basketball against men in the American Basketball Association.
But no other coed sport matches the physical contact and pain of wrestling.
Hutchison, a sophomore who's ranked No. 1 in the state at 103 pounds, said wrestling against boys is no big deal anymore.
"Whatever," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "I just try to go hard."
She will get tips from her older brother, Eli Hutchison, who's ranked No. 1 at 135 in Alaska, and older sister Melina Hutchison, who took third in 2000 at the 4A state championships.
Her father once wrestled too, and he is now the assistant coach at Skyview.
"My dad usually does the pointing," Hutchison said. "He's like, 'Michaela, it's 120 percent or nothin'.' "
Though she was runner-up at state, Hutchison knew she had a lot to learn after the season.
"Last year I would cry (after losing)," she said. "But this year it's different. Maybe it's because I'm a sophomore and because I have more experience."
Or maybe it's her brother's hand-me-down shoes.
"This is the only pair I've ever worn," she said about her dirty-white Adidas. "They're hand-me-downs from Eli, but I don't care. They were already broken in."
Hutchison broke into the sport when she was 11. With five brothers and four sisters in her family who either wrestled in high school or who hope to, it's hard for her to stay away from the mat. Growing up in a wrestling family is a big reason why she's becoming one of the top wrestlers in Alaska.
Gardner, Hutchison's coach, said she makes boys realize that girls can wrestle too.
"With Michaela, boys know they better wrestle or they will get pinned," Gardner said. "The girls have gained a lot of respect.
"And when they place in the state tournament, that really says something."
Hutchison said she plans to attend the Alaska Girls State Championship Open along with her eighth-grade sister, Monica.
Eli, who has never wrestled a girl in high school, will be cheering for his sister and the other girls at home.
Eli said if he were to wrestle a girl, he would "look at it the same as facing a guy."
"I'm not going to try to hurt her, but I'm not going to take it easy on her either.
"My sister is pretty good, so who knows? Maybe one of them could kick my butt?" he said.
NOTHING TO LOSE
Audri Pleas, a wrestler for Eagle River High, never had siblings to drill against or a dad to ask for wrestling pointers. In fact, nobody in Pleas' family has ever wrestled, and nobody but Pleas believed she could.
"I didn't want to do volleyball and I thought it would be new, interesting," she said. "But I knew I could go further in this sport than in any other sport."
Pleas wrestles at 215 -- a rare weight class for girls. Most girls make weight between 103 and 135, she said.
"I've never wrestled a girl," she said. "I don't expect a girl to be as heavy as me because most girls aren't. But I think I'm in pretty good shape for being in my weight class."
Her Eagle River teammate C.J. Jacoby, who wrestled her on the first day of practice, agrees.
"She's pretty good," he said. "She almost beat me."
If Pleas would have beaten Jacoby, he said, it would have messed with his head.
"I wouldn't want to lose to a girl."
Pleas, a junior, has won three times against boys this season. Her athletic inspiration is fueled by O'Donnell.
"To see how hard (O'Donnell) worked to get (to the Olympics) makes me work ten times harder," she said.
Pleas' hard work is apparent in her participation in wrestling and two other sports.
Earlier this year, she played linebacker on Eagle River's junior varsity football team. She also plays on the Wolves' JV basketball team.
"She's got a very aggressive attitude," said Eagle River assistant wrestling coach Sam Phillips. "She likes to take it to them, and that's what we look for."
Scrapping with a 215-pound male sometimes makes Pleas quiver. Boys are naturally stronger than girls, but Pleas' size and attitude helps even the playing field.
"Coming from Chugiak, either you roll with the punches or you get off the team," she said. "What's the worst that can happen to me?
"I could get hurt, but the ref would just call the match. And if I lose, it's either cut weight or try harder. I choose to try harder because the older I get, the more I realize that I have nothing to lose."
Pleas didn't lose when Eagle River needed her most, helping her team record its first dual-meet victory.
"She had to fight this guy off her back in the first period, then in the second, she threw him on his back and pinned him.
"She was our champion of the day," Phillips said.
OLYMPIC SPIRIT
As a sophomore, Abby Gillaspie had a vision for an all-girls wrestling tournament but no money to fund it.
She e-mailed about 30 businesses in Sitka asking to donate airline miles to help bring the 2004 Olympians into town.
The only business that responded was Marsha Howard, the owner of Work and Rugged Gear Store.
Howard hardly knows Gillaspie, but her son wrestled for Sitka years ago, so she donated 20,000 miles -- enough to fly McMann in from Chicago.
"I just think girls wrestling is a great sport that develops character," Howard said. "I don't know Abby real well, but she's real articulate. It was hard to say no."
Gillaspie's next step was finding $600 to pay for O'Donnell and McMann's wrestling clinic.
"I was in a really tough spot," Gillaspie said.
So she wrote a letter to Sitka's booster club and asked for help. The club wrote her check right away for $700.
"I just needed to show them that this tournament was going to happen," she said.
Once the money started flowing, girls from Juneau-Douglas, Colony, Wasilla, Kodiak, Nome, Bethel, Skagway, Mount Edgecumbe, Petersburg, Hoonah, West, Homer and South made commitments.
"I thought maybe 20 people would come," Gillaspie said. "But I guess since the Olympics, girls have goals to strive for.
"They see Tela's success and it gives girls something to look forward to."
If the tournament succeeds, Gillaspie hopes ASAA will give girls their own state championship.
John Andrews, ASAA's director of special events, said creating a separate championship could happen in the future, but the numbers aren't there.
"We don't have enough weight classes for girls to wrestle all year," he said. "But just look at girls hockey. Teams started off with low numbers and it's starting to grow every year.
"Girls wrestling is definitely on the horizon."
----------------------------------------------------------
Cancer no match for coach
SURVIVOR: Ritchie Sr. adds battle to the bevy of ploys he uses to motivate Malemutes.
By VAN WILLIAMS
Anchorage Daily News February 4, 2006
Tom Ritchie Sr. is as tough as they come. Not only was he an accomplished wrestler in high school, college and the military back in the day, he dodged death six years ago.
In 2000, Ritchie Sr. was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the sixth-most common cancer in men. But not even the deadly disease could beat this longtime Fairbanks high school wrestling coach.
He attacked his radiation and chemotherapy treatment with the same vigor he demonstrated as a wrestler. This time he was fighting for his life.
Today, the Lathrop head coach looks better than ever. The only noticeable difference between then and now is the grey in his hair.
"I've been asked many times if it changed my outlook on life," he said. "Not at all. Having cancer reaffirmed my belief in who I am and where I'm going."
Ritchie Sr., 53, is reminded of his feel-good story each year the Class 4A state championships roll around because people in the wrestling community gravitate to him like a celebrity. Nobody talks about the cancer, but they do celebrate his presence.
And nobody is happier about him making it this far than his son, Tom Ritchie Jr., 31, the coach at South High. Like his father, Ritchie Jr. shapes the lives of young wrestlers.
He puts team over individuals, effort before results. Just like the old man taught him.
"Just about everything I've got from coaching is from him," Ritchie Jr. said. "It is an individual sport, but it's the team that carries it. That's what he preaches."
But don't take his son's word for it. Take Lathrop sophomore Kent Osborn or junior teammate Leah Bachert. Both say Ritchie Sr. helped them achieve more in wrestling than they ever thought possible.
Osborn, a 171-pounder, didn't place at state last year after losing his final two matches. This year, he won his first two matches Friday to put himself in position to win a medal by placing in the top four.
"This is what I've dreamed of," Osborn said. "I didn't even place at state last year."
So how does Ritchie Sr. get so much from his wrestlers? By tricking them into working hard, Osborn said.
"He'll say stuff like, 'If you want me to stick around, you had better go all out,' " he said. "He keeps things interesting."
Ritchie Sr. also keeps things fair. Just ask Bachert, a 112-pounder. As one of the only girls on the Lathrop team, the coach doesn't play favorites or take it easier on girls -- which is exactly how she wants it.
"He expects us to do just as much as the guys," said Bachert, whose older sister Rachell also wrestled under Ritchie Sr. "It's really nice. I love it."
Bachert admits to having days when she feels like doing anything but wrestling. But she knows she can't just quit the team because she doesn't want to disappoint Ritchie Sr.
"He makes you feel like you're part of a family," she said. "That makes you less (likely) to quit because you're not just doing it for yourself. You're doing it for everybody else too."
Ritchie Sr. lives for helping a guy like Osborn live a dream or a girl like Bachert learn about commitment. That's why he's coached since 1981.
To him, coaching isn't based on wins and losses. It's about turning teenagers into adults.
"Winning is nice," said Ritchie Sr., who has three state championships on his resume. "But my fondest thing is developing a total person.
"The neatest thing is to see guys come back as grown men and testify that the wrestling program helped them in life."
Back in 2000, when Ritchie was undergoing five months of chemotherapy, droves of friends -- including rival coaches -- came to his side in support.
"I'm a lucky guy," Ritchie Sr. said. "I don't just have my first family. I have an extended family. I have Fairbanks, Alaska."
His son knows exactly why so many people supported his father during his darkest days -- they love him.
"It was great," he said. "It just shows how our wrestling community will come together. The coaches might disagree on certain things, but we all care for one another."
Tom Ritchie Sr. knows that from experience.
ASAA/First National Bank Alaska Class 4A State Wrestling Championships At Chugiak High
Friday's Results
Team Scores (through semifinals)
1) Wasilla 175.5; 2) South 115.5; 3) Skyview 78.5; 4) West Valley 73.5; 5) Kodiak 67.5; 6) Colony 66; 7) Sitka 63; 8) West 61.5; 9) Chugiak 60.5; 10) Lathrop 48; 11) Juneau-Douglas 35; 12) Bartlett 28; 13) North Pole 23; 14) Homer 22.5; 15) Service 18.5; 16) East 13; 17) Palmer 10; 18) Dimond 7.5; 19) Eagle River 7; 20) Kenai 6; 21) tie, Ketchikan and Soldotna 1.
Semifinals
103 -- Michaella Hutchison, Sky, p. Kyle Wilson, Col, 5:49; Aaron Boos, Col, p. Ross Edelen, South, 5;25.