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Region Wrestling Preview
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Greg Wyshynski
February 15, 2006

103 Pounds

The Contenders: George Billy, Robinson (Concorde champion); Alan Kwong, Hayfield (Patriot champion); Marvin Gomez, Edison (National champion); Ramond Borja, Woodson (Liberty champion); Michael Bowman, Langley.
Outlook: Last year's regional runner-up Bowman was upset in the Liberty District quarterfinals. He's bracketed to meet Billy, the Concorde champion, in the regional semifinals. Kwong, Borja and Herndon's Firen Gassman — according to the Virginia High School League, the first female wrestler to clinch a spot in the AAA tournament, a feat accomplished last season — are on the other side of the bracket.

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J. Fred Diem remembered at district wrestling tournament

2/15/06

There is little doubt last Wednesday's Eastern Shore District Wrestling Tournament will go down in history. With Nicole Beasly becoming the first female district champion the tourney received received renewed energy.

The tourney is dedicated each year to the memory of J. Fred Diem. To those of us who knew Fred, wrestling at Northampton doesn't seem quite the same without him.

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Wrestling Regionals Set to Begin

2/15/06

Tomhawk's Alyssa Lampe is already the first girl to ever make it to the state wrestling meet. This year she'is hoping to be the first to ever place. She is among a large number of area wrestlers who'll be in regional action on Saturday.

For a listing of locations for all of Saturday's regional action log on to this website: http://www.wiaawi.org/wrestling/assignments.pdf

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Tomahawk Leader Photo Album

The host Tomahawk wrestling team triumphed over six other mat squads Saturday at the WIAA Division 2 regional meet held in the fieldhouse. By winning the regional meet, the Hatchets earned a berth in the WIAA team sectional at Medford Feb. 14. A portion of our Feb. 14 story follows: In dramatic fashion Saturday at the fieldhouse, the Tomahawk varsity wrestling team claimed its 18th WIAA Division 2 regional championship. It took some heroics by the Hatchets 189-pound Kyle Schulz in the final match to secure the victory, though. Schulz took second-place via a wrestle-back win and earned enough team points to push the Tomahawk total to 194 - two more than Medford. Mosinee was third with 180.5 points, followed by Wittenberg-Birnamwood (175), Loyal-Greenwood (126), Abbotsford-Colby (115) and Three Lakes-Northland Pines. The Hatchets won four weight classes and two runner-up placements en route to their regional triumph. Those six wrestlers will advance to the WIAA D2 individual wrestling sectional at Somerset next Saturday starting at 11 a.m. By winning the regional team championship, the entire Tomahawk team will advance to compete in the WIAA team sectional at Medford Feb. 14 starting at 6 p.m. The Hatchets will take on Chetek-Prairie Farm, the top-ranked D2 mat squad in the state. Tomahawk senior Alyssa Lampe improved to 40-3 as she won the regional crown at 103 pounds. Her brother, Anthony, kept things rolling at 112 pounds as he breezed through the bracket with a bye and two pins to improve to 43-2 and claim his fourth WIAA regional wrestling championship. Hatchet freshman Nick Hagar ran his season record to 40-2 and won his first regional crown by defeating 125-pound Jordan Schulte of Mosinee 6-3 in the finals. Senior Dan Silvernale became the fourth Hatchet to win a championship Saturday. He beat Kyle Wolf, Medford, 2-1 in the championship match and pushed his record to 34-4 for the season. Jeremiah Moran, the Tomahawk 215-pounder, lost 13-4 to Dave LaBarge of Loyal-Greenwood in the finals. Earlier he pinned Chris Ellis, Mosinee, (0:51) and decisioned Randy Ploeckelman, Abby-Colby, 5-3. Schulz lost 10-8 to eventual 189-pound champion Steve Wozniak (Loyal-Greenwood) in the second round. He pinned Jake Ewert (Abby-Colby) in 3:04 to win the third-place bout. When Wozniak beat Devan Kirby (Three Lakes-Northland Pines) in the title match, the door was opened for the Schulz wrestle-back opportunity. Schulz took advantage of the situation, dominated Kirby for the entire match and won 5-2 to earn second place.

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Chalk Talk: CIF girls wrestling regional and state finals should be a yearly event

By Brian Williams, The Porterville Recorder 2/15/06

If I had a vote, and I don't, the girls wrestling regionals and state finals would become a constant on the CIF calendar.

I was not able to travel to South High in Covina or Whitney High in Rocklin to watch the Southern and Northern Regionals on Friday and Saturday, everything I am getting is from reading about it on the Internet and from Granite Hills High wrestler Erica Torres and her coach Marty Kouyoumtjian, who attended the Southern contest.

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Girl power
Sauer qualifies for state wrestling tournament

By Dennis Pleuss 2/12/06

Golden senior Brooke Sauer fulfilled her wrestling dream Saturday at Grand Junction High School.

She qualified for the Colorado's high school state wrestling tournament by taking fourth in the 103-pound weight class at the Class 4A Region 3 tournament on the Western Slope. The top four placers in each weight class qualify for state.

Last year Sauer placed sixth at regionals.

Sauer is the first girl in Colorado to qualify for the state wrestling tournament.

Sauer, who has been the Demons' team captain for the past two years, will take a 26-12 record into the state tournament that begins Thursday, Feb. 16, at Pepsi Center.

NOTE: A complete story on Brooke Sauer and Golden's five other wrestlers who qualified for the state tournament will be published in the Feb. 16 issue of the Golden Transcript.

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Girl grapplers finding a place
More females taking up wrestling in high school

By Jon Spencer 2/15/06
Mansfield News Journal

MANSFIELD -- At first, the offer sounded too good to refuse. But by the time Terry Steiner stopped wrestling with his decision, he felt like he'd grappled against a tag team of Andre the Giant and Rulon Gardner.

Should he or shouldn't he take the job as head coach of USA Wrestling's national women's team?

"They weren't only asking me to be coach, they wanted me to be an advocate," said Steiner, who accepted the job in 2002. "I didn't know if I was the right guy. I had to change my attitude about females wrest-ling."

Steiner, a 1993 NCAA champion for the University of Iowa, underwent a mental makeover. So have many wrestling fans and coaches across the country, including those following the progress in north central Ohio of Northmor freshman Sammi Heilman and Willard junior Nicole Feasel in their battles against the boys in the 103-pound weight class.
"Now and then you might hear someone yell 'Pull her hair!' or find a parent or coach who just don't approve," Feasel said. "In eighth grade, when I won my first tournament, the (opposing) coach wouldn't even shake my hand. But it's gotten better. Most people know me now."

During a recent two-week stretch, Feasel won five of her six matches. Four of her victories were by pin. Last week, she finished fourth in the Northern Ohio League tournament, pinning a Gorman Invitational placer in the process.

"I didn't know what to think ... it didn't seem like a girly thing to do," said Dawn Feasel, Nicole's mother and former Willard track star. "But after her first tournament, I was hooked.

"It's such a physically-demanding sport, with such discipline. I was a runner and you were basically out there by yourself. It's different on the mat. You're face-to-face with an opponent and when you dominate him, it's a natural high."

The boys on the losing end of a bout with Feasel or Heilman obviously aren't going to feel that way, for reasons beyond simply winning and losing.

"It's a no-win situation for the guys," Madison coach Jim Speelman said. "If a guy beats a girl, it's no big deal. If he loses to her, he gets ridiculed."

That doesn't mean Speelman is against girls wrestling. To the contrary, he took an Ohio squad of 14 girls to the USA Wrestling girls freestyle nationals last summer and coached a 144-pound national champion in Vanessa Oswalt of Mount Vernon. Oswalt is now a resident of the Olympic Training Center in Colorado.

Speelman also tutored former Northmor star Jessica Shirley. In 2001, she became the first girl in Ohio to win a match, other than by forfeit, at the district level. Shirley went on to compete for Cum-

berland (Ky.) College, one of five colleges in the U.S. that has a women's team.

"The quality of wrestling is amazing to see," said Speelman, who has officiated women's matches at the Olympic Trials. "The women are capable of some of the same things as the males. They not only do it, but do it well. With some colleges giving scholarships, that's given girls some incentive. But I still don't agree with girls wrestling guys."

In an ideal America, every state would sanction a girls state tournament. In reality, only Texas and Hawaii do.

"A guy is always going to get teased when he gets beat by a girl, but I don't know what to do," Feasel said. "I'm not looking at gender. I'm just wrestling."

Support is growing -- and encouraging.

"As of late, fans are going wild when (Nicole) wins; it doesn't matter what team they're for as long as it's not their kid getting pinned," Dawn Feasel said. "The ultimate goal is to see girls develop their own team, but right now this is their only choice.

"Women are wrestling now in college and the Olympics. For her to be in the front of this (movement) is exciting. The opportunity might be there for her to wrestle in college."

With or without wrestling, Heilman looks like perfect college material with her 4.0 grade point average. Matching her perfect GPA are two Northmor eighth-grade wrestlers, Sammi's sister, Rosie, and Shelby Shirley, Jessica's sister. Shelby recently earned runner-up honors in the Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference tournament and sports a 21-2 record this season.

"I've gotten very little negative reaction to my daughters wrestling," said Alan Heilman, a former prep wrestler at Warren Howland. "We were at a junior high tournament where someone was yelling at Shelby's opponent, 'Show her it's a man's sport!' Shelby pinned him in the first period. It's not a man's sport. It's an individual sport."

It took Steiner some time to come around to that way of thinking, but now no one speaks more passionately in defense of females in the sport.

"If it's something a young girl wants to do, why limit her?" he said. "This is a sport fighting for attention. How can inviting the other half of the population hurt the sport?

"I tell the women wrest-ling for me that they amaze me. They're doing this in spite of opportunity, not because of it. What would happen to them if we really got behind them? We teach girls to be doctors and lawyers and scientists, but tell them they can't wrestle. I've made a 180-degree change in the way I think."

Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools, requires any school receiving federal funds to allow girls to try out for, and if qualified, participate on a boys team if no comparable girls' team is available. Although contact sports -- such as football, ice hockey and wrestling -- are specifically exempt from the Title IX mandate, most coaches accommodate girls, even if they aren't required to do so by law.

"I don't discourage anybody," said Willard coach Todd Fox, whose state-ranked squad includes three girls: Feasel, Tabitha Wilhelm (103) and Autumn Lewis (119). "If you want to wrestle, you can wrestle."

Northmor's Mike Skelton figures he's had about a dozen girls come through the program in his 20-plus years of coaching. Heilman and Jessica Shirley have been the only ones so far to crack the varsity lineup.

"We treat them like athletes; we don't treat them like girls. They understand that," Skelton said. "The girls who have grown up in our program have seen Jessica or know that she was a captain one year. They don't get any special treatment outside of a separate locker room or the occasional joke about having the nicest hair on the team."

Northmor standout Spencer Carr was in junior high when Jessica Shirley was playing the role of trailblazer.

"Back then it had to be more awkward for Jessi, because girls wrestling wasn't that common," Carr said. "Now you see national tournaments for girls.

"If a girl is willing to tough it out and can hang with us, she can. It doesn't affect me at all. We're all members of a team."

Willard wrestler Jarrid Rodriguez feels the same way about the three girls on his team.

"I give 'em an A for effort," he said. "It's cool that they wrestle; it's bold of them. I have no problem with it as long as they work as hard as anybody else and aren't shown any favoritism."

Feasel went 3-4 at the Northern Ohio League Duals with two pins, one against archrival Bellevue.

"We were thrilled for her," Rodriguez said. "It was awesome."

Sammi Heilman has eight wins this season, five of them by forfeit. But only one of the forfeits was because a boy refused to wrestle her.

"I don't have a problem with guys who don't want to wrestle me," Heilman said. "It's the guys who are cocky and think they're going to beat me right away that I don't like."

While Jessica Shirley might have paved the way for Heilman, it was classmate Silas Shirley -- Jessica's brother -- who steered Heilman to wrestling by daring her to try out for the team.

"If someone tells her she can't do something, she'll prove everybody wrong," Alan Heilman said.

Sammi Heilman will weigh in for a meet fully clothed -- letterman jacket and all -- and hit only 93 pounds on the scale. At this time of year, with wrestlers given a four-pound allowance, that puts her at a 14-pound disadvantage.

"We don't want her to use that as an excuse," her father said. "If that's the case, she shouldn't wrestle because she's always going to give up weight. My wife's only 4-9, so she's not going to grow much more. But she's a workaholic. Everything she's gone after, she's conquered."

Two weeks ago, Michaela Hutchinson became the first high school girl to win a state championship by capturing the 103 class in the Alaska big-school tournament. The Skyview sophomore entered the meet ranked No. 1 in the state (there are only 22 schools in that division) and beat Colony's Aaron Boss 1-0 on an escape with 16 seconds left.

Most of the breakthroughs for girls have come at 103, the lightest class, where strength differences aren't so pronounced. Hutchinson, the third state champ in her family, finished this season with a 45-4 record and 33 pins, one shy of the state record.

According to Kent Bailo, director of the United States Girls Wrestling Association, 17 girls qualified for boys high school state tournaments around the country last year and six placed.

Still, when critics watch a match between a girl and boy, every standard move looks like inappropriate touching.

"People have to get that out of their heads," Steiner said. "You can put sexual connotations in everything. It's just athletes wanting to learn. I'm not going to go up to another guy in a mall and touch him like I do on the mat."

"The key is daily success by girls and developing them at the grassroots level," he said. "In my case, I needed an attitude change. I asked myself, why do I want to coach? I'm not in it for the money. I'm in it because I believe in the sport and believe it teaches life lessons beyond the mat. If that's the real reason I coach, then what difference does it make if I'm coaching a man or a woman?"

jspencer@nncogannett.com 419-521-7239

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