|
|
|
|
Vintage girls win gold
Murphree, Watanabe take individual titles
Sunday, January 20, 2002 BRIAN LIOU
Register Sports Writer
In the third grade, Vintage High wrestler Emilee Murphree tried her hand at wrestling just for kicks. Faced against a girl her own size, she got her "faced stomped" and decided this wasn't a sport for her.
Six years later, Murphree sat in the bleachers watching the first Napa Girls Wrestling Classic in 1999 and saw all the fun the girls had with wrestling. Friends and family looked at her, noticed her athletic build and wondered why she wasn't out there. They insisted she would be good at it. So Murphree decided to give it another shot.
"Everyone asked me, how come you aren't wrestling and you would be so great at it," said Murphree. "I didn't think I would ever do that again, but when I wrestled again, it just clicked."
Four years from that point, the 144-pound wrestler is fulfilling everyone's belief in her. After finishing second the last two years, she won all her matches and led Vintage to an overall victory at the fourth annual Napa Girls Wrestling Classic this past weekend. The field included more than 160 girls from dozens of high schools, arriving from all over California. Vintage High has been one of the pioneers of the emerging sport of girls wrestling.
To Murphree and to her Vintage teammates, this tournament legitimizes their talent not as girl wrestlers, but as wrestlers.
"I think it's good for us to compete against girls because it makes it feel like it's our own story, not something about guys and girls," said Murphree.
"It's like with guys, it's cool but it doesn't feel the same. Girls wrestling is growing, it's getting bigger and it's in the Olympics, so it's good to be a part of something that's getting bigger."
But the tournament means a whole lot more than just proving to everyone that girls wrestling should be a sanctioned sport, which it currently isn't. Murphree wasn't going to settle for second place like she did as a junior and a sophomore.
To no one's surprise this weekend, Murphree didn't lose a single match, pinning all of her opponents to win first place in her 144-pound class. Most of her matches ended within a blink, finishing in the first round. One of her matches took only 50 seconds before Murphree pinned her opponent.
Maika Watanabe of Vintage also swept all her opponents in the 100-pound class, to win first place. The nine-girl Vintage team barely inched out the 19-strong Thousand Oaks squad in the overall team standings. Final meet scoring was unavailable at press time.
Other Vintage highlights included Nicole Mazzaferro's third-place finish in the 130-pound class and Carina Valle-Santana's fifth place at 126 pounds. Vintage's 165-pounder Diana Douglas and 118-pounder Kayla Chambers also finished fifth in their respective classes.
----------------------------------
