|
|
|
|
FULP-ALLEN REPEATS AS STATE CHAMP
Half Moon Bay Review 2/13/02
Sara Fulp-Allen won her second straight California Girls' State Championship, taking the crown at 105 pounds at the state meet held in Vallejo Feb. 2.
Fulp-Allen dominated her matches, taking two of her four wins by pin. Her other two wins, including the win for the title, came by technical fall.
Gammon finished third at 110 pounds. Gammon split her first two matches. She then won her next match by decision, and claimed third place with a pin.
Thanks to the two wrestlers, Half Moon Bay finished sixth as a team.
----------------------------------------------
2/9/02
Sara Fulp-Allen, 16 years old. 5 feet 3 inches, 103 pounds.
What's a typical wrestler? With weight classes ranging from 103 to 275 pounds, it's a little hard to say.
There are constants across that range: Wrestlers must be strong and quick. They need power, so you might expect to find bulky, muscled mesomorphs.
But a wrestler who packs on too much muscle will push himself into a higher weight class, where he'll face bigger, more powerful opponents.
Sara, who's been wrestling since she was eight, is muscular but lean. That's typical of female wrestlers, says Lee Allen, Sara's father and a former Olympic wrestler, now a college women's wrestling coach.
Sara wrestles other girls -- women's wrestling is growing rapidly -- and boys as well.
She's the two-time national champion in freestyle, state girls high school wrestling champion, and Peninsula Athletic League boys' division champion.
What injures wrestlers is mostly other wrestlers, often in the form of sprains -- shoulders, ankles, and knees. There can even be dislocations.
"It's a contact sport," shrugs Allen.
---------------------------------------------
Lee girls romp to first crown
By Dan McCarney
San Antonio Express-News 02/10/2002
Since the halcyon days of Volunteer football in the 1960s and '70s, championship hardware has been scarce at Lee.
But a bit of that past luster was restored Saturday afternoon at Littleton Gym, and it came from the unlikeliest of sources.
Evelyn Anchondo and Lisa Obregon engineered first-period pins to capture individual championships as the Volunteers rolled to the team title at the UIL Region IV girls wrestling tournament.
They'll be joined at the upcoming state tournament by teammates Christina Rodriguez and Jocabed Castaneda, both of whom finished second in their weight classes.
Lee finished with 138 total points, 24 more than runner-up Killeen Ellison.
Neither Anchondo nor Obregon wrestled before this season.
"We've beaten some of these teams head-to-head before, so I knew we'd contend," Lee coach Bobby Allen said. "But this is quite a surprise to do as well as we did considering how young we are."
The best Greater San Antonio could do in the boys tournament was a sixth-place finish by Roosevelt, although John Soto of the Rough Riders and MacArthur's Cory Torkelson did capture individual crowns.
Nine other city boys lost in the finals, including a 2-0 decision suffered by Madison's Paul Quirindongo, who was attempting to defend the region title he won at 135 pounds last season.
All will advance to the state meet, which will be held Feb. 22-23 in Austin.
Quirindongo's battle with Danny Wright of Cedar Park — who was also a defending region champ, at 130 pounds — was just one of several compelling matchups in boys competition.
Immediately after Quirindongo's defeat, Torkelson nudged Houston Westside's Shaun Shaikh 5-4 at 140 pounds.
After dropping behind 3-0 midway through the second period, Torkelson clawed his way back and eventually won on a takedown with 1:05 remaining in the match.
Aside from defending his region crown, Torkelson had other motivation.
"I read on the Internet that he thought he was supposed to win," he said. "I beat him earlier in the season, but he said he was sick and wasn't at his best. It just pumped me up even more."
Later in the competition, MacArthur's Matt Criswell (189) and Ryan Prather of Reagan (215) wrestled about as well as you can without actually winning.
Criswell suffered a 4-2 overtime loss to Austin Bowie's Spike Fogle, while Prather was beaten 9-7 in extra time by Joey Castillo of Weslaco.
Prather's match was especially tense. After fighting back from a 6-3 deficit to take a one-point advantage on a late takedown, Prather allowed Castillo to escape and tie the match at 7 with only eight seconds left. Castillo won on a takedown just nine seconds into overtime.
----------------------------------------
Contestants in the UIL 2002 State Wrestling Matches
-------------------------------------
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
February 14, 2002
: U.S. wrestling team to avoid Iran tournament, says report
The United States national wrestling team will not visit Iran later
this month for an international tournament in a decision believed to be the
result of political tension between the two countries, the sports daily
Iran reported Thursday.
No specific reasons have been given for the U.S. team's decision not to
take part in the annual International Takhti Wrestling Cup - named after the
late Iranian world wrestling champion Gholam-Reza Takhti - to be held in
Teheran between February 20 and 22. The decision is believed to have been made
by the American side, the report said.
The U.S. State Department had called on American citizens not to travel
to Iran after the inclusion of Iran by U.S. President George W. Bush into
the "axis of evil" and speculation that Iran might be one of the next
American targets in the anti-terrorism campaign.
The U.S. wrestling team attended the same games in January 2000 as a
sign of improvement between the two political foes which have had no ties for
over two decades.
The state-run Iranian television IRIB harshly criticised Wednesday the
U.S. network NBC which, during the marching in of the Iranian team at the
opening ceremony of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, had said it was a team
whose country is accused of sponsoring terrorism.
The first appearance of a U.S. wrestling team in Iran was in 1998 which
was welcomed in the arena with wild applause by the Iranian crowd,
surprising both the American athletes and Iranian officials.
Despite political hostilities over the last two decades, Teheran and
Washington have been conducting sports diplomacy similar to that of the
1970s when a team of American table tennis players went to China as a
prelude to improved ties between the two states. dpa fm bw
