Oklahma City's Melissa Simmons finds a way to stay entertained while the men's team practices for the 2010 NWCA/Cliff Keen National Duals Friday, Jan. 8, 2010, in the UNI-Dome. (RICK TIBBOTT / Courier Staff Photographer)

CEDAR FALLS - In some ways, they fit right in Friday night: Athletes running laps in full sweatsuits in a final effort to make weight.

In other ways, they stood out: Athletes on the mat wearing pink socks and sweatpants.

Among 80 teams at the NWCA/Cliff Keen National Duals this weekend in Cedar Falls are seven womens teams.

All of those teams are from small private colleges, many of them with programs that just started in the past few years.

The No. 1 seed went to Oklahoma City University, a program in its third year of existence. Its roster reads like an atlas. OCU wrestlers hail from all over the country -- from Washington, Oregon and Alaska to Maine, New York and South Carolina.

The stories of how the women got into wrestling is nearly as varied as their native geography.

Melissa Simmons grew up in a wrestling family in Ridgefield, Wash. Her dad was a wrestling coach, and she got involved early. She now has been wrestling 17 years, spending the pre-college years primarily wrestling against boys. She won a national championship two years ago but spent the past year recovering from injuries.

Stephanie Waters, a junior from Joliet, Ill., thought she was going to play basketball as a freshman in high school but missed the first day of tryouts. In her massive school, missing a day was a death knell for her chances of making the team. She saw a sign for girls wrestling and decided to give it a shot.

"I was like, ‘I don't get in trouble for beating people up?' Of course I got beat up most of the time to start out, but every once in a while I'd get my licks in, and that felt good," Waters recalled.

Tessa Plana grew up in the Dallas area learning judo. She decided to try wrestling in hopes that it would improve her martial arts. It turned out the other way around, with judo helping form her into an elite wrestler.

Women's college wrestling isn't sanctioned by the NCAA, NAIA or at the junior college level. But with emerging programs in the U.S. and internationally, it is starting to gain some steam. The Olympics added women's wrestling in 2004, and some of the competitors hope to make the national team and wrestle at the 2012 games in London.

Just like with the college men, the women thrive on the discipline, competition and thrill of victory.

Unlike the men's teams, they have no choice but to travel great distances to find competition. For OCU, the nearest women's program is at Missouri Valley College, 453 miles away. This year, the team has traveled to Calgary, Alberta, Canada; California; North Dakota; Kentucky; and Tennessee.

Desiree Martinez wrestles for Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo. She grew up in South Texas but traveled north to wrestle. Her grandparents and her mother were initially leery of her wrestling, concerned that she would get hurt. That happened this year, when she sustained a knee injury, but it didn't deter her from returning to the mat. Unfortunately, she gained some weight while out with the injury, so she's wrestling up one class at the Cliff Keen duals this weekend.

"I'm a wrestler. I like a challenge," she said.

Matt Wallis Burlington-Edison’s Emma Foss (right) wrestles Mount Baker’s Katie Weide during a Northwest Conference dual meet on Wednesday night.

BURLINGTON — Burlington-Edison wrestler Megan Absten wasn’t at the Tigers’ match against Mount Baker on Wednesday, but her presence was everywhere, from the banner with her name on it hanging at one end of the gym to her face peeking out from the freshly made T-shirts worn by her teammates.

Absten was seriously injured in an accident Dec. 28, and when The Tigers took on the Mountaineers on Wednesday, her teammates took to the mat with the freshman on their minds during the 36-36 tie.

“They did the best they could against a tough Mount Baker team,” Burlington-Edison coach Travis Holmes said. “The girls should be proud of themselves. It’s been a difficult week, given what we’ve had to deal with. Megan had a huge impact in the (wrestling) room and we miss her every day.”

Absten was involved in an all-terrain vehicle accident and suffered serious enough injuries to be airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle before undergoing nine hours of surgery. She’s still there, and as she recuperates, the community has already started fund-raising to help defray the costs.

There was a raffle at Wednesday’s match, and a fund for Absten and her family, called the Megan Absten donation account, has been set up at Skagit State Bank. Donations can be made at any branch. The proceeds from the 50-50 raffle at Tuesday night’s Tiger-Hawk Classic also went to the fund.

There will be another fund-raiser on Jan. 30 at the Longhorn Saloon in Edison with a live auction and raffles. Details of that event are still being worked out.

Teammates said the bubbly Absten was a crucial presence for the Tigers, going to wrestling camp with the team before her freshman year and making her presence felt.

“She’s always trying to make people feel better — always trying to make you laugh and get your spirits up,” said Burlington-Edison wrestler Makenzie Pell.

Another wrestler, Caitlyn Pell said, “If she was old enough to be a captain, she’d be a captain.”

Holmes, who has known Absten and her family for years said, “her personality, and the way she treats people, along with the love she has for the team and the sport ... she became a leader as a ninth-grader. I’ve never seen that.”

CANADA WRESTLING AT

Two WP freshmen join the team after seeing junior high mat time — David Acosta and Dawn Pinkal, the combined team’s first female.

Of Acosta, West said he will wrestle at 145 pounds and is “getting the hang of things.” Pinkal will wrestle at either 119 or 125 pounds. “She’s doing pretty good so far,” West said.

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BUSINESS CASUAL: Female fighter's career choice gains respect

Shawni Young grapples with Roman Todorovich at Redondo Beach's Elite Training Center, where she is program director. (Steve McCrank Staff Photographer)

I recently put on a pair of punch mitts and braced myself as a mixed-martial arts fighter hurled fists like bricks into the padded palms of my hands.

If that had happened five or 10 years ago, I would have viewed the experience as extraordinary.

Today, a woman practicing the violent sport of MMA is par for the course.

The lady treating my hands with ill intentions was Shawni Young, who was hired in August as program director at Elite Training Center in Redondo Beach, after a long career in vehicle sales.

In addition to teaching classes, Young was offered the job to help attract new students to the facility.

"I was brought on to use my sales experience," Young told me.

Think about it. A woman with toenails painted red was hired to recruit students, who would then learn to punch, kick, wrestle and choke an opponent.

The idea of women's equality is hardly new. The fairer sex has already made huge strides in the workplace, government and military.

For example, my boss is a woman, and her boss is as well.

But women's progress in the fast-growing MMA sport, which rivals boxing in popularity, is a new twist.

In August, Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos and Gina Carano were the first women to headline a major MMA event. The fight in San Jose set an MMA ratings record for the Showtime channel.

This is not oil wrestling, mind you, but full-contact fighting that leaves welts, black eyes and broken bones.

Back to Young, whom you can watch on YouTube, fighting in a professional match against Sara Renaud.

Young acknowledges her new job is unusual.

"I think it's fairly strange," she said. "But I think a lot of students have respect for me because of my fighting and my skill sets as a woman. Society is progressing forward with the times."

The 30-year-old El Segundo resident has trained in various aspects of MMA for about a dozen years.

It has not always been easy. A decade ago, she encountered two gyms that declined her request for membership, explaining that they did not have another woman member to train with her.

"In the mid- to late '90s, the mentality of men when I was wrestling with them, in some places, was that I shouldn't be wrestling," she said.

Young noted that even today when she wrestles with men, their male ego often drives them to try to force her to tap out - an MMA acknowledgment of defeat from a submission.

Young and her new gig remind us of how much the job market has changed for women.

As Young put it, "I'm focusing on a career of a??-kicking."