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Entrepreneur goes to mat for dream
Coach, competitor works to promote women's wrestling

By Valerie Singleton, Rocky Mountain News
August 26, 2002

Don't underestimate Heather Hatten's femininity just because diamonds, rubies or sapphires aren't her treasures.

She has a ring of her own - the wrestling ring.

"A lot of girls don't realize you can still be a lady and wrestle," says Hatten, of Glenwood Springs. "You can be feminine and a woman and everything else and get out on the mat and wrestle. I probably dress up in skirts and heels (more than anything else), and I'm just as comfortable in that as I am on the mat."

The 20-year-old wrestling coach and freestyle competitor is an advocate for bringing women's wrestling to the forefront. With women's wrestling coming to the Olympics for the first time in 2004, she will come closer to her goal of gaining a wider audience for the sport.

With years of coaching and several wrestling clubs and camps under her belt, she has become Colorado's wrestling entrepreneur.

Hatten first set foot on a wrestling mat as a child when her father, Brett, 51, took her to matches. He was a veteran wrestler who coached junior high and high school students in the sport. Brett Hatten's moves and knowledge whetted his 4-year-old daughter's curiosity.

By age 14, she was setting up brackets, weighing in her dad's team members and even coaching.

While Brett Hatten never let his daughter wrestle team members, he wasn't averse to letting her pack gear and set up for competitions. When she got older and stronger, she was allowed to practice with the team - sort of.

"She was our practice dummy," Brett Hatten says.

But the practices didn't satiate her. She wanted more.

So by age 19, Hatten was tossing and slamming competitors on the mat. She became fascinated with fast-paced, freestyle wrestling, the universal form of the sport.

Meanwhile, Hatten has launched programs to bring wrestling to her community and encourage girls and women to get on the mat. She coaches peewee to college-level wrestlers, with stints at the Boys and Girls Club of America, local gyms and wrestling clubs and camps in her hometown. She also was instrumental in founding a freestyle club in Alamosa.

In April, Hatten and her father participated at the U.S. Nationals in Las Vegas, Nev., where they became the first father-daughter team to compete on the national level. When Hatten wasn't taking people down on the mat, she was on the sidelines coaching her father.

"She coached me at the nationals, and she was just dead right," Brett Hatten says. "She's just a great coach. She has three eyeballs."

At the Cadet and Junior Nationals in Fargo, N.D., last month, Colorado USA Wrestling women's director Pat Babi asked Hatten to coach the state's female competitors. Babi was so impressed with Hatten that she asked for her help in future state wrestling seminars and clubs.

"She did a great job for us," Babi says. "We had two girls who were up there. . . . Heather coached both of them, and one of them actually placed as an All American."

Hatten's mother, Kim, has become the "wrestling widow."

"It was bad enough when I was coaching, but when I was taking Heather with me, (Kim) got left home a lot," Brett Hatten says.

Hatten started her junior year Tuesday at Adams State College, where she's pursuing dual degrees in sports management and hotel resort management, with a minor in coaching.

"I like to do things that nobody else has done," Hatten says. "You can only be the first at something once. I have never settled for mediocre. So if I can do something once and do it the best, that's kind of what I'm after. You don't do it 'cause you have to. You don't do it for the money - that's for sure. You do it 'cause you want to."