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MontereyHerald.com 1/21/03
Anyone who thinks that girls' wrestling is a joke has never been on the mat with Carmel High grapplers Tera McFeely (112), Ashley Sickler (130) and Devin Eckert (135).
Just recently, the trio took home a third-place (Eckert) and two fourth-places (Sickler, McFeely) at the Mt. Eden Male and Female Varsity Tournament in Hayward.
"They don't appear to be the type of girl that you'd think would be out there wrestling, but they get after it," said Padres coach Pete Devlaminick. "As far as the guys go, they're all for it."
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Caprock girls capture state wrestling duals
panhandlesports.com 1/26/03
HOUSTON - The Caprock Lady Longhorns have done it again.
Caprock captured its second straight Texas high school wrestling duals championship Saturday night, defeating Arlington Sam Houston 37-18 in the championship match held at Houston Westside High School.
Led by most outstanding wrestler Nina Rodriquez at 148 pounds, No. 1-ranked Caprock swept through the talented field unblemished.
"The girls were ready," said Caprock coach Scott Tankersley. "I'm proud of them. It's a honor to watch them wrestle."
Caprock received a first-round bye, then breezed into the finals, recording six pins in a dominating 54-6 semifinal victory over Houston Lee.
In the championship match, Caprock faced No. 3 Sam Houston, coming off an upset of second-ranked Katy.
But Caprock used key wins from Rodriguez, Ana Mireles and Hope Jones, along with a pin from Chelsea Corallel, to easily defeat Sam Houston.
Caprock returns to action Friday in the district tournament at Amarillo High.
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Spartan Sports
Hammell gives up wrestling for women's b'ball
by Creg Jantz 1/16/03
CWRU women's basketball Head Coach Kristin Hughes became the winningest coach in school history two years ago during the 2000-2001 season, surpassing former coach and assistant athletic director Nancy Gray 73-71 (12-year mark).
CWRU wrestling Head Coach Bob Del Rosa needs a 125-pounder. It is a weight class he has forfeited thus far this season, but help could be as close as upstairs. Help that would be the first of its kind during his 41 years in University Circle.
Upstairs from the Claude B. Sharer Wrestling Room in the Veale Center, women's basketball Head Coach Kristin Hughes has her team, among the nation's best, running line drills in Horsburgh Gymnasium. One of those players is freshman guard Amber Hammell.
Hammell, from Parkersburg, W. Va., is scoring points the easy way these days. She's hitting shots on the hardwood rather than slamming her opponent to a foam rubber mat, like she used to.
Hammell, a former wrestler, gave up ringworm and cauliflower ear for shin splints and twisted ankles at the end of her 9th grade year at Parkersburg High School.
"I never actually got ringworm when I wrestled, and then I started dating a wrestler after I stopped wrestling-and I got ringworm," said Hammell. "I was so mad."
Hammel, who now stands 5 foot 7 and weighs 135 pounds, had troubles finding sparring partners at times but never any trouble with being a women participating in a male-dominated sport.
"Everyone came to see the girl who wrestled, and I think they were all surprised when they saw it was not some big beastly girl," said Hammell. "Even parents from other teams would cheer for me because I was the underdog. No one really wanted me to fail."
She began wrestling when she was seven for the Parkersburg Cougars wrestling club, quit for two years during the 5th and 6th grade and then started back up when the middle school team needed someone at the 123-pound weight class. Sound familiar?
Anyway, she double dipped, playing basketball and wrestling during the winter-a lot of work.
"I had a county finals basketball game right before the county championships for wrestling," said Hammell. "I had to go to the basketball game and then the wrestling match. I pulled doubleheaders like that all the time"
The double duty became too much after her freshman year when she became a member of the varsity basketball team, a place she remained throughout her high school career.
Hammell was an honorable mention All-State honoree her senior year averaging 12.5 points per game. She was also a very successful soccer player at Parkersburg, the second largest high school in the state.
She was a four-year letter winner and was the Mountain State Athletic Conference Player of the Year her senior year as well as a second team All-State selection.
"Wrestling was definitely the hardest sport I ever participated in," said Hammell. "You are an individual and are out there by yourself."
Hammell, a biomedical engineering major (pre-med) at CWRU, has played significant minutes off the bench (20.4 avg.) for the Spartans (9-3 overall, 1-0 UAA) this season. She is averaging 7.5 points (4th on the team) and 1.9 assists (3rd on team) per game.
She said the CWRU wrestling coach has not approached her yet, but what if he did?
"No," said Hammell. "That would be crazy."
Crazy probably, possible definitely.
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CWRU's Hammell more into basketball
Burt Graeff 1/22/03
Plain Dealer Reporter
Case Western Reserve University women's basketball coach Kristin Hughes is getting solid production from a freshman who wrestled as a youth in Parkersburg, W.Va.
Amber Hammell, a 5-7, 135-pounder, is averging 7.6 points in 20.6 minutes a game for the Spartans (10-4 overall, 2-1 in the University Athletic Association).
Hammell, a biomedical engineering major, wrestled through the ninth grade in Parkersburg. She dropped it for basketball. "I enjoyed wrestling," she said. "I liked beating the boys.
"I was competitive, but I liked basketball better."
CWRU wrestling coach Bob Del Rosa has been forced to forfeit several weight classes, but said that there is no chance he will seek out Hammell. "Participating in both of these sports at the same time would be impossible," Del Rosa said.
"And women wrestling against men on the college level is a lot different than girls wrestling against boys at the junior- and high-school levels. She would be a body to put on the mat, but she is doing the right thing."
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Changes pushed for Title IX, which expanded college programs for women
01/26/03
Sabrina Eaton
Plain Dealer Bureau
Washington - A longtime battle of the sexes in college sports is about to be refereed by the Bush administration.
The fight is between men's college wrestling (and all other men's sports) and women's college soccer (and all other women's sports) - and it's over whether there is room and money enough for both. Title IX, a controversial 30-year-old law, requires equal athletic access for students of both genders, which some colleges say is the problem.
Forced to provide equality, many colleges say they can't afford to.
Some have discontinued their men's gymnastics, swimming, track, golf, tennis and wrestling programs and have capped the rosters of remaining men's teams.
It's not fair, the men complain. Too bad, say the women.
"It's OK to have sympathy for male athletes who have lost their sports," said Women's Sports Foundation Executive Director Donna A. Lopiano. "But you cannot discriminate on the basis of sex in your sympathy or empathy. You must also care about women who for many years had no chance to play, who still have fewer opportunities to play and less support when they do play."
That's where the Bush administration, already embroiled in an unrelated quota case involving race-based admissions at the University of Michigan, comes in. Education Secretary Rod Paige, who seems likely to land in court no matter how he resolves the sports dispute, appointed a panel to help him decide what to do about gender equity in athletics, and the panel is close to finishing its work.
Final meetings this week
The panel's final meetings are in Washington this week, and it plans to send Paige its recommendations on Feb. 28.
"We just want to make a good thing better," Paige told the 18-member Commission on Opportunity in Athletics at its December meeting in Philadelphia. "We want to do something to help all Americans."
Groups including Lopiano's organization and the National Women's Law Center worry that that won't happen, and have strenuously objected to proposals Paige's commission made at the Philadelphia meeting.
Those suggestions included revising the formulas that determine school Title IX compliance in a way that would give men a greater share of resources and athletic scholarships than their gender balance on campus would dictate.
"The radical proposals were astonishing," said law center Vice President Jocelyn Samuels, who insists that Title IX is being enforced properly, and that the ideas the commissioners discussed "would not stand up in court."
Since its inception, Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 has helped boost young women's sports not just in colleges but in high schools as well, where participation has risen by 847 percent over three decades, boosters say. They attribute much of the rise in high school activity to the opportunities young women realize are now available in college sports.
Paige told a Senate hearing last summer of a 66 percent rise in the number of women's college teams between 1981 and 1999.
But others argue that Title IX led to discrimination against male athletes when schools imposed gender quotas and eliminated men's sports programs to attain parity with women.
The College Sports Council and the National Wrestling Coaches Association have already taken the Department of Education to court in an effort to halt cuts in men's sports to help women. Although women now comprise 57 percent of students on U.S. college campuses, the plaintiffs contend that it should be permissible for men to get a bigger slice of college sports budgets than their enrollment dictates because, they say, more men than women are interested in playing sports.
"Title IX was intended to ban gender-based discrimination in programs that get federal funds, not to be a strict quota law," said Mike Moyer, former Princeton University wrestling coach and executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association.
He notes that more than 430 colleges eliminated wrestling after the law went into effect, and says the men's groups want Paige's panel to reinterpret the law in a way that "protects women, without harming men."
The sports that are being cut are those that don't draw the crowds of basketball or football, but some nurture the country's Olympic medalists. Sports council President Eric Pearson noted that the University of Miami diving program that trained Olympic gold medalist Greg Louganis has been eliminated.
Ohio schools cut wrestling
Ohio schools including Hiram College, Youngstown State University, Cuyahoga Community College, Defiance College, Ohio Wesleyan University, Cedarville University, Marietta College, Capitol University, Wittenberg University and the University of Cincinnati have all discontinued wrestling, said Rich Fleming, wrestling coach at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea.
Fleming, a former Miami University of Ohio wrestling champ, was particularly stung when his alma mater's program was cut despite legal efforts to save it.
He said such reductions make it harder for the remaining programs to arrange meets, and reduce athletic opportunities for teenagers.
"Wrestling is a big tradition in Ohio," he said. "Boys are competitive. Lots of kids like combative action. Wrestling provides a way to channel it constructively."
Yet Kent State University Athletic Director Laing Kennedy says he has managed to comply with the law without cutting men's programs. The university balanced its ratio of male and female athletes by capping the number of players on men's teams and adding women's golf and soccer programs.
Kent State now has an equal number of men and women athletes - although its enrollment is 60 percent female. It also gives 98 athletic scholarships to women, compared with 133 for men. Kennedy said the school still complies with the law, because it has met women's demands for sports and increased their opportunities.
Kennedy applauds how Title IX has increased the quality of coaching and athletic performance for women, but he said he'd still like to see a loosening of the federal government's proportionality requirements.
"Whenever we have open sports tryouts, more men than women always try out for the teams," said Kennedy. "In society, more male students than women are interested in sports."