News Page
By Our Sports Reporter CHENNAI MAY 22.
For a State which is hosting the National wrestling championship for women for the first time, the organisers are making all efforts to make the event a grand success, notwithstanding the seemingly minor hurdles like accommodation of around 600 wrestlers from different parts of the State and making the mandatory testing procedures.
One half of the Sivanthi Thidal courts at the Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium (used for volleyball) will be put to use for the three-day competition beginning on Friday.
It was interesting when Rohtash Singh, Secretary of Tamil Nadu Wrestling Association (formed six months ago) released the names of Tamil Nadu competitors. In the 25-member team, except for five who are boxers, the rest are all first-timers. Comparing them with their Northern counterparts, who have had more experience, would be foolhardy.
The host will, nevertheless, consider the event as a learning curve. "When Tamil Nadu women are doing well in volleyball, basketball, weightlifting and boxing, it can do well in wrestling too. Because of official and several other reasons, we were not able to conduct it here. But I am sure with more tournaments, Tamil Nadu women will improve", said Mr Singh.
Defending champion Delhi, with Internationals Kiran Sihag and her sister Parveen Sihag, Rachana, Alka Tomer and Sonika Kaliraman, is expected to dominate the championship in the respective weight categories.
Haryana with Sunita, Neeru Panghal, Sudesh Kumari would give the defending champion MTNL (Delhi has fielded two teams— MTNL and NCR) a run for its money. Twenty-three States, three Union Territories and two institutional teams would take part in the tourney.
Explaining the format, Mr. Singh said that with respect to weight categories, the cadet section would have 10, junior 8 and senior 7. There will be only one bout at a time, with 20-second rest. "We want to make sure that the crowd concentrates on one match, especially when the host is involved, said Mr. Singh.
It is interesting to note that many wrestlers, mostly from Northern States, are fairly decent judokas. Take for instance 16-year-old Rashmi Chadda from Delhi, who has taken part in the National judo championships. "There are lot of similarities. But in wrestling there is more ground work," said Rashmi. Same is the case with Rashmi's State-mate Vishula Kataria.
When the first official National women's boxing championship was held in Chennai around two years back, the interest-level among the spectators and the participation of the players exceeded the organisers' expectations.
Rohtash Singh will consider it `mission accomplished' if something similar happens.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Chennai, May 22 (PTI):
Almost all the State grapplers, including strong contenders Punjab and Haryana, have arrived for competing in the 7th Women Wrestling National Championships commencing here tomorrow.
In all 300 competitors would be on view in the qualifying and preleminary rounds for the first two days and the finals of all bouts in the senior, junior and cadet categories would be held on May 25, Rohtas Singh, Secretary, Wrestling Association of Tamil Nadu, said.
The national wrestling championship, the first to be held here, will be the basis of selection of Indian teams (Senior and Junior) for the 8th Asian Wrestling championship scheduled in New Delhi from June 8.
Among the participants, Indian Railways, Postal and Telegraph and Maha Nagar Nigam Limited are expected to provide stiff competition to Haryana and Punjab wrestlers. These two Northern States have been ruling the roost in the sport for years now and they also boast of internationals in their ranks.
The medallists would be subjected to 'dope test' during the Nationals.
The top four finishers in various weight categories of this Nationals would automatically pick themselves for the camp to be held for the Asian championship. The final Indian team would be announced in early June.
Unlike the usual practice of holding the championship indoors, the organisers have decided to hold it in the 'open' due to lack of sponsors for the meet.
Prev: India hopeful of winning bid for 2010 C'wealth Games
-----------------------------------------------
Danielle, http://www.daniellehobeika.com/new.html just posted her
photos at nationals: http://www.daniellehobeika.com/usopens2003/index.htm
--------------------------------
Hey, guys, Annika has come to play
Thursday, May 22, 2003
By TARA SULLIVAN
STAFF WRITER
When Amy Perlmutter walked into a party not long ago, a man recognized her as the high school wrestler she was in the mid-1990s at Manchester Regional High School in Haledon. He remembered Perlmutter's pioneering effort as the first girl in New Jersey to win a match in the traditionally boys sport.
"He said to me, 'Boy, did we tease that guy for losing to a girl,' " recalled Perlmutter, now the only female officer in the Prospect Park Police Department.
At the time, Perlmutter never thought about what trail she was blazing, never considered that she did not belong among the male wrestlers, never worried about hurting a boy's ego. When she took to the mat, competition was it.
"I was just out there as a wrestler," she said. "I hated being in the papers and all the attention. I didn't want to be a pioneer."
Worldwide attention is now on professional golfer Annika Sorenstam, who is competing in the PGA Tour's Bank of America Colonial tournament in Fort Worth, Texas, which begins today. Her appearance prompts a flashback to 30 years ago.
In 1973, Billie Jean King served up Bobby Riggs in the historic Battle of the Sexes tennis match. King felt she carried the weight of a gender in her racket.
"Before the match, I kept saying to myself: 'I have to win,' " King wrote recently in the Los Angeles Times. "Everything is riding on this. Women's sports is riding on it. Women's tennis is riding on it. If I lost to Riggs, I felt the women's professional tour could fall apart; it had been going for only three years. ... I worried that they would tell us that girls couldn't play."
King swept the match and helped sweep aside the notion that women could not be athletes. Efforts such as King's, as well as the 1972 passage of the Title IX legislation mandating equal athletic opportunities for men and women at federally funded institutions, changed the message in women's sports.
No longer are girls and women knocking on the locker room door with a plaintive, "Let me in; I have a right to play." Sorenstam's effort seems to confirm they're blowing those doors off with a warning: "Watch out, here I come. And I can be just as good as you."
This new script set today's stage.
Sorenstam, the top-ranked golfer on the LPGA Tour, is the first woman in 58 years to compete with the men on the links. She is not Babe Zaharias, who made the 36-hole cut at the Los Angeles Open in 1945 as an athletic anomaly, a woman who had precious few places to compete against other women. Sorenstam, a Swede, so dominated women's golf last year - she won 13 tournaments in 25 starts - that she's now looking for the next great challenge.
"I'm not putting the guys on test here, or men against women," Sorenstam said in a recent interview. "I'm far from that. This is a test for me personally. I don't want to put the guys on any defensive. I just want to play against the best and see what happens."
That Sorenstam is able to compete is evidence of development in the level of women's sports. But it doesn't mean the gender no longer needs barrier breakers.
"Annika is a pioneer in this first exploration in legitimate competition between sexes, and the consideration of what can come to play as the gap between men's and women's skills gets smaller," said Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation, an organization King founded in 1974 to ensure equal access to participation and leadership opportunities for all girls and women in sports and fitness.
"One, it provides a platform for discourse. Two, it is a legitimate test for her as an athlete, and three, it can portend if it's of interest to people to see men and women compete."
Examples of such mixed-gender competition are on the rise. A survey by the National Federation of State High School Associations, for 2001-02, showed 2,870 girls competing in football and 3,405 in wrestling nationwide. The same survey 10 years ago put those numbers at 117 and 219, respectively; 20 years ago, there were three girls playing football and one girl wrestling.
At the University of Texas-El Paso, a former soccer star named Holly Cohen is trying to get her foot through the door. A walk-on football placekicker,Cohen forced her way onto the depth chart after a successful spring season in which she kicked a field goal of 45 yards and, more important, was consistent on her extra points.
"I just can't be good for a girl," the 22-year-old Cohen said. "I have to be as good as any kicker. The coach told me if I'm consistent and can compete, I can play. I'm not a novelty."
Cohen earned her chance after friends on the football team pulled her off a workout on the track with a dare to kick a field goal. She nailed it without warm-ups or kicking shoes. Before long, coaches coaxed her into joining practice. With specially fitted pads for her 5-foot-4 frame, Cohen showed enough to hold on to her invitation. She may have to pay her own way because of NCAA football scholarship limitations, but she says the chance to become the first woman to score a point in NCAA football history is worth it.
"Football is the ultimate male thing; it's what every male watches," she said. "What better place for women to prove they can take this step?"
Females are taking such steps all over New Jersey, from high school to youth leagues.
Kim Salma, a wrestler at Fair Lawn High School, became the first girl to qualify for the region tournament this season.
Jeannine Mondesando, a former golfer at Mahwah High School, shared the state title with a boy as a high school junior in 2001.
Brooke Zander, a 12-year-old from Newton, is the only girl on her travel soccer team, a Flight Two squad in the Morris County Youth Soccer League.
"Before Title IX, and that's the benchmark, you saw idiosyncratic women breaking out of the barrier-laden world of sports," Lopiano said. "Babe Zaharias. Wilma Rudolph. People who were extremely passionate about sports and who were brave enough to challenge to compete gave us a glimpse of the possibility of the female athlete. [The gap] won't ever close because of physiological differences, but the legitimacy of tests between the sexes will be accepted."
Acceptance appears to be a very loud subtext here. Vijay Singh, one of the biggest names on the PGA Tour, openly questioned Sorenstam's being invited to play in the Colonial. Singh said he hoped Sorenstam would miss the cut, and threatened to withdraw if paired with her. Singh withdrew before the tournament anyway.
"I think men who say things like that are just scared of losing," said Mondesando, who just qualified for a United States Golf Association amateur event in Florida. "It's the worst thing for a guy's ego to get beaten by a girl. But it shouldn't matter. Everyone's competing for the same thing. If Vijay Singh walked off, he'd just be showing that he couldn't beat her."
Throughout her high school years, Mondesando faced petitions aimed at stopping her from competing with boys, mostly because she drove from the girls' tees, which are closer to the hole than the boys' tees. (Sorenstam will play from the same tees as the men.)
Salma has watched boys she defeated walk off the mat in tears, without a handshake.
Not all the vibes are negative. Dean Wilson and Aaron Barber, who will play in Sorenstam's group today, applauded her inclusion. Cohen's boyfriend is on the UTEP football team, and members of the offensive line promised to play even harder if she's out there.
Thirteen-year-old Matt Kienz, a teammate of Brooke Zander, never questioned her spot on the roster. "She's probably better than half the kids we play, and she's definitely as aggressive," Matt said. "I don't think of her differently. It's up to the person to decide what they want their competition to be like. If they want to be tougher, they play with the boys."
The message of this new generation seems simple: If you can handle the competition, you're welcome to play.
"To me, it's all about competing," said Gary Sandberg, the father of two high school athletes. Son Joe quarterbacked Bergen Catholic's football team and played point guard in basketball, and daughter Julie plays volleyball and basketball at Ramapo Regional High School in Franklin Lakes.
"If [Sorenstam] is good enough to compete at that level, more power to her," Sandberg said. "If it's a sport and you can compete, why not?"
And if his own son were to face a girl? "If she's playing, you've got to play. Don't hold back. Treat her like another player."
It's a "challenge yourself to get better" issue. That's what it's always been to Nancy Lieberman, the pioneering basketball player who competed in the all-male United States Basketball League long before there was a WNBA.
"What Annika is saying is, 'I want to be better, and I'll try whatever I can to take my game to another level,' " Lieberman said. "I applaud her for that. How do you get better but by competing against people better than you? I had to play against men if I wanted to take my game to another level."
---------------------------------