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Pinning down a top spot
A $10 bet with a friend led to Ohenewa Akuffo becoming one of Canada's best female wrestlers

RANDY STARKMAN
TORONTO STAR 7/31/03

Fresh recruits to the wrestling team at Brampton's St. Augustine High School never knew what hit them.

Immediately upon joining the squad, they would be steered by the other boys toward Ohenewa Akuffo to test their mettle.

"Any time a new guy would come on the team, they would say, `Now, just go wrestle that girl over there,'" Akuffo said with a chuckle.

"The guy would be like, `Watch me beat up a girl.' And I'm like, `Oh yeah, we'll see about that.'"

It was the wrestling equivalent of being thrown into the lion's den.

Many of the world's top female wrestlers now know how those unsuspecting guys felt, as Akuffo is establishing herself as a solid gold-medal prospect for the 2004 Summer Games in Athens when women's wrestling makes its Olympic debut. She will compete for Canada at the Pan Am Games in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

This has been a breakthrough season for the 24-year-old from Brampton. Her biggest victory came at the Canadian championships in May when she created a buzz in the wrestling community after she upended six-time world champion Christine Nordhagen 8-1 in their 72-kilo semifinal match. It was the first meeting between the two former training partners since 2000.

Akuffo followed that up in July with a big win at the Canada Cup in Guelph, where she defeated American rival Toccara Montgomery and was named the tournament's outstanding female wrestler. She has qualified for the world championships at New York's Madison Square Garden in September.

It's quite a list of accomplishments for someone who ventured into the sport only because she didn't want to lose out on a bet she made with a friend.

Akuffo had just switched from public to Catholic school, and the transition was made more difficult, since all sports programs were on hold due to a teachers' work-to-rule campaign. When sports resumed, wrestling was the first to start.

"I was scared," she said. "I'd never seen wrestling before in my life. I was like, `I'm not going to do this.'"

It wasn't the $10 she'd bet with her friend that finally got her on the mat; it was the principle.

"It would have been like giving up," she said.

One thing Akuffo is definitely not is a quitter. She says she's a young woman who gets bored easily, and is conditioned to seek out challenges.

"You've got to always try to get out of your box because if you don't you can never live," she said.

"That's one thing in wrestling. You can travel the country and, guess what, it doesn't matter how rich or how poor you are. If you can step on the mat and you can beat somebody, their father can be a CEO, but that money isn't going to make them a better athlete if they don't have skills."

That attitude was instilled in Akuffo from a young age. Her father, Daniel, an executive with Concord Elevator, had a deal with her about school and sports. If she maintained an A average, he would cover all the costs of her sports and take her there.

He never wavered from that, either. Once she got a 78 in high school and was not allowed to compete in the wrestling national championships.

"I look at him and I respect him highly for that," she said. "Principle is principle."

Hers is a tight-knit family. Her sister, Obenewa, who is 14 months older and works as a model, shows up to all of her tournaments. She was also the one who loaned her the money she needed to train at a wrestling camp one Christmas, which led to her first making the national team.

"She's like my No. 1 supporter."

The family moved back to their native Ghana when she was 3 years old and lived there for several years. Her father wanted his children to know about their roots.

"He said, `If anything happens to you, you want to be able to go back to your family,'" Akuffo said. "If you don't know the language, you don't know the culture, you're going to be shocked if you ever go back home and you're wondering if it's like the stereotype of Africa in a North American country. The only way you're going to know is if you live there."

She said the experience has helped keep her grounded.

"When you go to school and see people waiting outside for someone to give them a book or something, or tell them what you learned in school — they're dying to go to school but they can't — it teaches you not to take it for granted."

At the same time, Akuffo said, she couldn't live there now because of the role women play in society there.

"My mouth would get me in a lot of trouble," she said. "My dad never said girls can't do something. The word `can't' is not in his vocabulary. If you're a woman or a man, it doesn't matter, you can do it. Everybody did everything in our family. Everybody washed the dishes. Everybody cleaned the toilet, the boys and the girls."

She's not taking her spot on the Olympic team for granted. She's in a good position right now. Her victory at the nationals means she will enter the Olympic trials this December as the top seed. The other wrestlers must fight each other for the chance to meet her in the final, where they will have to beat her twice to get the Athens berth while she needs to win just once.

But no one, particularly Akuffo, thinks Nordhagen is down for the count.

"Regardless of who Canada sends to the Olympics, we'll come out with a medal," Akuffo said. "And that's our goal."

Akuffo receives regular mentoring from Olympic gold medallist Daniel Igali, who considers her a younger sister. The two have become very good friends.

"I see in her, what I was eight years ago," Igali said.

Ohenewa calls Igali "my biggest fan and my biggest critic."

"He's been where I want to be," she said. "He's done it. I always think in life if you want to do something you've got to surround yourself with positive people and people who have been there, so you're not going into it blindly, you know what to expect. Once you know what to expect, you can do it."