Women's Wrestling
District IX

McMann ineligible for college - ruled a "pro" due to stipend.

Jessie Daniels wrestling in Iowa - from the Des Moines Register

Sacramento Bee article - Dec 22, 2001

New York Post article - Dec 24, 2001

http://www.themat.com/pressbox/pressdetail.asp?aid=3829

Tomeo beats Sherwood, two match to none, in finals of Special Wrestle-off for the 123.25-pound position on the U.S. Women's World Team
11/6/2001

Gary Abbott/USA Wrestling

Erin Tomeo (Volant, Pa./Sunkist Kids) defeated Malissa Sherwood (Rocklin, Calif./Missouri Valley College), two match to none, in the championship series of the Special Wrestle-off for the 123.25-pound position on the U.S. Women's World Team in Colorado Springs, Colo., Nov. 6.

Tomeo won the best-of-three series and will represent the USA at the World Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria, Nov. 22-25. The competition was held in Gym #9 of Sports Center II at the U.S. Olympic Training Center.

Tomeo won the first match of the series, 8-3. She opened the bout with a three-point underhook whipover, and led 3-0 at the mid-break. Sherwood tied the bout at 3-3 late in the second period with a three-point headlock. Tomeo immediately stormed back with a three-point throw just 11 seconds later for a 6-3 lead, and scored two more points as time ran out on a counter.

"I thought I was sharp," said Tomeo after the first match. "I stayed in good position throughout the match."

Tomeo said that she was not concerned after Sherwood tied the match with the headlock. "I thought, It doesn‚t matter; I‚m coming back.‚ I didn‚t let it faze me," said Tomeo. "I have been blessed with this opportunity. Things worked out, like they should have. It is great to have a second chance, and I‚m not taking it for granted."

In the second match, Tomeo scored a fall with just 13 seconds left, leading by 10 points at the time. Tomeo led 5-0 after the first period, and broke the match open with two counter throws in the second period.

"I am very grateful," said Tomeo after the second win. "I knew I had it in me. I had to find the focus and I did. In this match, I was trying to score one point at a time. I knew she had good throws. I tried to stay in position and take what was there. In the end, I knew she was tired and knew she was going to try her throws."

"I‚m really focused now," she said. "I am ready to go to the worlds and wrestle like I am capable. I want to go, have a great experience and show the world what I have."

Sherwood, who was injured during the entire 2001 season, returned to competition this month.

"I‚m out of shape; I haven‚t done anything for a year," said Sherwood. "I don‚t know what I was thinking. My brain told me I could do it, but my body told me I couldn‚t. She is a good candidate for the team, because she has been training well. My body is not working to its ability yet. I thought I‚d come here and test myself. Obviously, I am not back yet."

The Special Wrestle-off became necessary when World Team member Tina George (Colorado Springs, Colo./Sunkist Kids) notified USA Wrestling that she will not be able to compete at the 2001 Women‚s World Championships. George has joined the U.S. Army, and has started her basic training assignment.

The Women‚s World Championships were originally scheduled for Madison Square Garden in New York City, Sept. 26-29. Due to the terrorist attacks on the United States, the event was postponed, then rescheduled.

Sherwood qualified for the finals with a 9-0 win over her college teammate Grace Magnussen (Missouri Valley College) in the semifinals. Tomeo advanced with an 11-0 technical fall over Jessi Shirley (Galion, Ohio/Cumberland College).

The event opened with a quarterfinal match, where Shirley pinned Brandy Rosenbrock (Warren, Mich./Shamrocks) in 49 seconds.

Wall Street Jounral article

Comprehensive Links @ The Mat
Erin Tomeo at the 2001 Dapper Dan Classic!!

 
AP Article

 
The Minnesota-Morris wrestling team has just returned from US Nationals,
and friendly insults and laughter bounce off the walls of the small
practice room.  "Who's the best? Who's the best?" demands one wrestler,
pinning another.  A typical college wrestling
practice, except that these wrestlers are women.  They're competing on
the only collegiate varsity women's wrestling program in the United
States, created as an easy and inexpensive way to comply with Title IX,
the federal law intended to give women equal athletic opportunities.  At
other schools, women wrestlers  must compete in clubs or on former mens
teams turned coed.  That makes Morris an attractive choice for wrestlers
who want to compete in college. Most are happy to abandon their dream
colleges for the chance to wrestle even at a Division II school in rural
Minnesota that doesn't offer athletic scholarships. While the school has a
strong academic reputation, only the women's wrestling team draws students
from across the country: eight of the 11 wrestlers come from other states.
When practice starts, the laughter quickly dies down, replaced by the
thumping of bodies slapping the mat, the scraping of wrestlers trying to
squirm out of a pin and the grunting that naturally accompanies forceful
movement Emily Gulbrandson perfects her leg lace on Jen Teske. Bent on
one knee, Gulbrandson grabs Teske around the crotch and flips her onto
her back. Nearby, another wrestler works on her arm throw, grabbing a
teammate around the neck and ffipping them both to the floor.  The Morris
women don't get to use these moves in competition as much as they'd like.
They compete about once a month against women's club teams, often in
national and international competition. They wrestle freestyle, four minutes
of gut wrenches, takedowns and occasional pins. In April the team won the
Senior National Championships, where the best American women compete. Eight
team members qualified for the World Team Trials in Minneapolis in August.
And t several of the women hope to compete at the first Olympics to feature
women?s wrestling in 2004.  If women's collegiate wrestling is to
succeed, several colleges in the same area need to offer the sport, said
Art Taylor, director of youth sports programs at Northeastern University's
Center for the Study of Sport in Society. "Normally when you integrate a
sport, you try and do it with masses," Taylor said.  The NCAA requires
skippy documentation of 20 schools with co-ed teams or high interest levels
before it will vote on whether to recognize the sports as "emerging" -
the first step in becoming an
NCAA championship sport. Morris coach Doug Reese is hoping to complete
that documentation soon to get the vote on the NCAA's agenda for a
January meeting.  When Reese started the women's program three years ago,
no one on the team had any experience.
Next year's recruits all have at least three years of high school
experience.  Like Aimee McNab. When she started high school, she played as
many sports as she could. Then she discovered wrestling.  Once I started
wrestling, I didn?t do any other sport,"  McNab said. "I lost interest
in everything else."  Like most of her teammates, McNab has always been
strong and aggressive, playing football with the boys team in grade school
and becoming her high school's first female wrestler. She graduated from
high school in January so she could wrestle with the Morris women a semester
early. "After wrestling the guys, girls are a lot more flexible and you can
do all sorts of different things. It?s really cool," she said. Her own
flexibility is obvious. She interrupts her warm-up run with backflips. As
she complains about making weight for next weekend, she flips upside down
and starts walking around the padded room on her hands. Women say that
their male counterparts accept and support them for the most part. Some
men forfeit matches rather than wrestle a female. Some coaches aren't
supportive. Tina George said a male opponent slammed her onto the concrete
next to the mat during a high school match. "You step on the mat with a guy
and you know you're wrestling against some guy who will try and hurt you,"
George said.
McNab says that resistance stems from the fact that wrestling is more
physical than other sports.  "There are a lot of injuries," she said.
"Now they see we can take pain just as much as them. People on our team
have had knee surgery, elbow problems, ankles ...name it and we?ve
gone through it."  In these three years, though, Reese has seen
attitudes change. "This is not some circus sideshow," he said. "I?m
very serious. I want our athletes to excel. I want them to make
the national, world teams........ Just their success on the mats has
really spoken in loud volume across the country." Not everyone is
convinced that women's wrestling is good for women's sports.  Sometimes,
girls follow boys in the wrong direction," Taylor said.
He?s not convinced that wrestling, with its violent tendencies,
sets good values for anyone.  The Morris wrestlers disagree.
"Women?s wrestling is going to come, like it or not," George said.
"People just need to expand their horizons. Even if they don?t like
it, they need to accept it." 

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