U.S. Women Hit Olympic Wrestling Circuit

May 1, 2004 -- After years of dreaming of the Olympic Games, women wrestlers are finally going to get their shot.

Women's wrestling is the only sport being added to the Olympics this year, and Kristie Marano — a former waitress from upstate New York who has won multiple national and world championships — hopes to be one of the four women selected in May for the first female U.S. Olympic team.

"It's been my dream since I was really young," says Marano, "ever since I started wrestling at 5."

Women's wrestling has long been accepted in other countries, but Americans have been slow to warm to the idea. The young women who wrestle hope to change that cultural prejudice.

"Women have a natural ability to go out and be aggressive when you have to be," says Toccara Montgomery, another Olympic hopeful, adding, "I think a lot of people sell us short on that issue."

Popularity Contest

Right now, there are six colleges in the United States that offer women's varsity wrestling.

At California's Menlo College, the men and women work out together, because of limited funding and facilities. But there are, of course, differences. The men have more upper body strength, while the women compensate with agility.

And that's not all, says wrestling coach Sara Fulp-Allen. She thinks the women who choose this male-dominated sport "have a lot of intensity, a lot of movement and a lot of adrenaline."

Some 5,000 girls are now wrestling nationwide. That's a 300 percent increase in the last five years. But despite that surge in popularity, only two states — Texas and Hawaii — sanction girls' wrestling at the high-school level.

There have been concerns that girls involved in such an aggressive contact sport could be injured. And yet, because so few female teams exist, girls must join the boys' team if they want to compete. At West Covina High School in California, Coach Don Stephens often has to reassure parents that there is no inappropriate touching.

"The last thing going through that boy's mind when he finds out he has to wrestle a girl," says Stephens, "is how pretty she is. He's thinking, 'Please, don't let me lose.' "

Tough Young Women

But they often lose to 17-year-old Norine Cruz, a top-ranked wrestler in California who hails from West Covina.

Her petite frame masks a tough spirit. After she broke her nose in a match, her doctor gave her a choice: set it now and give up wrestling for awhile, or wait until the end of the season when he would re-break the nose and set it then. "I went to the league finals," she says, "and finished off the season." That's right: with a broken nose.

One of Cruz's younger teammates, 12-year-old Samantha Lopez, took up wrestling as a way of defending herself against her brothers. She says she's used to the taunts she sometimes gets. When boys tease her, she simply replies, "You want to go wrestle?"

That's the sort of grit that motivates these young women to aim for the top which, in wrestling, is definitely the place to be.

This report originally aired on April 27, 2004.