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100-pound champion
By MARK FOYER / Half Moon Bay Review / May 28, 1999
Sara Fulp-Allen knew it was going to be hard. Wrestling is tough, and she knew from five previous trips to the California State Championships in Fresno just how hard it could be.
This time, it was hard for Fulp-Allen's opponents.
In late April, the 13-year-old El Granada resident won the California State Championship, School Girls Division.
Then, on Saturday, Fulp-Allen helped Cunha Intermediate School win the Peninsula Junior High School League Finals.
She claimed the 100-pound title ‹ and became the first girl in league history to claim an individual title.
Unlike in the state championships in Fresno, where Fulp-Allen claimed the title in an all-girls' division, on Saturday she claimed three wins for the title against boys.
"I don't care who I am wrestling against," Fulp-Allen said. "I just want to wrestle."
The eighth-grader said that she has even wrestled high-schoolers.
"It's easier to wrestle against boys in junior high," Fulp-Allen said. "They're a lot stronger in high school."
Fulp-Allen will get up-close to the male high school wrestlers next year, when she enters Half Moon Bay High School.
She will not be alone in the locker room. Half Moon Bay has group of girls who have made a major impact for the Cougars.
"I've wrestled with them a couple of times," Fulp-Allen said. "But I only go there when I don't have any homework."
Getting an interest in wrestling for Fulp-Allen was not that hard, even though girls' wrestling is just starting to pick up steam. After all, her father, Lee, has been involved as a coach of women's wrestlers since its inception a decade ago.
Lee Allen has a long history in wrestling. Twice, he participated in the Olympics. He was supposed to coach the United States Olympic Wrestling Team in 1980. But the U.S. boycott of the Games, which took place in Moscow, prevented him from participating.
All the while, Allen maintained his presence in San Mateo County, coaching at Skyline College in San Bruno.
When Lee Allen introduced Sara to wrestling, she went for it.
"She showed an interest," said Lee Allen. "She was very willing to wrestle."
"Dad brought me to one of his tournaments," Fulp-Allen said. "I tried it and I liked it a lot."
The first time she took to the mat in a wrestling competition, she made an instant impression.
Participating in a tournament in Livermore, she won her first match 20-0. Yes, it was against a boy.
Those two would meet again. The results were different the second time.
"He pinned me in 10 seconds," Fulp-Allen said with a smile.
These days, Fulp-Allen is the one doing most of the pinning.
In Fresno, she won all three of her matches by pin. Each time, she won with a head and arm lock.
There was one big difference for Fulp-Allen in the state meet. All of the wrestlers she pinned are people she never faced before.
As a veteran of five state meets, Fulp-Allen usually knows whomever she wrestles. But with each passing year, some of the competitors move up to a new age group. This year in Fresno, other competitors moved up a weight class.
"Usually, I have wrestled one of those people before," Fulp-Allen said. "But not this year."
As good as she is in wrestling, there is more to her life than just wrestling and school.
"In the fall, I do gymnastics," she says. "Next year, I'll go out for track."
Track was something she could not do at Cunha, since both track and wrestling are offered in spring. That is not the case at Half Moon Bay, where wrestling occurs in the winter, with track in the fall.
"When the class goes out for a run, she always does well," said Lee Allen.
She has plenty of goals set for herself. She would like to participate in the state high school tournament, as well as the high school national championships.
Right now, she is taking it one step at a time, she said. All she knows is that she will wrestle for the Cougars next year.
She's not sure at what level she'll wrestle. She might even wrestle for the varsity team. The final decision on all that is a long way away.
But whatever level in which she competes, she knows one thing for sure when she arrives for the first day of practice.
"It will be hard," Fulp-Allen said.
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Female wrestler inspires strength
Dear editor,
I saw a beautiful and wondrous sight Wednesday night (the Feast of the Epiphany, Jan. 6). I saw the birth of the new woman in the guise of Danni Presley, 110-pound wrestler for Vintage High School. Her opponent flipped her around pretty mercilessly for most of their six-minute match. Though trailing 14-5, she never gave up, never quit, never gave less than 100 percent. She watched, she waited, until he made one little mistake. Then she jumped him, and jumped him hard, pinning him and winning the match. What a thrill to see. What tenacity, what spirit. This is the answer to those people who want to keep females of any age from fulfilling their potential. The power that comes from that kind of spirit will triumph over any obstacle and take very little crap from anybody. The strength to take on the boys on an equal footing and win by your wits and back it up with muscle will raise the quest for equal respect to the next level. To teach our daughters to be strong and tenacious is to teach them the toughness and confidence they need to maneuver around in this world. To teach them to be responsible for their own safety gives them great power as they thread their way among the predators, who are always watching. This is the answer to the Neanderthals who date rape, beat their women, or abuse little girls. The Nicole Brown Simpsons of this world would be alive and their attackers would be in jail. All the young girls "missing" would have a fighting chance and not go to their slaughter like lambs but biting and scratching all the way -- leaving their mark, at least. It's time to stop telling our girls to always "be nice." Train them to be ready and watchful, wary for their own safety. God bless Danni Presley. I hope she has a great life.
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Andrews uses trusty move to win title
By MARTY JAMES
Register Sports Editor
NAPA
Megan Andrews was trailing 4-3 in the third and final round of her championship match when she turned to a trusty move during the U.S. Girls Wrestling Association National Championships.
Andrews, a Vintage High School senior who is also a member of the Napa Valley Wrestling Club, calls it a Granby roll. Andrews' reversal and nearfall resulted in five points and enabled her to beat top-seeded Brandy Beayon of Vermont, 8-5, and win the 136-pound national title last week at Lake Orion, Mich.
"I think I wrestled well," Andrews, 17, said after returning to town. "Every time I went out there I tried to win. I felt like some of the people were a lot less experienced than I was, but a lot of them were close matches.
"I knew that I could win it; that's sort of what I was telling myself all along for confidence. I just knew I had a shot at it."
The win capped a perfect weekend for Andrews, a starter for the Vintage varsity wrestling team, as she went 5-0 over two days with three pins. Andrews, who was presented with a medal and the large bracket sheet, also helped California to a third-place finish in the team standings.
"She's worked very hard for five years, and I thought if anybody deserves a national title, she does," Vintage coach Carl Murphree said. "She showed four years of hard work and experience and the ability to think on her feet. She came through.
"I knew that she would go out and do a good job. Whether or not she won the tournament, I was still going to be proud of her."
Andrews, seeded sixth in a field of 22 in her bracket, opened the tournament with pins over Candace Miracle of Ohio at 1:32 of the first round, Joy Warren of Florida at 3:19, and Nicole Barnes of Michigan at 4:20 of the third round in the quarterfinals. Andrews jumped out to a 10-0 lead against Barnes, the No. 3 seed and the Michigan state champion.
he beat Diana Wojdyla of Michigan in the semifinals, 3-2.
"From the moment I met her, she's always worked hard, she's always listened, and she pays attention to details, the finer points, and technique," said Murphree, who accompanied Andrews and another VHS wrestler, sophomore Danni Presley, to the nationals at Lake Orion High, located 30 miles north of Detroit. "It's paid off."
Andrews, a Vintage co-captain who is a nationally-rated wrestler, went to work after falling behind 4-0 against Beayon, the 1998 national champion. Andrews didn't get rattled, and instead relied on her experience to gain the upper hand. An escape and then a takedown got her right back in the match.
Starting the final round in the down position, Andrews used the Granby roll -- invented by a coach from Virginia over 40 years ago -- to take an 8-4 lead within the first 20 seconds. Beayon's only other point came from an escape.
"I knew I had a good Granby," she said. "I set it up and I was patient with it. We had done a lot of stuff in practice with working on strategy. I didn't feel like I was going to lose."
The tournament, now in its second year, drew over 300 girls from 40 states in 14 weight classes. Eight of those states have sanctioned state-wide girls tournaments, something California doesn't offer. Twenty-two wrestlers from California competed.
Michigan won the team title and Hawaii was second. Others finishing in the Top 10 were Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Oregon, Arkansas and Illinois.
"It meant a lot to me that my coach was there," said Andrews, a second-degree black belt at Pinewood Karate in Napa who wore a burgundy-colored Vintage singlet. "This is the first time that he's ever been at one of these national tournaments with me, and it helped a lot that he was there. I wanted to win it for him. I wanted to win it for my parents.
"Everyone's put so much into me. It meant a lot because it was my senior year."
Presley, meanwhile, went 2-2 in the 108-pound division and didn't place. Presley lost 9-7 in overtime to Ohio's Becky D'Ambrosia, the defending national champion, and lost 11-6 to Patrice Crenshaw of Georgia.
Michelle Domagas, a 118-pound junior from Vallejo, took fifth place after going 5-2 with a bye.
Wrestling against boys in varsity matches, Andrews compiled a 17-24 record with eight pins during the 1998-99 season. She also won titles at the Napa Valley Girls Classic, held at Vintage, and the North Coast California Championships in San Jose.
She is now preparing for the U.S. Women's Nationals, to be held later this month, and should be one of the top considerations for the 2004 U.S. Olympic team, according to Murphree, when women's wrestling is introduced.
Andrews, who carries a 4.27 GPA and is on the student council, will attend Oklahoma State in Stillwater in the fall. She's attended camps there for the last three years.
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Moanalua, Kamehameha lead in wrestling tournament
By Pat Bigold
Star-Bulletin
This time they belonged. The 87 girls from 24 schools who carried gym bags into the Stan Sheriff Center at 9 a.m. Friday were not stat keepers, they were not equipment managers and they were not cheerleaders.
They were wrestlers, thank you very much.
And they were about to make their debut at the 32nd Hawaii High School Athletic Association wrestling tournament.
After waiting all year for a pilot girls' state wrestling tournament they thought had been approved in May by the state's athletic directors, they were told early this month by the HHSAA executive board it was a no-go. But a groundswell of parental pressure, a petition drive by the girls and the threat of an injunction persuaded the board to reverse its decision.
"This is it," said Iolani's Jill Remiticado, top-seeded semifinalist at 114 pounds. "This is the event of the year. I worked all year for this and now I'm here. I am actually standing in the building."
Remiticado's face glowed with the exuberance that could be seen on every female competitor's face Friday.
"When I was in the terminal getting ready for my match, all I could do was smile. Usually I have a game face on, but all I could do was smile."
Hawaii Baptist Academy's Danelle Miyamoto, who beat Leilehua's Francine Anny at 103 pounds in the quarterfinals, said she will "treasure" any medal she wins.
"You can feel the energy in here with everyone encouraging you," said Kalaheo's 5-6 Hillary Broad, a first-year wrestler who won her first match in the 140-pound consolation bracket.
The first girls to compete were Cathleen Higa of Assets and Jacque Geringer of Aiea. Geringer won by a pin.
Higa said she felt welcome among the 168 boy wrestlers at the arena.
"When we circulated a petition to hold the girls' state tournament, all the guys signed it," she said.
Moanalua leads the girls' tournament with 52 points going into Saturday's semifinals, but McKinley is a point behind. Leilehua trails in third with 38 points.
Defending state boys' champion Kamehameha enters the semifinals with eight wrestlers. The Warriors have an 11.5-point advantage on St. Louis. Waiakea is third (55) while 10-time champion Iolani and Aiea are fourth with 42 points.
"If we can get eight to the finals, it'll be over by then," said Kamehameha coach Al Chee, whose 1997 championship was his school's first.
Lahainaluna senior Lia Berger, who pinned Nicole Manuel of Moanalua at 1:38 of their 140-pound quarterfinal match, said she was happy to be in her own state tournament but disappointed in another way.
"I wrestled varsity for my team all year but I was prevented from competing in the MIL (Maui Interscholastic League) championships because there is a sanctioned state tournament for girls now," said Berger.
She had beaten four of the six boys who competed for the MIL 140-pound title and was anxious for a chance at a title.
Baldwin High coach Mike Donahoo, who has seen the 5-7 Berger wrestle, said he believes she would have had a chance to win against male competition in the MIL tournament.
Berger, who has 20 victories against boys in her varsity career and has pinned every girl she has ever faced, has a multi-dimensional background. She was Miss Maui Teen 1997 and first runner-up Miss Hawaii Teen.
A 4.3 student with two advanced placement courses, she has starred in several original youth theater musicals on Maui and also plays piano.
"Wrestling is not for every girl, but if you want to stick with it, you can handle it," she said.
Kamehameha's Ashley Byrd, the No. 1 seed at 130 pounds, epitomized his team's determination to repeat.
He said the memory of how a broken finger, suffered in the 1997 Interscholastic League of Honolulu quarterfinals, kept him out of the Warriors' state championship run, fueled his desire.
About 30 seconds into the first round of his state quarterfinal match against Nanakuli's Matt Flanagan, Byrd made a move and felt his shoulder pop out of place.
Time was called while trainer Tim Freitas iced and wrapped an Ace bandage around Byrd's shoulder.
He went back in and shortly thereafter won by a pin.
"I had him in a pin and he got away but I just kept driving the pin," said Byrd. "It (the shoulder) wasn't 100 percent but it was good enough to wrestle.".
Chee said Bird had no choice but to end it as quickly as possible.
"He knew it was going to he tough to go a hard 6 minutes with just one-and-a-half arms, so he decided, 'I better turn on the jets now and get this over with,' " he said.
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Lia Berger:
Life's not fair, but you have to deal with it.
'When God closes a door, he opens a window,' she says
An optimist battles the odds
By Pat Bigold
Star-Bulletin
LAHAINA, Maui -- Lia Berger understands that life is not fair.
"No, it's not, but you have to deal with it," said the 17-year-old Lahainaluna High School student.
The oldest child in a family that barely escaped homelessness on Oahu five years ago, Berger has put together a jaw-dropping combination of achievements in the face of severe financial adversity.
She has a cumulative 3.66 grade-point average and was a four-year varsity wrestler who won a state championship this spring. She has starred in a handful of Maui Theater musical productions and won five Chevron Speech Festival Awards.
But her chance of pursuing those activities in college is fading.
Berger, her parents and five siblings live in a state housing project on Mill Street, a hot, dusty neighborhood adjacent to the Pioneer Sugar Mill.
Across the narrow street are the cane-train tracks, over which cars hauling sugar cane rumble every hour during harvest season. When it's hot and the wind kicks up, red dust blows through the louvers and the family must close the slats.
That makes the small dwelling almost unbearably hot.
"You breathe fire," said her mother, Sophie Berger.
Mom stays home to care for her large family, but she occasionally uses her hair-dressing skills to earn money. She has done it to pay for Lia's music lessons.
Berger's father, Sama Mataafa, suffers from the wearying effects of Hepatitis C. He performs maintenance around the David Malo Circle housing area where his family lives. He earns $750 a month, and he also manages to pick up security work at restaurants and clubs.
Life is clearly not easy for Lia Berger, but she is undaunted in her academic and athletic pursuits.
After winning her state wrestling title in February, Berger was invited to the U.S. High School Girls' Wrestling Championships in Ann Arbor, Mich. She couldn't raise the air fare, however, and was forced to stay home.
"I told mom, 'I'm going, I'm going.' But there were no sponsors," she said. "I made some contacts but they didn't get back to me in time.
"But my mom always says that when God closes a door, he opens a window."
One window that opened, albeit slightly, was college and a chance to fulfill her dream of majoring in drama. She received letters of acceptance from Boston University and the University of Southern California.
But there is no way the family can afford tuition at those private universities. And flying to either one to audition for drama courses is out of the question -- even if she were to receive a generous federal grant, there would be a need for air fare and living expenses.
The family's financial difficulties began to mount in 1992, when Mataafa was laid off from his construction job. Lia was forced to give up a scholarship to Punahou so the family could accept a state housing opportunity on Maui. The waiting lists on Oahu were too long. Had they stayed on Oahu for Lia's sake, they faced homelessness.
"We had no medical insurance, we had no money for food or rent," Sophie said. "We just hit rock bottom."
Even though life hasn't taken any dramatic financial turns for the better since then, Lia still finds reasons to hope and to be happy.
"I can see the whales from up here, and it's really pretty," she said, looking down from the Lahainaluna campus, high on the mountain slope. "I still get excited when I see them, even though I've lived here so long now. A lot of people don't, but I still do."
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Wrestling with the gender issue
While legislators struggle with bills on
gender equity, girls in Hawaii are busy
making inroads, not only competing, but
going to the mat for what they believe in
By Craig Gima
Star-Bulletin
On the eve of the state boys and girls wrestling tournament last week, Heather Robertson of Radford High School and Jessie Rolon, a member of the boys wrestling team, circled each other on a practice mat.
Robertson grabbed Rolon's arm, spun around and flipped him to the ground.
"You gotta come all the way through," volunteer coach Pat Collins told Robertson as he helped her perfect the move, called an arm spin.
Afterward, Rolon said practicing with a girl is no big deal.
"We're here to wrestle, not to think about stuff like that," he said.
By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Whether you're male or female, injuries are a part of
wrestling. Marie "Aloha" Chavez rests her ankle during practice.
In a different venue -- and about the same time Robertson was going on to win her 121-pound weight class in the state tournament Saturday -- the Senate Ways and Means Committee was considering a bill that could give girls more opportunities to compete in high school sports.
The bill mandates that public schools provide equal opportunities in athletics for boys and girls sports. It sets standards to determine whether there is gender equity in high school sports, and calls on the superintendent and an advisory committee to come up with a plan, rules and an enforcement mechanism to ensure equity.
Wrestlers on Radford's girls team last week testified on a similar House measure, which is expected to be voted on by the full body today. The Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to make a decision on the Senate bill tonight.
Jill Nunokawa of the Gender Equity Sports Club, an attorney who has been active in pushing for gender equity, told lawmakers the state is not in compliance with Title IX, the federal law that requires gender equity in athletics.
She said a federal lawsuit could lead to another consent decree, much like the Felix decision, that would force the state to spend more money on women's athletics in public schools.
By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Boys and girls on the Radford High team train together,
as in this conditioning drill, with Brandi Kaslausky at the front.
"If we as a state cannot learn from Felix vs. Waihee, then we have learned no lesson at all," Nunokawa said. "I believe if we simply mandate it within the existing legislative and statute system, it's a way to minimize the inevitable cost."
At Saturday's hearing, athletic directors said they support the Senate bill's intent, but have concerns about penalties and the selection and function of the gender equity advisory committee.
Keith Morioka, athletic director at Waipahu High School, testified that Waipahu's boys volleyball coach is a woman and was hired because she is highly qualified. But he wondered if the bill will require him to hire female coaches who are not qualified.
Athletic directors have been working toward gender equity, Morioka said. But he noted that football creates a situation where a large number of boys and very few girls participate. And a financial imbalance arises because the cost of safety equipment makes football more expensive than other sports, he said.
Yvonne Bolton, whose daughter wrestles for Radford, told the House Finance Committee that the struggles of the girls wrestling team are an example of both the potential and the frustration of girls sports in Hawaii.
Bolton said parents and students successfully waged a public battle last year to get the Hawaii High School Athletic Association to hold a state tournament for girls.
But unlike the boys, she said, the girls who won the state wrestling championship last year did not get medals and their matches were not televised live.
She said that kind of treatment sends the wrong message to girls.
"It shows the kids they are not worthy," Bolton said.
Radford wrestler Marie "Aloha" Chavez and her teammates believe it shouldn't be a struggle to get equal treatment in sports, and said that's why they support the gender equity bill.
"Everything we got we had to fight for," said Chavez, who won the state title in the 155-pound division.
If there were more girls sports, more girls would be encouraged to participate, she said.
Lauwae Smith, a wrestler who graduated from Radford last year and was the national champion in her weight class, said she would like to continue to wrestle in college. But colleges don't offer women's wrestling programs.
While two boys on Radford's team are getting athletic scholarships for college, there are no wrestling scholarships for girls.
By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Atashe Potter, top, from Maui, defeated Holly Sumida
of McKinley High School to advance in the girls 175-pound
division of the girls state wrestling tournament held last week.
"I'm hoping for that girls scholarship, or that a girls collegiate program will start up," Smith said.
Nunokawa said that, according to Department of Education statistics, 11,153 males participated in high school sports vs. 6,828 females, and that the operating budget for boys sports is more than double that of girls sports.
Superintendent Paul LeMahieu testified in support of the gender equity bill. LeMahieu noted participation in girls sports has more than doubled since 1975, but said more needs to be done.
He said he has ordered his staff to begin development of a strategic plan to reach a goal of gender equity.
Radford was one of the first schools in the nation to start a girls wrestling program in 1993. Before that, girls wrestled on the boys teams.
Bolton pointed out that in just a few years, the number of girls participating has increased to the point where a state championship can be held and Hawaii girls are competing for national championships.
"When girls are given an opportunity," she said, "look at all we can do."