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Arlington Morning News;
11-10-1999

With industrial dance music pulsating from a portable stereo, Brenda
Malott does jumping jacks to the beat while watching most of her teammates on Sam
Houston's wrestling team sparring on mats.

Then head coach Roy Shultz blows his whistle for the team to switch
drills, which sends teammate Cathy Cotter over next to Malott, joining Malott
in synchronized jumping jacks.

When Malott sees Cotter, she alternates shadowboxing jabs with her
jumping jacks and slides over next to Cotter. She jabs Cotter in the left
shoulder, then again and again.

"Hit me back," says Malott. Cotter just smiles in response. Malott
smiles too.

This wasn't how it used to be for the superb senior wrestler. In the
past, when she hit somebody, she meant it and she wouldn't be smiling.

"I used to have a short temper when I was a kid. If some little boys in
the neighborhood would call me a name, I would fight them, " Malott said.
"I was bigger than them at the time. I was a bully."

These days, instead of being a street-fighting girl, she's a book-
smart, savvy wrestler. And she is one of the best girls wrestler in Texas. Malott is
the defending 128-pound state champion and a leader for the defending state
champion Sam Houston girls wrestling team.

Malott was 18-0 last year and was untouchable in the state tournament, winning
all her matches by pin. But unlike her brawling days in grade school,
when she lived in Corpus Christi, her size has little to do with success.

"For my size, I'm stronger and faster than she is," said Cotter, who
finished third in the state at 110 pounds. "She has perfect technique. You tell her
once to do something and she's got it down, then she' ll add her own little touch
to a move."

Malott's maneuvering on wrestling mats is a surprise considering she
did not pick up the sport until two years ago.

But that's just official training. Unofficially, her scraps on the
street may have been an ideal prelude.

"When I got in fights, we would roll around on the ground. They were never
serious enough to where we would kill each other," Malott said. "We would
never hit each other in the face, but we would hit each other in the
body, and it would hurt."

Malott said when her family moved to Arlington before she entered the fifth
grade, her fighting stopped, except for one incident in the seventh
grade when a girl classmate took a swing at her outside a sandwich shop. Malott said
the blow didn't connect and she grabbed the girl's leg to knock her to the
ground and the fight was over.

But in her time at Hutcheson Junior High School, there were plenty of verbal
fights instead of physical.

"If people got in my face over a boy or something, I would tell them I would
kick their butt," Malott said. "If they had any fear, I had to intimidate them.

"Boy . . . I've changed so much since then."

The biggest change came in the fall of 1997, when former Sam Houston
wrestling great Melony Monahan convinced Malott to come out for wrestling.
While she was active in softball at the time, a sport she still plays, Malott said
she was chubby, weighing 150 pounds on her 5-2 frame.

But during the course of the 1997-98 season, Malott lost 30 pounds, on
her way to finishing second in the state against heavier girls in the 128-pound
weight class.

Malott said her weight will rise to 135 pounds in the off-season, but she will also
be constantly active during Sam Houston practices. She will hop from teammate
to teammate to see what they are doing, or spar in judo with some of her boys
teammates.

"She's like that all the time. She has so much energy that she never slows down,"
said Niko Atonio, a Sam Houston boys teammate. "She has the adrenaline of 10
to 15 normal girls."

That adrenaline keeps going long after Sam Houston's practice is over. For the
past two months, she will work out for another three hours. She said she has a
different routine every day, from running and riding a stationary bike, to
practicing judo or boxing.

Malott said partial inspiration came from visiting Monahan this summer.
Monahan is a sophomore at Minnesota-Morris, one of the premier women's
wrestling programs in the nation.

"Melony told me it was another level in college, but I mainly want to do this on
my own," Malott said. "It's like an addiction. I didn' t do it on Sunday and I felt
[bad]."

Malott said she has thought about joining Monahan at Minnesota- Morris and
she is a college recruit after finishing 10th in the nation in a national tournament
in April. However, Malott said she is leaning toward going to Missouri Valley
College in Marshall, Mo., to pursue a career as a pharmacist.

But Malott said she doesn't like to look too far into the future, preferring to focus
on the present.

Like what she'll do the next time she has free time. She said she will probably be
working out.

It keeps her from seeing where her pugilistic past might have taken
her.

"I think I would have been a party girl if I wouldn't have got in
wrestling. I don't
think I would be fighting anymore, but in those parties, people who are
drunk will," Malott said. "You have no control over that.

"I'd rather wrestle. I have complete control over that."

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WRESTLING

11-18-1999

Since taking over South Grand Prairie's wrestling program two years
ago, Mike Eaton said one
of his goals is to promote the sport better.

A veteran of competing and coaching in locations ranging from Colorado
Springs to Boston, he
said one of the biggest problems in Texas he has encountered is the
slow speed in which
tournaments are run. That makes him a fan of the speed-oriented,
state-wide rules changes this
season implemented by the University Interscholastic League.

Among them is the time allowed to recover from injuries has been
reduced from two minutes to
90 seconds. In addition, after a second stoppage of play for injuries,
the non-injured wrestler gets
to choose what position on the mat he or she wants to be in when the
match resumes.

Eaton said he likes the rule changes because too many times wrestlers
have faked injuries just to
give them time to catch their breath, in addition to slowing the pace
of wrestling tournaments.

"It's not quite like soccer, when someone fakes an injury so the other
team gets a red card,"
Eaton said. "I always liked wearing down an opponent when I wrestled. I
think you should be
rewarded for being in shape."

Eaton also said that he is pleased the procedure over disagreements
with officials calls have been
altered. In the past it was common for some coaches to simply voice
their grievances. In
response, the official would eject the coach from the individual event.

This year, during a break in a match, a coach can voice a disagreement.
If the referee still doesn't
change his mind, the coach will get a warning. The next warning will be
an ejection.

Other rules changes this year include granting wrestlers a maximum of
carrying two pounds over
their weight limit at the state meet (good news for Sam Houston's
Brenda Malott, who almost ran
all night in the halls of her hotel last year to make weight) and
enforcing unsportsmanlike conduct
penalties on wrestlers.

For instance, if a wrestler is ejected from a Friday-Saturday match on
Friday, he or she cannot
participate on Saturday.

But one rule change that could create future friction is that in order
to compete at a certain weight
at the district, region and state meets, a wrestler must have wrestled
at that weight for at least half
of the season.

If this rule was implemented last year, Arlington High's David Panton
would not have been
allowed to wrestle at 140 pounds, which he dropped down to shortly
before last year's District
15-5A tournament. Panton eventually qualified for state at 140,
upsetting Martin's Matt Altschul
along the way.

"I had to put David at the weight I thought he had the best chance of
making state, but I guess I'm
O.K. with the rule change," Arlington High head coach Henry Harmoney
said. "I'm not too
worried about the rule changes anyway. If someone does, I guess they're
not busy enough."

Thursdays in Scot land

The most interesting duels over the next two weeks will involve
Thursday matches of Warriors
invading defending state champion Highland Park. Unfortunately for
those Warriors, South Grand
Prairie and Martin, memories of one-sided battles like Waterloo and
Custer come to mind.

South Grand Prairie takes on Highland Park Thursday and Martin wrestles
at Highland Park on
Dec. 2. Highland Park returns five individual state placers and three
state champions.

Eaton said he realizes his team goes into Highland Park with thin hopes
of winning, but said he
isn't giving up hope of a good showing.

"Wrestling Highland Park will show us how good we are," Eaton said. "I
know it will be tough,
but I think we can get a couple wins or more."

Wrestlers of the Week

Two area wrestlers lived up to their names on Saturday, their last
names to be precise.

On the boys side, Martin's Alan Starr had a star-quality performance in
winning the 140-pound
title at Martin's Southern Assault Wrestling Tournament. Starr's
championship match pin was in
one minute, eight seconds. He made an even more impressive debut in his
weight class of 140
pounds. Starr wrestled at 125 pounds last season.

On the girls side, Sam Houston's Brandi Killingsworth is still
wrestling at 165 pounds, but there's
no need to change a good thing because she's still making a killing.
The defending 165-pound
state champion won her weight class at Southern Assault, winning both
of her matches by pin,
and was named the outstanding girls wrestler of the tournament.