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News Page
01/20/00
JIM YOUNG, Staff Writer
LIBERTY -- It is filled with mat burns, cauliflower ears, limbs forcibly bent in unnatural directions and an occasional errant elbow to the face. Amateur wrestling traffics heavily in physical pain.
Inflicting and enduring punishment are the central elements of boxing. Snapping a jab toward the bridge of an opponent's nose, clinching the abdominal muscles to absorb a body blow, shaking away the cobwebs after an uppercut collides with a chin.
Athletes that choose to be both wrestlers and boxers are a rare breed. Fourteen-year-old girls who do so are rarer still.
It is an unusual choice, but one that makes perfect sense to Anna Matteson, a freshman at Eastern Randolph High School. To her, the decision to join the Wildcats' JV wrestling team and to train as an amateur boxer at the Team USA gym in Jamestown is simply the next logical step in a life where sports are as vital as oxygen.
"Challenging myself all the time keeps me going," Matteson said. "How many girls can say they are a wrestler and a boxer?"
Not many. USA Boxing, the sport's national governing body, has 543 female boxers between ages 8 and 16, and there were fewer than 2,400 female high school wrestlers nationally in 1999.
For Matteson to join those exclusive ranks, the Liberty native has needed a tireless work ethic, an extremely patient mother and willingness to face failure. Manic schedule
Eastern Randolph's Tuesday afternoon wrestling practice lasted almost two hours, and Wildcats coach Greg Hardin had his wrestlers in a state of constant activity. He stood at the front of the green-and-white mat, barking out instructions and consulting a sheet of paper on which he had each step of practice carefully charted. There were five minutes of stretching, five minutes of takedown drills, and so on.
"I've got to do it that way," Hardin said. "I've got a lot of young ones and they need structure."
In the midst of the group was Matteson, practicing takedowns and pins with her partner, Doug Beal. She was distinguishable from the rest only by her brown ponytail and a pair of rosy cheeks any grandmother would pay to pinch.
At 5:15 the practice finally wound down, with only a two-minute timeout for water breaking up the activity. By the end, sweat was pouring off the bodies of the wrestlers as they pe-e-e-led themselves off the mat, put on warmups and headed for home.
Matteson, though, had just reached the halfway point. Her mother, Karen Moore, was waiting with the family Mazda to whisk Matteson off to boxing practice.
"It amazes me that anybody can go through our workouts and then go to a boxing workout like that," Hardin said. "That was a concern of mine and her mother. Would she get burned out? So far, she's done well."
The drive from Eastern Randolph to the Team USA gym in Jamestown was a 35-mile journey over winding back roads. Matteson used the time to do schoolwork, eat a little food, and take a short nap.
Mother and daughter reached the gym just after 6 o'clock, and Matteson immediately plunged into a routine of shadow boxing, jumping rope, and sprinting up and down stairs. Later in the evening, she climbed into the ring to spar against women who were twice her age, and more importantly, several inches taller than Matteson, who is barely 5 feet.
All the while, Moore looked on. Is she the driving force behind her daughter's manic athletic schedule? Hardly.
"I don't know how to push a kid like this," Moore said. "You just have to keep up with her."
Energetic toddler
Moore's not a doting parent; she just wants to maintain her sanity. She learned very early that she had a child who needed to be in constant motion to be happy. And when Anna wasn't happy, motherhood became a trying time.
"It was a horror," Moore said. "I would never go back there again. You had to keep her physically engaged all the time. All the time."
Matteson once ate through three car seats. Moore was able to teach her how to read only by giving her books and driving back and forth from Liberty to Asheboro. Always being on the move while still keeping Matteson in a confined space was the only combination that worked for the frazzled mother.
And then there was the coffee-cup incident.
It happened when Matteson was 6 months old. Moore was seated on the couch with a cup of coffee on the table in front of her. Matteson toddled up to the table, balled up her fist, and plunged it into the steaming hot liquid. She withdrew her hand in pain, then angrily balled up her fist again and stuck it right back in the coffee. Matteson repeated the process one more time before Moore overcame her initial shock and wonderment and moved the offending mug out of the child's range.
"I almost thought that she didn't have normal pain receptors," Moore said. "She scared me."
She was a child that couldn't be still. A child that didn't shrink from physical discomfort but almost seemed to relish it. She was a child that needed sports.
The Liberty city leagues were the family's salvation. Matteson began with softball at age 7 and added basketball later that year. She later moved in to competitive dance and eventually added volleyball to the list in middle school. Now, an existence without sports is unthinkable.
"This is all I've done all my life," Matteson said. "I don't even know what I'd be like. I would be very unhappy."
Still, there was something missing. The same anger-fueled desire that plunged a fist into burning coffee led Matteson to snap at teammates, coaches and anyone else that didn't share her total desire to win, to be perfect.
"I consider myself a lot more competitive than most girls," she said. "It I lost, I was mad. And if the other girls didn't take it seriously, I was mad."
She poured some of the excess competitive zeal into fitness, working out with her mother's boss Charles Broadway, who spends his spare time as a personal trainer. She even moved into the current fitness fad of aerobic kick boxingand actually began teaching Friday night classes at Team USA.
All the groundwork was in place for Matteson's move into wrestling and boxing. The aerobic kick boxing classes became tiresome, and the boxing ring that shared the room with the classes at Team USA was beckoning. Wrestling, which was not offered during middle school, seemed like a perfect use of the muscle-bound body Matteson had forged in the gym.
And they were both individual sports, competitive environments in which only Matteson would bear the brunt of her own stubborn perfectionism. No fear of challenges
But they offered something else -- a daunting challenge. She was a novice at both sports, and her short stature also put her at an immediate disadvantage.
It was evident during matches at a wrestling meet Nov. 27 at Eastern Randolph. Matteson won her first match of the day, much to the delight of the crowd, by using her lower-body strength to bull her opponent onto his back, registering several near falls and racking up points.
The next three matches though, were a litany of reasons why Matteson had won only three matches this season. Her opponents in the 126-pound class were much taller and possessed more upper-body strength. They also had more refined wrestling skills, twisting and turning Matteson and never letting her seize an advantage. She lost all three matches by pinfall.
"It's really hard to go out and there say, 'I'm going to be in a sport where I'm expected to lose,'" Matteson said.
Until last Saturday, Matteson hadn't had an opportunity to set her expectations in boxing. CherylNance, her coach at Team USA, had been scouring the eastern United States in search of possible opponents for Matteson for months and had finally found some matches.
Matteson's first opponent, Faye Cullum, 15, of Aiken, S.C., had both a height and an experience advantage. Cullum had been training for three years, while Matteson took up the sport in April. Cullum had also fought twice before, a fact that became apparent when she flattened Matteson with a right-handed punch just 10 seconds into the fight.
But like the bout with the steaming cup of coffee, Matteson kept coming back for more. Another right-hand from Cullum stunned her, but she finished the first round and sought out Nance.
The key, Nance told her, was to stop leaning in on Cullum. Instead, try to get Cullum t commit her punches, then slip past them, step inside and cut down on the reach disadvantage.
During the third and final round, it started to click for Matteson. She began ducking and weaving, moving her head away from Cullum's jab and landing a few sharp punches of her own. When the bell rang, she took an ecstatic leap and then fell into Nance's arms for a congratulatory hug. Nance was pleased with her pupil's physical performance but more impressed by Matteson's willingness to put her ego at risk in front of a crowd of about 150 people.
"Pride is a terrible thing," Nance said. "Pride will keep you from getting up there and taking the challenges of life. Don't tell me that you're pride doesn't take a beating. That's a great thing to overcome."
Matteson lost the bout by a split-decision, her third-round comeback not enough to make the judges forget the bout's opening seconds. It was a result that, thanks to her fledgling wrestling career, she is learning to accept and balance with her desire to win.
Before the fight, she had wondered whether a setback in her debut would diminish her desire to continue boxing. The answer was an emphatic no.
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She wrestled sexism, and won
Dave Stubbs
Citizen Special
(1/22/2000)
Christine Nordhagen didn't have the easiest path to her four world titles, says Dave Stubbs.
MONTREAL - She breezed through town on Saturday briskly enough to push the wind-chill factor down another few degrees, but four-time world wrestling champion Christine Nordhagen of Calgary had no trouble lighting a fire in the hearts of 35 young female athletes who will long remember her visit.
Nordhagen was the professor of honour at an instructional clinic staged on the outskirts of Montreal, and for six hours she patiently shared the tricks of her trade, hard-earned secrets that have made her one of the dominant female wrestlers in the world.
It was the 28-year-old's first visit to Quebec, not counting airport transfers, and her students came from across the province and as far afield as Guelph, Ont., to hear her motivational gospel. Twenty-four hours after touchdown, she was on a plane to France, where she will compete this weekend in a major international women's tournament.
"I'm a better person because of my sport, because of the opportunities to travel and meet great people," Nordhagen said. "I've learned so much and had many adventures, so I see this as a chance to give something back."
Her pupils hung on her every word, and for good reason. Their 5-8, 165-pound teacher is a genuine trail-blazer, a legend in a sport that less than a decade ago welcomed women onto its mat with all the warm hospitality and good manners of a caveman.
Nordhagen is from solid stock, one of five children who grew up on the family farm in Valhalla, Alta., an hour north of Grande Prairie. Her parents still work the land, and she fondly recalls her days as a 10-year-old, leading a 1,400-pound steer through the fields.
She discovered wrestling when she was 20, a physical-education student at the University of Alberta. The 1992 Canadian championships would, for the first time, include a women's category, and the drive was on to recruit participants.
Nordhagen enrolled in a wrestling class, and soon was learning as much about put-down remarks as take-down technique, enduring sexist cracks about her bosom and her hips.
"These guys had been down in the (university training room) dungeon forever, and before I showed up, there had never been a girl down there," she said. "There were some rough times, where some of the guys would get more aggressive than they had to be.
"But I just kept coming back every day. Eventually, they realized I was staying, and they started to see me as just another athlete. I gained their respect."
As threatened as their egos might have been, the men certainly couldn't argue with her results: Nordhagen won the 1992 national title, and hasn't lost a senior Canadian championship in seven subsequent trips to the tournament.
Competing today for the University of Calgary, coached by Mitch Ostberg and Leigh Vierling, she has gone on to win four world championships and five times has been named the Canadian Amateur Wrestling Association's female athlete of the year.
In 1997, she was selected the top international female by the sport's world governing body; that year she also was inducted into Canadian wrestling's Hall of Fame and was named winner of the Breakthrough Award by the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women In Sport, a prize recognizing unparalleled excellence and leadership.
In the process, Nordhagen's fondest wish has come true: she is seen on the mat not as a woman, but as a teammate and a training partner -- nothing more, nothing less.
She conducts clinics almost whenever she's asked, teaching both girls and boys, and continues to chip away at stubborn barriers.
"We have programs where we wrestle with kids, and I regularly beat up these little junior high-school boys," she said. "They go on to high-school and university programs respecting the fact that women can wrestle.
"Maybe they've had girls as their training partners or even role models, and for some, their goal is to defeat these women. They don't think they've lost to women, but to good athletes. It's nice to see this change in attitude."
Last month, she married Vierling, a Greco-Roman national wrestling champion who hopes to qualify for the Sydney Olympics. And when she isn't training, she's a high-school teacher of mathematics, phys ed and dance.
Nordhagen and Vierling feed off each other's unfailingly positive outlook, finding the bright side no matter how dim the situation. She spread those rays of sunshine in Montreal, dispensing many sage words to the attentive young girls who might be champions when women's wrestling clears its next hurdle -- it hopes to join the Olympics in 2004.
"You're not born a winner or a loser, you're born a chooser," Nordhagen said. "It's the choices you make that are going to determine your destiny.
"I hope these girls will do the same. When they finish wrestling, I hope they coach or remain involved in it, or in another sport, and help other girls, too."
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Equal Pay For Equal Play
Wall Street Journal; New York; Jan 21, 2000
By Kimberley A. Strassel;
It was bound to happen. Lindsay Davenport swept into the Australian Open
this week, easily swatting aside her first competitor. The tennis star then
clambered onto her media podium and promptly used it to -- what else? --
slam the tournament for paying men higher prize money.
So much for progress. Last year looked to be a slam-dunk for women's sports.
The U.S. women's soccer team won the World Cup. The Women's National
Basketball Association maintained surprisingly decent attendance levels.
Women won college football scholarships, one even in a pigskin-fanatic state
like Georgia. We now have little girl wrestlers and little girl boxers,
dying to beat the everlasting snot out of little boy equivalents.
Sadly, the very beneficiaries of this new high seem set on sabotaging their
gains. Though women are better placed than ever to grab hold of fame, many
have chosen to whine about unmatching salaries and unlucrative product
endorsements. Yet if women want to keep riding the tide, they'd be advised
to get a grip on one crucial fact: Someone has to pay for all that equality.
It is no easy feat drumming up money for boring sports. And, for the most
part, women's sports are still pretty boring.
It was bound to happen. Lindsay Davenport swept into the Australian Open
this week, easily swatting aside her first competitor. The tennis star then
clambered onto her media podium and promptly used it to -- what else? --
slam the tournament for paying men higher prize money.
So much for progress. Last year looked to be a slam-dunk for women's sports.
The U.S. women's soccer team won the World Cup. The Women's National
Basketball Association maintained surprisingly decent attendance levels.
Women won college football scholarships, one even in a pigskin-fanatic state
like Georgia. We now have little girl wrestlers and little girl boxers,
dying to beat the everlasting snot out of little boy equivalents.
Sadly, the very beneficiaries of this new high seem set on sabotaging their
gains. Though women are better placed than ever to grab hold of fame, many
have chosen to whine about unmatching salaries and unlucrative product
endorsements. Yet if women want to keep riding the tide, they'd be advised
to get a grip on one crucial fact: Someone has to pay for all that equality.
It is no easy feat drumming up money for boring sports. And, for the most
part, women's sports are still pretty boring.
As shocking as that may sound -- especially given the glowing reports of
commentators -- I am not alone in this feeling. Polling acquaintances, I was
hard-pressed to root out even the smallest female fan club. "I'd rather
watch my mother pick the fuzz off our family's sweaters," noted one friend,
when I asked if she'd watched our American soccer gals whoop butt on China.
Other female friends agreed.
Not that women can't hold their own in certain sports. Women's ice skating,
the most popular Olympic event, is a favorite on TV. Ditto gymnastics and
diving. Chicks can be just as great in combative sports. Members of my
family used to drive demolition-derby cars. My father -- no wimp -- would
marvel at the underhanded things that my mother would do to other ladies on
the track. Women, when given the proper tools -- in this case, very large
cars -- can be just as aggressive as men.
The problem with most women's sports is that women often lack the one big
proper tool: brute strength. When it comes down to it, physical sports are
largely just that -- physical. Brains and skill are important, but there is
something more than IQ at work when a lineman rips a quarterback's leg off
and beats him with it.
Men can throw faster, hit harder, run quicker. As a result, women's sports
that have male equivalents seem dull. When Michael Jordan reached up to the
heavens and looked down to the hoop to put the ball in, you felt like
kissing your bleacher buddy. It was that exciting. But white girls -- almost
all girls -- can't jump: No woman has yet dunked a ball in a WNBA game. A
cousin of mine who plays college softball patiently explained to me why the
windmill pitches girls use are more difficult to execute than the pitches in
regular baseball. Maybe so, but when the Cubs' Kerry Wood wings a 100 mph
fastball for another strike out, fans are hardly thinking of his technique.
There are ways to make women's sports more interesting. Some have suggested
that the WNBA use a smaller court and lower the hoop -- to speed up the game
-- but the players have objected. Though the league has trouble filling its
stands -- leading to a depressing game environment -- it is creating four
new teams this year.
Given that women generate fewer ticket receipts, Reebok deals or TV
advertising, why should they get paid like men? Some people tout the
"pure-sport approach," a theory that women's sports are more interesting to
watch because, lacking strength, women play more competitively. But numbers
don't lie. The WNBA claimed attendance of 10,000 a game, on average, in
1999. The NBA, in these, its lowest years, averages more than half that much
again, not to mention millions of TV fans. Women's tennis, arguably the most
popular women's sport, is still second-best: Organizers say that roughly 70%
of fans still show up to watch men's tennis. Yet players like Ms. Davenport
earn 90% to 95% of the prize money of men.
The equal-pay question reveals just how skewed thinking has become on the
subject of athletics. Playing a sport for money is a job like any other,
driven by supply and demand. The average annual salary of a woman in the
WNBA is reported to be about $58,000, far more than that of the average
working woman. The true aberration in sports is not that women are paid
less, but that certain sports have become so wildly popular as to be able to
pay people like Michael Jordan -- or, more recently, the Yankees' Derek
Jeter -- so much.
The interest in women's sports is a good thing. Female high-school athletes
are now inspired by women like basketball player Teresa Weatherspoon and
soccer player Brandi Chastain. Women's games can be a joy to watch, and the
players, through hard work, are slowly narrowing the skill gap with men. But
women need to fight the big battle: getting better, entertaining crowds. One
day, when they do, we can talk about giving them millions.
