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Danni Presley of Vintage High continued her fine season by taking first place at the Williams Cup Wrestling Tournament in Westlake Village. The girls tournament was hosted by Thousand Oaks High and two-time World Silver Medalist Shannon Williams-Yancey.

Presley, wrestling at 112 pounds, opened the tournament with a hard-fought 2-0 decision and followed that with two pins, including a first-round pin in the finals.

"Danni keeps improving and gains a little more confidence every time out," said Vintage wrestling coach Carl Murphree.

Emilee Murphree finished second in the 135-pound class. She picked up two pins before losing in the finals.

Maika Watanabe took third place at 99 pounds with a 4-1 record and two pins. Watanabe's loss came at the hands of Cadet National champion Melissa Moore of San Jose.

Christine Rafanan was fourth at 119 and Carina Valle-Santana was fifth at 127 to round out the Crushers placers.

The VHS wrestlers will use the next two weeks to prepare for the Brute Napa Valley Girls Classic, to be held at Vintage High on Jan. 22.

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A rare day on the mat: Girls wrestling making an impact

By VINCE D'ADAMO
Register Sports Writer

NAPA 01/23/2000

Napa Valley female wrestlers did not have the success they hoped in their finals round of the Brute Napa Valley Girls Classic at Vintage High School Saturday.

However, their participation contributed for what they hope can some day establish an all-girls wrestling team in the Napa Valley.

Girls currently wrestle against males. Vintage's Maika Watanabe (99-pound weight class), Danni Presley (109), Emilee Murphree (136), and Napa's Ani Melvin advanced to the finals, only to lose.

Del Mar's Melissa Moore defeated Watanabe 6-0. Suzanne Kivi of Reno defeated Presley by pin. Danielle Bebaut of Yosemite upended Murphree by pin. Toshie Christal defeated Melvin by pin.

The tournament pitted roughly 150 wrestlers from 60 different high schools in California, Oregon and Nevada.

"I'd hoped for bigger numbers but as the day wore on it turned out to be a real competitive event," Vintage High head coach and tournament director Carl Murphree said. "It was bigger (than last year) by 25 percent. We were looking for 50 percent and we didn't get it. I'd say it's a good indicator. More than just the numbers, I thought the quality was much higher."

Adding to Murphree's happiness was having four local girls in the finals.

"Ani wrestled just a tough girl," Murphree said "The Vintage girls went up against really stacked competition. I wasn't so sure about them winning. I thought Ani might have had a chance but Christal was real good."

The day's event offered a different challenge from the standpoint of wrestling fellow females instead of males. The females, as a whole, seemed more flexible than the males might be.

"Against the guys I'm not as nervous because if you lose, you lose to a guy and it's an excuse so to speak," Presley said. "If you lose to a girl, you're supposed to be even. We don't get to wrestle only girls very often. There was a lot of girls here which included a lot of the best wrestlers. We all had very tough matches in the finals."

Melvin hoped for a measure of redemption. Vintage's Megan Andrews pinned Melvin in last year's finals. However, Melvin didn't let that dampen her day.

"I'm really proud to be a part of it, even if I didn't win -- again," Melvin said with a sarcastic sneer. "Wrestling against the guys you have a bigger bracket. Here I only wrestled two matches. The guys are usually a little tougher. I had a couple of matches today that could have been up to a guy's standards. The gap is starting to close with the girls that are sort of wimpy and the guys that aren't."

The participants hope this day was another stepping stone toward establishing an all-girls wrestling team.

TOURNAMENT NOTES -- Other winners included Sarah Fulp (Half Moon Bay) in the 103 class; Sheila Lerit (Vallejo) at 114; Michelle Domagas (Vallejo) at 119; Nikole Bebaut (Yosemite) in the 123 division; Kierstin Hyat (El Camino) at 127; Helaina Day (San Mateo) in the 131 class and Christine Rivera (Berekley) at 145.

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Bowie freshman Jessica Lopez finds that wrestling suits her perfectly.

By Blane Bachelor
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Updated: Saturday, Jan. 22, 2000

As a seventh grader, Jessica Lopez was looking for a sport to call her own. While other female athletes took to volleyball and soccer, Lopez, self-described as a tomboy in some ways, found wrestling exactly suited to her.

And then she found herself as the topic of some jokes.

"It was a pretty small team and there were only guys on the team," said Lopez, now a freshman on the Bowie team. "So I was kind of an outcast. People used to make fun of me, saying I was just on the team to meet guys. But that's not what it's about. It's about working hard and reaching your goals."

Though this is only Lopez's second season to wrestle, she said she has already learned volumes about those ideals. One of a handful of female wrestlers in the Volunteers' program, Lopez also has the results to show for her efforts: a 12-0 record in the 119-pound division this season.

The Volunteers' program as a whole has suffered a few setbacks recently, after the program underwent an investigation because of some rules infractions, which led Bowie coach David Mudgett to pull his team out of five meets. But the Volunteers are scheduled to return to action this week against Arlington on Thursday, Bowie's first meet in three weeks.

Mudgett said Lopez is a perfect example of what is positive in the program.

"She's a great kid, and she's got a good head on her shoulders," Mudgett said. "She fits right in. We've got some real good girls in the program, and we've got some real goal-oriented kids. She's one of them."

Lopez also has some lofty aspirations in mind for herself -- specifically, a state title -- even though this is the first time she has competed since her initial season in seventh grade in Olympia, Wash. Her family moved from Washington to Arlington at the end of that school year, and Lopez didn't compete in eighth grade because there was no girls team at the junior-high level.

Upon arriving at Bowie, Lopez said she was pleasantly surprised to find she would compete against girls instead of boys, as was the case her first season. That year, Lopez boasted up a 7-3 record, while taking what she described as a crash course in toughness.

"What I really liked about the guys was that they didn't care if you're a girl," she said. "They would take you down, no problem. So I learned from my mistakes and I learned to get out of the moves they put me in.

"It's hard with the guys, but I like wrestling with the girls."

Lopez competes in the 119-pound division, and frequently trains with Volunteers standout Angela Martinez, a two-time state champion. Mudgett envisions Lopez adding some hardware of her own to the Volunteers' trophy cases by the time she graduates.

"She gives Angela everything she wants and more," Mudgett said. "She's got the personality, and the desire, and she's definitely got the toughness."

Lopez credits some of that grit to having two older brothers, who rarely left her out of constant rough-housing sessions growing up. But Lopez didn't get caught in the shadow of siblings, both of whom chose basketball as their signature sport.

"I'm a very adventurous person," she said. "I like different things, I wanted to try something new and it looked good. It's very different from any other sport. It's very individual. When it's all up to me, I just really go for it."

However, to this point, Lopez balks at having her family attend her meets because she becomes too nervous, her mother, Alba, said. So they must settle for watching her on videotape occasionally, or sneaking into meets without her knowledge, as her brothers did once this season.

Even though Alba has yet to see her daughter compete live, she said following her success has been as satisfying.

"She's really into wrestling," Alba Lopez said. "I've always told [my children] to follow their dreams no matter where it might take them, and she's living that dream. At such a young age, it's kind of something. It's one of those times when a parent can say, `Wow, is that really my daughter?' "

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