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News page
By Bob Johnson
thursday, february 10, 2000
Half Moon Bay High (Half Moon Bay, Calif.) freshman grappler Sarah FulpAllen has been wrestling boys since she was a small child when her father, a former Olympic wrestler, entered her in a match.
?One day he said ?Let?s go to a wrestling tournament,? and he just threw me in there,? FulpAllen remembers. ?I was nine.?
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FulpAllen is thanking her pop now, while she tears apart the Peninsula Athletic League as a starting member of the Half Moon Bay boys? wrestling team at 103 pounds. So far this season, FulpAllen is 22-6 overall, and is the second-ranked wrestler in the PAL at 5-1. As a freshman.
?I?ve been wrestling guys forever,? says FulpAllen. ?The first match I ever had was against a guy. They?re hoping to get a girls? wrestling league. But right now I like wrestling in the guys? league.?
FulpAllen doesn?t mind mixing it up with the boys because she believes it makes her a better wrestler. And the evidence speaks for itself: after wrestling boys for five straight years, she competed in the junior high girls? 100-pound division last year, and won the state championship. Currently, she is ranked second in the state for her weight division, according to Half Moon Bay wrestling coach Tom Baker.
?She?s just an extraordinary girl,? says Baker. ?She?s part of a team, and wants to win like everybody else. Just a really gutty, determined woman; and she?s an asset to our team.?
FulpAllen, who hopes to gain enough exposure over the next three years to compete for a Division I college women?s program, says the ultimate goal is the Olympic Games in 2004, where women?s freestyle wrestling will be an event. Her coach thinks she has the right stuff.
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?She can go as far as she wants,? says Baker. ?No doubt, she definitely has the potential. Her dad knows exactly what it takes.?
Sarah?s dad, Lee Allen, wrestled in the 1960 Olympics at 125 pounds. And it was he who lit her fire for the sport. But what about mom?
?My mom doesn?t like me wrestling guys,? says Sarah. ?She doesn?t want me to get hurt.?
FulpAllen, who has never had a major injury in six years, recognizes that she needs to be a master of technique to compete and excel in the boys? league. And that comes from hard work.
?You need to be a lot better at technique,? says FulpAllen. ?You have to know what not to get into. You have to use skill against technique.?
Coach Baker sees her hard work paying off.
?It?s her technique and conditioning,? says Baker. ?She is in better shape than most of the guys on the team, and the guys that she wrestles.?
FulpAllen, who assists Baker with his introductory freestyle wrestling program for children ages 5 through 12, has much success to look forward to in her prep career. And if her rookie season is any indication, FulpAllen hopes to eventually wear gold for the USA down the road.
?I can wrestle freestyle as long as I want,? says FulpAllen. ?But the Olympics, in 2004, when they?ll have women?s wrestling as an event ? that?s the ultimate goal.?
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Crenshaw Slams Competition and Naysayers
By Pete Rea(11/24/99)
?6 minutes of pain. Are you a real man??
Printed on the T-shirts of the Tri-Cities High (East Point, Ga.) wrestling team in 1997, the slogan both offended and intrigued then-freshman Patrice Crenshaw.
?I thought,? says Crenshaw, ?I?m not a man but I might be able to handle it.?
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Over the last two years, Crenshaw ? who currently holds a No. 8 national ranking for female high school wrestlers ? has done much more than simply handle the pain. With fierce determination and the ability to overlook biting sexist criticism, Crenshaw has positioned herself as one of the top 103-pound wrestlers around.
Crenshaw describes herself as both passive and sensitive. Unlike many of her competitors, Crenshaw has to work hard to put on her match-day face.
To overcome her fears, the 4-foot-11 17-year-old junior uses a variety of methods that range from poetry writing to a little help from the 1970s rock band Led Zeppelin.
?Black Dog is my psych-up song, ? says Crenshaw. ?It?s in my head before I go out on the mat.?
Crenshaw is now accepted by her peers, but working her way into the Atlanta wrestling community was difficult as a freshman in ?97. At her first-ever prep match against neighboring Southwest DeKalb, jeers greeted Crenshaw as she entered the gym.
?My name had been circulated,? says Crenshaw. ?I was crying and then our captain Reginald just told me to go out there and work hard. He pumped me up.?
Bridget Bland, Crenshaw?s best friend since childhood, feared for Patrice that first season.
?I was really scared for her when she first joined the wrestling team,? says Bland. ?I was afraid that she was going to get slammed hard.?
Despite a few ?hard slams,? Crensha w persevered that rookie season and entered her sophomore year with an eye on becoming the first female in the South to reach a state championship.
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After improving dramatically during the 1998-99 season, Crenshaw finished the year with a 25-13 record and narrowly missed the state tournament.
This year she again has her sights on the state tourney. Assistant coach Michael Stephens, himself a former Division I collegiate wrestler, believes the time is right for Crenshaw?s big breakthrough.
?Patrice works extremely hard,? says Stephens. ?She?s to the point now where she is going to make a dent in some of the big tournaments this year.?
Despite the rigors of her athletic schedule, Crenshaw hits the books as hard as she hits the wrestling mat, maintaining a 3.9 GPA.
In addition, she is class president and looking at both West Point and Annapolis as her college choices for the fall of 2001. In the meantime, however, she has a piece of history waiting for her in the wrestling gyms of Georgia.
?I want to win region [and] become the first girl in the south to go to state.?
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Fulfilling a Dying Wish
By Mike Butts(10-29-99}
When McCallum High?s Melisa Rutledge took the mat for her state semifinals wrestling match last spring, she faced perhaps the biggest challenge of her athletic career. And because her brother Billy had been clinging to life in an Austin hospital, it became a challenge much more profound than any simple athletic contest.
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Rutledge wrestled that Saturday as the only McCallum student to compete in Texas? first high school state wrestling championship. And she continued through the championships despite the death of her brother ? and only sibling ? just before her second match.
As Rutledge was called to the mat to wrestle Amarillo Caprock High?s Tori Adams in a semifinals match at the state meet last April, an emergency announcement came over the public address system for Rutledge?s father.
?I had no idea what was going on,? says Melissa, McCallum?s lone female wrestler last spring.
Rutledge, then a junior, had left her brother?s side that morning. Billy, 14, was on a respirator and battling cancer, but doctors said he would likely live through Monday. According to Melissa, Billy had wanted her to wrestle in the state meet.
She had won her first match earlier in the day. But Adams was ranked second in the country, and Rutledge had only been wrestling since the beginning of the season.
?I had seen [Billy] that morning and he looked OK. I was really nervous about what was going to happen and about not being there to see him,? says Melissa. ?And I was worried about the match. The other girl had been wrestling, like, 11 years to my four months.?
Despite her anxiety, Rutledge found the strength to wrestle Adams. She put forth a tremendous effort, losing in the third period. But her mind was never on the match.
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?I lost because I wasn?t able to concentrate at all,? says Melissa, who is a standout defensive specialist on McCallum?s District 26-4A champion girls? volleyball team this season. ?I wasn?t thinking about wrestling or technique or anything.?
After the match, Rutledge was told that her brother had died. She immediately left the meet and went to the hospital with her father and grandfather. McCallum wrestling coach Josie Rodriguez had figured Melissa was done for the day, even though she still had a consolation match to compete in.
?We just assumed that that was the end of the day,? says Rodriguez. ?We had already checked out and withdrawn her from the tournament, but we got a call that she was on her way back ? that she had promised Billy that she would wrestle.?
Rutledge lost that consolation match, but that didn?t matter. What did matter was that she came back and wrestled. She had a promise to fulfill.
?I thought it was totally amazing,? says Rodriguez. ?It took a lot of strength for her to come back. It took a lot of heart.?
Today, Melissa says it won?t be easy to re-take the mat for the McCallum wrestling team, which was in its first-ever season last year.
?I?m sure [it will be hard],? she says. ?But I think I?ll have a lot more confidence and a lot more motivation.?
She may not promise anything this time around, but she?ll still be wrestling for her brother Billy
