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She wrestled sexism, and won Christine Nordhagen didn't have the easiest path to her four world titles, says Dave Stubbs.

1/25/00
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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U wrestling coach leads charge into past

Doug Grow / Star Tribune. Monday, February 21, 2000

We've got to get this J Robinson fellow outside the wrestling room a little more often.

Robinson is the University of Minnesota wrestling coach who has come to the conclusion that Title IX isn't fair. Title IX is the 1972 legislation that opened the doors to gymnasiums for girls and women -- and, lo and behold, given the opportunity, women have raced into sports in ever-increasing numbers.

But there are men who cling to the belief that Title IX isn't about opportunity for women. They believe it's about taking opportunity from men.

Robinson has become a leader of that archaic group.

Understand, he is a hugely successful coach. He has turned the university's wrestling team into a national power.

But so strong are his beliefs about Title IX that two days before the biggest dual wrestling match in the university's history, Robinson was making headlines that sounded as if they came straight out of the 1950s.

The stage: On Sunday, Minnesota, ranked second in the nation, wrestled against the University of Iowa, a perennial national power, which is ranked No. 1 in the country again this year. A record crowd, nearly 14,000 people, jammed Williams Arena to watch a match the Gophers ended up losing.

On the Friday before the match, however, Robinson found himself in the middle of a headline-making spat with his bosses.

You know whom he blamed for those headlines? Women.

It worked like this. Top university officials vetoed an effort by Robinson to put an article critical of Title IX in the wrestling program that was to be sold to fans. Sports souvenir programs aren't a place for personal political viewpoints, the university ruled.

Robinson said the only reason that reporter Jay Weiner, who wrote about the issue in Friday's Star Tribune, learned of the dispute between the coach and administrators was that "the story was leaked by people in the Women's Athletic Department to the media."

In Robinson's view, women in athletics spend a lot of time conspiring to hurt men. It was because women were politically organized, he said, that Title IX came into existence. It is because women remain politically organized that Title IX is now interpreted to mean that there should be as many women participating in sports as men.

"Now, they [women] don't like the idea of men coming back," Robinson said.

That's what he feels like he's doing. He feels like he's leading a men's comeback. Charge into the past!

Robinson has taken the lead because he feels that wrestling is among the men's sports hurt by Title IX. In fact, the number of college wrestling programs has fallen from 363 in 1981 to 246 now. It's also fact that in an effort to balance the number of women and men competing in sports, some schools have cut some men's sports.

Title IX is fine, Robinson said, but it has been taken too far. Schools are trying to match the ratio of men and women in sports to the ratio of men and women on campus.

"It assumes that male and female athletic interests are the same to start with," Robinson said, "and that's a wrong assumption."

He scoffs at those who believe that because men slammed the door on women for decades, it's reasonable to level the playing field now.

"Everybody seems to think it's OK that there's some pain as long as it's the other guy who's feeling the pain," Robinson said. "But what if it's your job that's taken away? What if they come in and say, 'We need more female writers, you're gone.' "

(Should we let Robinson in on a little 21st century secret? Newsrooms, once white male bastions, are getting steadily more diverse -- as are most other workplaces. Turns out, there's plenty of work for men and women.)

On Sunday, Robinson had members of his wrestling team who weren't competing in the match distribute the vetoed article to fans arriving at Williams Arena. The wrestlers said the coach "requested" that they distribute the literature, he didn't order that they do it. They also said they agree with him.

Working the edges of the crowds of people headed to Williams Arena were a handful of supporters of women's athletics. They were handing out leaflets suggesting that Title IX isn't the problem. The problem is the way athletics money is spent. Lavish amounts, for example, are spent on all sorts of luxuries in such sports as football.

Christie Heikes, a second-year med student, was among those handing out the pro-Title IX literature. Heikes is 25, meaning she was born after Title IX opened gym doors. She became a runner who was good enough to win a partial athletic scholarship to the university. The discipline of sport, she said, helped her believe she can become a physician.

"I decided I had to put my books down for a couple of hours and come to this today," she said. "I don't understand why anyone would want to keep women from achieving. Why not build up your own sport? Why don't we support each other?"

J Robinson needs to get out of the wrestling room, take a deep breath and meet women such as Heikes.

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THIS FEMALE CHAMP IS JUST ONE OF THE GUYS

Published on 02/16/2000, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE

As a member of the Quigley varsity wrestling team, Sissy Lyle is, well, just
one of the guys.

At the second annual Pennsylvania Girls High School Wrestling Championships
on Feb. 5-6, she
was the best of the girls.

Lyle won a girls' state wrestling title for the second consecutive season.
Last year, she captured
the 135-pound weight class championship. This time, she won at 130 pounds.
The tournament took
place at J.P. McCaskey High School in Lancaster.

A senior at Ambridge Area High Sc

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QUIGLEY IS HOST TO GIRLS' NATIONALS

Quigley High School in Baden will play host to the United States Girls'
Wrestling Association
Pennsylvania state championships March 19. Matches will begin at 10 a.m. and
continue until
champions are crowned.

Competition will be conducted in three divisions. There will be the
elementary, middle school and
high school age groups.

"We'll have four mats going and there will be girls here from all over the
country," Quigley Coach Ed
Driscoll said. "This is the first time we're doing anything like