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Area competitors fare well at national event

Monday, March 27, 2000

LAKE ORION, Mich - Palo Duro and Caprock representatives fared well at the United States Girls Wrestling Association Tournament during the weekend.

Palo Duro, Caprock and Arlington Sam Houston were members of Team Texas, which finished third in the tournament. Teams from each state were represented.

Team Texas scored 258 points. Winning the national championship was Michigan with 407 points, followed by California with 369 points. Ohio was fourth with 199 points, and Florida was fifth with 175.

Caprock's Tori Adams successfully defended her national championship in the 149-pound division. In the semifinals she pinned Molly Ann from Michigan in 5 minutes, 33 seconds. In the finals she decisioned Jena Pavlik of Delaware 4-1. Pavlik was last year's national champion in the 154-pound weight division.

"The girls did great," said Caprock and Team Texas coach Scott Tankersley. "The competition level was very high. Both Caprock and Palo Duro did Amarillo proud. I'm proud of both teams."

Tankersley also had help with the team from Caprock assistant T.J. Johnson and Palo Duro head coach Scott Nelson.

Also, Palo Duro girls' coach Lisa Hunt won the national championship in the collegiate division. The top 10 in each division gained All-America status.

Caprock's Stephanie Olivas (106) and Marie Hernandez (hwt) finished sixth in their divisions. Jennifer Johnson (119) was fourth, and Mini Garcia (131) was ninth.

For Palo Duro, Dyanna McIntire (hwt) was third, Janice Gooden (149) was sixth, and Casey Britton (173) was seventh.

Lauren Lindsey (119) of Palo Duro was 12th, and Rachel Rodriguez of Hereford (131) finished 12th.

Two wrestlers from Bowie Middle School competed in the Middle School National Tournament and earned All-America honors. Hope Jones (102) finished third, and Nina Rodriguez (134) placed sixth.

The team is expected to arrive at Amarillo International Airport at 5 p.m. Tuesday.

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MAKING A (STATE)MENT
Caprock Lady Longhorns - 2000 State Wrestlign Champs

Wednesday, March 8, 2000

This group of young athletes and coaches comprises the Caprock Lady Longhorns girls' wrestling team, the 1999-2000 Texas State Champions: (fron row from left) Deedra Puentes, Stephanie Olivas, Miny Garcia, Denise Allegreth, Jennifer Johnson and Tori Adams. (middle ro from left) Amy Garcia, Carmella Gonzales, Leticia Renteria, Marie Hernandez and Mellissa Holley. (back row from left) Assistant coach Mickey Ripley, assistant coach Ronnie Johnson and head coach Scott Tankersley.

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Tori Adams: A pioneer in girls' wrestling
Caprock standout's love for the sport kept her determined to persevere

Tori Adams doesn't think of herself as being responsible for girls wrestling in Texas.

"Everbody says, 'Look at what you started,' " said the 18-year-old leader of Caprock High School's 2000 state championship girls wrestling team. "I don't look at what I'm doing. I just love the sport. It's what I love to do."

She has no choice, though. Tori Adams always will be linked to the start of girls wrestling in Texas. Just as Nazareth is linked to girls basketball supremacy, Jackie Smith to the dropped Super Bowl pass, Kerrigan to Harding and Bobby Riggs to Billy Jean King.

"You could say she is responsible for girls wrestling in Texas. She's certainly a pioneer," said Henry Harmoney, who first coached Adams when she started wrestling at the tender age of 8 at the Mavericks Boys & Girls Club in Amarillo. "You could say if Tori hadn't been there, someone else would have come along and got things started. But Tori started years before anyone else did."

Since 1996, Harmoney has been the wrestling coach at Arlington, where he fielded the state's first high school girls team and won two Texas Independent Girls Wrestling Association state championships before the UIL began sponsoring boys and girls wrestling last year.

"The girls I started with hadn't been wrestling for nearly as long as Tori. None of them are even close," Harmoney said.

The thought of girls rolling around on a mat and engaging in choke holds and body slams is horrifying to many who believe, like with football, that wrestling is a boys only sport.

But sport has always undergone and survived change. Basketball added a shot clock to speed up the game and the 3-point shot to loosen up zone defenses. Prep football now plays overtime to break ties instead of rewarding the team that threatened to score the most. The UIL accepted soccer and softball and, facing a pile of potential litigation, opened up football to girls. Adding girls wrestling was simply part of the process.

"Tori is really recognized for what she did, but she's not interested in stepping up and taking that recognition," said Gary Adams, Tori's father. "She's just not that kind of girl."

Adds her mother, Sandy Adams: "Tori's still enjoying what's happening so much with her and all the other girls. She doesn't realize, at least now, the impact she's had on girls wrestling. And it won't be over after she leaves Caprock on wrestlers in college. She wants to be a coach, and she'll probably do that."

"That's after the Olympics," Gary interjected.

Innocent beginnings

Tori's wrestling roots mirror her mind-set today. Starting a revoluntion never entered the 8-year-old's mind. She watched Justin, her older brother by almost three years, wrestle for the Maverick Club and she wanted in on the action. At that age, she never thought she wasn't supposed to wrestle just because she was a girl.

"Her mom kept telling her there was no way her daughter was going to wrestle," Gary Adams said. "I even told her there was a rule that girls couldn't wrestle because there weren't any girl wrestlers in Texas. Then we took her along to one of Justin's tournaments in Oklahoma, and there were a couple of girls out there wrestling. That blew the roof off of it.

"I went and talked to coach Harmoney and he said, basically, that there was no rule against girls. He said that most mothers wouldn't let their daughters do it."

Shortly thereafter, a rookie tournament was scheduled in Dumas. Gary Adams gave into his daughter's wishes. Sort of.

"I figured Tori would get her head twisted off and she'd get enough and we wouldn't have to listen to it anymore," Gary said. "Coach Harmoney said she had to get some practice in before the rookie tournament so she could at least defend herself.

"She ended up with two trophies - one for winning her division and one for being the top rookie.

"Needless to say, our plan backfired."

"When I won the first couple of tournaments I went to," Tori Adams said, "I was hooked."

Gaining acceptance

During her wrestling days with the Maverick Club, Tori never wrestled another girl. There weren't any. So she wrestled boys. And beat them on a regular basis.

Harmoney, realizing Tori's talent, saw to it that she was accepted within the Maverick Club.

"At first, we had to go out of our way to get the other boys to wrestle a girl. The boys just weren't used to it," Harmoney said. "She never asked for any special favors. She worked as hard as everybody else. She was just a topnotvh athlete anybody would love to coach.

"When she started beating the boys that were pretty good at the club, that's when she gained respect."

Acceptance from the outside came more slowly.

"The problems weren't with the other boys as much as it was their dads and granddads. They have man-sized egos, you know," Gary Adams said.

"It was really a no-win situation for the boys. If they lose, they're not about to tell anyone they got beat by a girl. If they won, they couldn't really brag about beating a girl."

Tori became a favorite of women who attended club wrestling events throughout Texas and Oklahoma. They didn't have to know Tori. This was about a girl holding her own in an arena supposedly ruled by boys. All the women - except those whose sons were about to be beaten by Tori - lined the arena to cheer when she took to the mat.

The referees weren't as amused. Many refused to call a match involving Tori.

"They'd just walk away when Tori's match was being introduced and they saw a girl," Gary Adams said. "I guess they thought we would eventually go away, that we'd give up. They didn't understand that wrestling was the love of Tori's life. "We were able to find a few referees who would agree to call her matches. Most of them had seen her wrestle before."

Harmoney still doesn't like to talk about the referees who boycotted Tori's matches.

"She was out there doing everything she was supposed to be doing, and she still had battles to fight," he said. "The referees, there was no reason for them to treat her like that. She wasn't out to prove anything; she just wanted to wrestle."

Gary and Sandy Adams didn't worry about their daughter engaging in a physical sport against boys.

"Most girls at that age are just as strong and quick as the boys," Gary said. "At her age now, I would have to second guess letting her go against the boys."

Eventually, Tori's success couldn't be denied.

"At first I heard a lot of, 'You shouldn't be doing this,' " Tori said. "But they accepted me as I got better. They came to accept that they had gotten beat by, not a girl, but a good wrestler."

School-sponsored wrestling

Challenges for acceptance were only beginning for the Adamses.

When Tori enrolled at Bowie Middle School, school administrators initially said no way to girls wrestling, especially against boys.

"They were afraid of a lawsuit," Sandy Adams said. "Coach Harmoney talked with them and told them that Tori was the best wrestler at Bowie." She soon proved it.

After finishing third in the city middle school championships as a sixth-grader, Tori won city titles in both the seventh and eighth grades.

"I do remember one boy who said that if he got beat by a girl, he would quit wrestling," Tori said. "He's playing basketball now."

Tori never wrestled another girl until she arrived as a freshman at Caprock High School. At that level, it became boys vs. boys and girls vs. girls.

During her first two years at Caprock, high school wrestling was sponsored by the Texas Independent Wrestling Association. The girls were unwelcome participants.

The first time girls participated in the state tournament was in 1997 at the Amarillo Civic Center. The girls were forced to wrestle at 7:30 in the morning, and they weren't considered part of the official program.

Tori was Caprock's only female wrestler during her freshaman year. There were five girls her sophmore year. This year's state champion- ship team had more than a dozen members.

The UIL began sponsoring boys and girls wrestling in 1999, and the ground rules were laid down in writing: Boys vs. boys, girls vs. girls. No mixed matches, not even in practice.

If Tori Adams regularly beat boys, you can imagine her success against girls. Her individual credentials include four state champion- ships, two national championships - with one more possible March 25-26 in Ann Arbor, Mich. - and an 82-1 record. The loss came during a third-place finish at nationals.

Tori has mixed emotions about no longer being able to wrestle boys.

"Girls wrestling girls, that's the way it should be," she said. "Around the ninth grade, a little more maturity occurs in boys. They start getting bigger than the girls. The strength and endurance level becomes different with the boys around that age.

"In other states, girls can wrestle against boys. That's a disadvantage for us at nationals because it's a little easier to wrestle a girl than a guy."

Tori says the UIL has been good for girls wrestling because it brought about more equal coaching compared to the boys.

Profile of a wrestler

Who are these girls who choose wrestling over volleyball or basketball?

Tori Adams smiles at the question she obviously has heard many times before. Outsiders tend to view girl wrestlers as freak-show candidates.

The dozen girls who wrestle for Caprock come in all shapes and sizes, from just over 100 pounds to more than 200. Some are dainty while others you probably wouldn't want to mess with - same as basketball players. Most are firmly put together, a product of a vigorous training regimin that Tori says is tougher than basketball or volleyball. And she played both.

"Wrestling USA magazine did a story on that - 'Who are the girls who wrestle,' " said Tori, who is 5-feet-6 and competes in the 148-pound division. "They have girl wrestlers who are in the choir and band - even some who won beauty pageants. There are girls who also play basketball, volleyball and softball."

If you sent the Caprock wrestlers dressed in school clothes down the hallway with the general student body, you couldn't pick out all the wrestlers.

Successful wrestlers are no different than successful athletes in other sports. They experience the same drive to be the best.

"I dislike losing more than I like winning," Tori said, gritting her teeth just at the thought of losing. "Losing is an indescribable feeling. You put in all that work and effort - pushing your body to its limit - to lose.

"If you've given all you've got and not made any mistakes and still lose, you have nothing to be ashamed of. But if you watch the video and see a mistake, the feeling ... I can't explain it."

The future

After nationals, Tori Adams will decide whether to accept a full-scholarship offer to wrestle collegiately for Minnesota, Missouri or Kentucky.

With her talent and her No. 9 academic ranking in a class of about 400, Tori pretty much has her choice of colleges.

Gary mentioned the Olympics, and although the percentage of athletes who make the cut are minuscule, you don't rule out someone with Tori's credentials.

Women's wrestling won't become an Olympic sport until the 2004 Games. Tori will be 22 then and have four years of college experience. Where she will fit in among the nation's best is anybody guess at this point.

After she finishes competing, she wants to coach.

The bigger picture

Harmoney calls Tori Adams the "best girl to go through the state of Texas, and she probably will be for a long time."

Gary and Sandy Adams, blue-colar graduates of Caprock High who live within a stone's throw of the campus, have spent more money than they can count on equipment, travel and entry fees to Tori's wrestling tournaments.

Just to get Tori on the mat in a match, they fought the system and won.

"If it wasn't for my parents, I wouldn't be wrestling today," Tori declared proudly.

The comment made her mom's eyes water.

"If we had just fought for our child, girls wrestling wouldn't have gone anywhere," Sandy Adams said. "They have a whole team now. They want to wrestle. They love to wrestle. When the girls won state, it was like a family achievement. They're all like our daughters.

"My biggest hope is that the girls' program will keep growing - that it's not a fad. With the big turnout this year at the middle school city tournament, I think that shows there's still a growing interest.

"All the time and effort and money spent were worth it for us with Tori, just seeing the look on her face when she competes and how much she enjoys being around the other girls," Sandy said.

"But we want girl wrestling to keep growing."

It is.

In 1998, Tori was the only girl from Texas to compete at nationals. Last year, there were 10 girls from Amarillo and 23 from Texas. This year there will be 20 from Amarillo and about 50 from Texas.

When Tori won her middle school city championships, she was the only girl. This year's competition included 46 girls.

"That was awesome to see," Tori said. "There are young girls out there who want to wrestle. The sport is growing."

That's the main thing Tori Adams really wants.