Grappling for Progress

By Sean Gregory

He badgered the coach, the guidance counselor and the principal. "Why don't you let her do something else?" asked Jose Miranda, whose daughter Patricia wrestled on the high school boys' team in Saratoga, Calif. "How about gymnastics? Or volleyball?" He begged her to give it up, even threatened to sue the school to get her off the mat. She wouldn't relent. Jose, a Brazilian-born family doctor, wanted his daughter to concentrate on school; he also feared for her safety. And for him, there was the obvious question. "Why would a woman want to wrestle?" he asked her. "That's not a thing for a woman to do."

Jose was no match for his determined daughter. He agreed to let her wrestle if she got straight A's, and Patricia, now 25, delivered. She faces even tougher foes as a member of the U.S. women's wrestling team, which, like the sport itself, is making its debut in these Olympics. Miranda is a favorite in the 48-kg (105.5-lb.) division and leads a four-woman team into Athens. Each has fought off the tomboy taunts to get there. As it happens, most have grappled with personal tragedy as well.

They hope to repeat the successes of other women's championship teams, the 1998 U.S. Olympic hockey and 1999 U.S. World Cup soccer teams, which boosted the popularity of their sports. "I'm not some staunch feminist who wants to tell girls that they have to wrestle," says Miranda. "I just want them to know that they can." At a high school tournament her junior year, someone in the crowd yelled, "You're a joke!" She wept in the bathroom after the match. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me," she says. "I was able to know that I could take my worst hit."

Miranda had also been hit hard off the mat--her mother died at 40. Although Miranda was only 10 at the time, she accepted the death as a lesson for her own life. "I realized that my life would be one-fourth over if the same thing happened to me," she says. "So I needed to take on some challenges fast." She not only made the Olympics but also graduated from Stanford, in 2003. Yale Law School awaits.

One of Miranda's teammates, 72-kg (158.5-lb.) contender Tocarra Montgomery, 21, lost a parent in a different way. Her father Paul Montgomery is serving 30 years to life in prison for killing two men in Cleveland, Ohio, when Tocarra was 15. She released her anger in wrestling; just months after joining the team at Cleveland's East Tech High, she won the silver medal at girls nationals. Two years later, she was named International Women's Wrestler of the Year. "She doesn't drink. She doesn't get high. She doesn't party," says her Cumberland College coach, Kip Tranik. "She trains 50 weeks a year."

Tela O'Donnell, 22, a native of an Alaskan fishing town, is the opposite of the street-toughened Montgomery. Her toughest opponents as a kid were the sheep she wrestled near the log cabin she shared with her mother, a part-time mime. O'Donnell will compete in the 55-kg (121-lb.) division. "She's our free spirit," says U.S. coach Terry Steiner. She's also a wild card: O'Donnell upset the favored Tina George to make the team, and has little international experience.

Sara McMann, the 63-kg (138.5-lb.) wrestler, is proven; she finished second at the 2003 world championships. Unlike her teammates, McMann, 23, followed a sibling into the sport. Her older brother Jason wrestled for McDowell High in Marion, N.C., a small, Bible Belt town in the western part of the state. The football coach told Sara's mother that it would be "a cold day in hell before a female wrestles in McDowell County." That guy must have frozen his machismo off when Sara made the boys' high school team. Unfortunately, another kind of hell awaited: Jason was murdered five years ago. Says McMann: "I don't have to dedicate any kind of outcome to him. No matter what happens, I think he'd be proud of me because I'm doing exactly what I love."

Will the U.S. fall in love with this team? The story lines say we should, but Canadian, Japanese and Russian women are more experienced. If the U.S. soccer team had won the silver in Atlanta, would as many girls be playing today? So for these women, all that's at stake is the future of their sport. "They definitely love you if you win," says Miranda. "That's all part of the game." Miranda has won over one tough convert already. Her once reluctant dad will be cheering in Athens, watching his daughter pin down a dream.