When the 2008 Olympic Games are played, a young athlete from Anne Arundel County could be among the American contingent in Beijing.
At least Nicole Woody hopes so. In fact, it is her goal: She intends to make the U.S. women's wrestling team.
Freshman Nicole Woody puts a hold on Joey Dowling of Southern High. Woody is the only female on the Arundel wrestling team; she wrestles at 103 pounds for both the junior varsity and varsity.
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It will be only the second time that women will compete at the Games in wrestling, a sport traditionally reserved for men. Women made their Olympic wrestling debut at the Athens Games last August.
The 16-year-old Arundel freshman is one of the nation's top female junior wrestlers. Last summer she competed at the U.S. junior women's nationals in Fargo, N.D., and, after earning five technical falls in five matches, emerged with the title of 95-pound national champion. Just the mention of her title brings a smile to Woody's face. The accomplishment, she acknowledges, took "hard work and dedication."
"You can't just go out there and expect to win," Woody said last week during a break in a meet with Annapolis and Glen Burnie. "You have to have the will and the training for it."
Woody started wrestling seven years ago while living in St. Leonard. She credits Coaches Bruce Gabrielson and Rick Jones of the Southern Maryland Wrestling Club with "getting me seriously into wrestling." And she also praises another of her coaches, Mike DeSarno, whom she termed her "summer freestyle coach."
"He got me ready to wrestle before I went out to Fargo," she said, noting that she'll be heading back to the girls' nationals this summer.
Surely her pedigree has helped, too. Brother William, now 24, wrestled competitively and many of Nicole's uncles (her mother has nine siblings) were mat grapplers as well.
Until this academic year, Woody had been home-schooled. But when the family moved to Odenton last year so her father could be closer to his construction job, Woody enrolled at Arundel. She already knew Coach Billy Royer from junior league, and the transition to the team -- as well as to taking courses in a classroom setting -- has been a smooth one, she said.
"I went in expecting [school] to be totally different, that I'd know nothing [about class and teachers]," she said. "I didn't think I'd be able to learn as well.
"I'm shocked at how well I've adapted. I said to myself, 'I feel like I've done this before.' "
Woody, who now wrestles at 103 pounds, is wrestling mostly junior varsity this year (varsity 103-pounder John Kotsis is among the best in the state at that weight class) and was 16-1 in JV matches entering the week. She has also won three varsity matches at 103, most recently last Thursday, when she pinned her opponent from Eleanor Roosevelt High.
"The kid I wrestled was laughing," Woody said, "He was laughing as I was taking him down. I gave him a dirty look. I guess he was shocked. He was smiling in an 'Oh, my gosh' sort of way."
Woody recently returned from a seven-day trip to Moscow and Siberia, where she wrestled in an international competition with former Olympic and world team members. U.S. Women's Olympic Coach Terry Steiner led the American contingent.
"I learned a lot of wrestling strategies," Woody said, before pausing and altering the words a bit. "I learned that I need to figure out a lot of wrestling strategies."
She lost both matches against the women (who Woody said were much older than she is) but was pleased with the way she competed. She laughed when recalling how, after a 0-0 first period, her Russian opponent "picked me up and threw me in the air."
Her globetrotting will continue next month, when Woody will go to Sweden with Olympic and world team members. She'll then head to California in April for the world team trials. Woody's mother said her daughter is trying to land a spot on the U.S. Junior World Team.
"She's that good, she could be an Olympian in 2008," said Royer, her high school coach. "For some of these guys [at Arundel], it might be the closest they get to being with an Olympian. They can look back and say, 'I pushed her. I trained with her.' "
