Mat of dreams

CLEVELAND — Toccara Montgomery first became intrigued with wrestling as a sophomore in high school, and her goal was to eventually be good enough to start winning matches against boys.

Now the 21-year-old senior from Cumberland College, in Williamsburg, Ky., doesn’t mind admitting she often visualizes herself at a medals ceremony in the Summer Olympics in Athens.

“It’s been playing back in my head, me standing on the podium, with my medal on, maybe holding flowers and just the anthem playing with the flag over my head,” she said recently while in her hometown of Cleveland. “It’s something I’m looking forward to.”

Montgomery, one of four members of the first U.S. Olympic women’s wrestling team, is widely considered to be a strong contender for gold. She won a championship in the 2003 Pan American Games. She has lost some matches, but also has won at least once over each of her main competitors in international events for her weight class, up to 158.5 pounds.

“It’s really a tough weight class, but I feel confident. We’ll see,” she said.

USA Wrestling’s national women’s coach Terry Steiner, responsible for training America’s best women freestyle wrestlers, has no doubt that Montgomery will be focused and ready.

“Toccara has proven herself as a definite gold medal contender. She was second in the world championships last year. She just beat a six-time world champ from Canada. I don’t know if she is a gold medal favorite, but she is definitely highly regarded,” Steiner said.

“I think her biggest asset is her demeanor, how calm and collected she is even under the most stressful circumstance.”

This summer’s Olympics is the first to include women’s wrestling.

“If you don’t follow women’s wrestling at all, there would be a lot of people who don’t know it exists,” Steiner said. “There have been world championships for about 20 years. So the Olympics was bound to happen sooner or later.”

At Cleveland East Tech under coach Kip Flanik, she tried out for the wrestling team as a personal challenge she thought might be fun. There were few, if any, other female wrestlers on opposing teams. Losing to boys did not dim her spirit, and by her junior year she started winning.

By her senior year, Flanik found national girls’ wrestling competitions for her to try.

“He told me I had a talent, and if I wanted to pursue something greater in the sport he would help me get to as many women’s tournaments as possible. I still wrestled about eight matches my senior year against guys and I won all of them,” she said.

After high school, she went to Cumberland on scholarship. Soon after she made that decision, the college’s coaching job for women’s wrestling opened up, and Flanik was hired.

The team had about eight girls her first year and about 27 last year. “Everyone at Cumberland has been really supportive,” said Montgomery, who is majoring in elementary education.

“I really like kids, and I think second grade is really when they have learned the basics and are really starting to use more learning skills and abstract thinking, and I really want to work with them,” she said.

For now, she educates her three pet pit bulls, Coco, Xavier and Vegas.

“They are my babies. They are sweeties,” Montgomery said, breaking into a wide grin. “Pit bulls, in a way, are a lot like women’s wrestling. You hear so many things and you don’t know what to believe. A lot of times you get just the negative. I believe pit bulls are a great dog.

“They will grow up the way you raise them. I raise my pit bulls to be gentle, kind and loving dogs, and that’s just what they are. Wherever I’m at, they’re at.”

But they won’t be with her in Athens, although she lobbied to take at least one. The dogs might have to stay in Cleveland with her parents, Paul and Tara Montgomery.

Her mother said she was worried about Montgomery’s safety when she started wrestling.

“I’ve always been proud of her, no matter what she has done,” Mrs. Montgomery said. “I’m glad she is blessed to have gotten as far as she has gotten in this sport.”