WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Downing brings her pioneer spirit to sport of wrestling
By Gary Abbott Although she never looked at it that
way, two-time World medalist Katie Downing is OK with being called a pio- neer within women’s wrestling. When major opportunities opened up for women in the sport, Downing was often there on the ground floor. “We were the second wave of pio-
neers. As far as the pioneer theme goes, I definitely can’t deny it because I was at almost all of the firsts,” said Downing. A judo athlete at the age of eight, Downing found her way to wrestling as a youth in Pendleton, Ind. It was still a time when it was a novelty for a girl to be a wrestler. “In judo for years, it has always been
boys and girls and men and women all training together, but with separate com- petitions, so it was not taboo at all. I grew up with a set of boys. I’d seen boys who were wrestlers who never did judo win- ning right away in judo, and that got my attention. Some of the judo boys I grew up with also wrestled. I thought I’d join wrestling to make my judo better,” said Downing. Unknown to Katie, her father Joe met
with the high school coach to discuss the many challenges that might face Katie joining a boys wrestling team in an era which had not yet accepted it. “Small town in Midwest in late 1990s, I
was definitely not welcome by some. A lot of people had concerns. Coaches Kriebel and Cloud did the best thing possible. They gave me a chance, but they really made me prove it. Early on it was all con- ditioning, a test, and they were seeing if I would quit or not. I didn’t and pretty much proved myself. It was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life, and I was hooked at that moment,” said Downing. Wrestling was a whole lot more chal-
lenging than her experiences in softball and judo and after surviving a rough freshman year, on and off the mat, her team and community eventually support- ed her wrestling dreams. “All of the issues you ever heard about women’s wrestling ever, I got all of them.
18 USA Wrestler
Katie Downing transformed from a young judo athlete growing up in Indiana to one of the best women’s freestyle wrestlers in the World. John Sachs photo.
Some schools would forfeit to me rather than wrestle me. By then end of the year, it was clear that I just loved wrestling. Wrestling itself weeds out people who are not there for the right reasons anyway. It’s not worth doing unless you really want to do it. People started seeing me as a wrestler,” said Downing. She had a .500 record wrestling boys
and was varsity in her senior year. Coach Dave Cloud researched opportunities for Katie to compete, including wrestling against girls. He found a few all-girl events, and even a college that had a varsity wrestling team. Katie decided to give it try, wrestling in Senior-level events including the Sunkist Kids International and the U.S. Senior Open. She also had a chance to wrestle against other high school girls. “Coach Cloud, my dad and I went up to Michigan for the USGWA Nationals. It was the first USGWAs. There were 247 girls there and it was amazing. It was the most awesome thing we had ever seen.
We were all the only girls who wrestled for miles around us. This time, the boys were in the stands and we were wrestling. It was the coolest tournament ever,” she said. She decided to attend the only college
in America with a women’s varsity wrestling team, the University of Minnesota at Morris, coached by Doug Reese. “At Morris, all we did was freestyle, because that was the only option we had. We did Open stuff. I won FILA Juniors one year, and that was the first year that USA Wrestling took a full team that was funded to Junior Worlds. In 2001, it was the first year for a World Cup and I got to go there also. We did go up to Canada a couple of times, and they had lots of col- lege teams, so that was the only time we got just college girls,” said Downing. She became the top star on the UM-
Morris and its team captain, staying there four years and earning her bachelor’s
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