WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Murata made her mark By Gary Abbott
There is a group of women wrestlers who were considered pioneers for the sport, successful in the years before the sport was added to the Olympic Games. There is another group that were able to try out for the first few U.S. Olympic women’s teams and help the U.S. program take the next step on the international scene. Stephanie Murata was one of the few who spanned both of these eras in U.S. women’s wrestling history. As a kid growing up, Stephanie knew little or nothing about wrestling, and would have never imagined her life involving the sport in any way. That all changed when she went to college at the University of California-Davis. “I grew up playing soccer, skiing, pretty much every sport. I was an active kid, anything that was running, jumping, playing. I didn’t start wrestling until college. I met another wrestler and she said that I should try it. I said I was too busy with school. But I ended up trying it and loved it. Most sports came pretty easy to me but wrestling didn’t. I had to work at it. Everybody I knew in wrestling worked really hard and I liked that, the work ethic and the camaraderie it built,” said Murata. The men’s team at UC-Davis allowed Murata to learn the sport in their room, and encouraged her to stick with it. This ulti- mately led her to test out the women’s Senior circuit, with her first full season in 1993-94.
“I remember my first tournament. Everything happened. I got tech falled. I tech falled someone. I won by points. I pinned someone and someone pinned me. It was like a little kids tour- nament. It was hilarious. Everything happened to me there,” she said.
Soon after, Murata was invited to train in Phoenix with top women athletes from the Sunkist Kids, including Tricia Saunders, Miyuu Yamamoto, Afsoon Johnston and Debby Weiss. Her ability and desire grew rapidly in that environment. “I was fortunate that I started training with the best in the
country. Because I had quality partners, I ended up having suc- cess rather quickly. You skip over the bad technique and find out what works. Once I went to my first tournament and quali- fied for training camp, I met more women and they invited me to train in Arizona for the nationals. At that time, I wasn’t with Sunkist yet and basically finishing college. I said I had time and went there,” she said. After placing at the U.S. Open, Murata was invited to join the Sunkist Kids and she moved to Arizona full time, living there for many years. She quickly rose to the top, making her first World Team in 1997 and competing in three straight World Championships. This was an era when women’s wrestling was gradually gaining more acceptance, but had not yet achieved Olympic status nor much public attention.
“I met great people in Phoenix. I also got to train with great people all the time. I was so fortunate that Sunkist was so sup- portive of women’s wrestling at the time. There weren’t many other clubs with women. Art Martori was way more supportive of the women than anybody else. I have to thank his daughters and his wife Sue for that. That was a very big part of my wrestling. There was no way I could train or compete without him,” she said. Murata was working full-time, as a geneticist and as a person-
18 USA Wrestler
Stephanie Murata’s career spanned two major eras for women’s freestyle wrestling. Larry Slater photo.
al trainer, making ends meet to support her wrestling. She ulti- mately focused only on the personal training job, which allowed more flexibility in her schedule. A typical day would start at 4:30 a.m. when she started training clients, working in a few short workouts for herself throughout the day. In the evening, she went to wrestling practice under coach Joe Corso from 7-10 p.m., then would go home to sleep, starting the routine again the next day. Her third World team was in 1999, and an experienced team went Boden, Sweden for the World Championships. Murata placed fourth in her weight class, and all six women placed in the top five, with three medalists including champions Tricia Saunders and Sandy Bacher. The USA beat Japan by one point for its first and only World team title.
“It was great. Everybody contributed to that team. The most memorable to me was Tina George. When you get to criteria and things are close, they go to how many points a wrestler scored in her matches. She had a ridiculous match, 17-15 or something crazy, and because she scored all those points, we won. We only won by one team point,” she said.
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