Recent McNary High School graduate Samantha Urban won a national title in Fargo, N.D., at the USAW Junior Women`s Freestyle?Nationals. (KEIZERTIMES/Eric A. Howald)
By ERIC A. HOWALD
Of the Keizertimes
Look Samantha ?Sam? Urban in the face and you?ll see the all-American girl: chestnut hair, blue eyes, freckles and a smile, when she chooses to deploy it, that is sure to break a heart or two.
Stare into her soul and you?ll find that sugar and spice and everything nice coats something tougher: a national champion wrestler.
Sam captured a national title at 172 pounds in the USAW Junior Women`s Freestyle?Nationals two weeks ago making her the second of two McNary High School Celtics to achieve such lofty heights in the sport this year. The three-time state champion tore through two preliminary matches and overcame a loss in the second round of the finals to win the title, but overcoming doubts-those of others and her own?has become a way of life for the 18-year-old.
?With every coach, I had to prove myself,? she said. ?They didn?t immediately take to me because I was? the only girl on the team.?
As far as she?s concerned the worst, or perhaps the best, thing anyone can tell her is that she can?t do something. ?You?re going to be proven wrong,? she said.
?Sam has always been a great student and her success earned respect among her peers,? said Kelly Hafer, wrestling coach at Whiteaker Middle School where Urban got her start in the sport. Sam credits Hafer with supplying the encouragement she needed to keep going in the sport at a time when she was just as likely to have thrown in the towel. ?By her second year, she had a winning record. That?s pretty uncommon in middle school and she never hesitated to wrestle anybody we put her up against.?
While her talent and determination were enough to quiet many skeptics, there were and continue to be many holdouts.
?I?ve had a guy bite through her lip while she was pinning him, guys who ask for her phone number after they finish wrestling, teammates razzing their own teammates after losing a match to her,? said mom Crystal Urban.
It also wasn?t uncommon for Sam to find herself defending fallen opponents. Mean-spirited comments about losing to a girl were squelched when she went over to the opposing team?s side of the mat and challenged the tormentors to a match.
?If a guy?s going to doubt my ability, I want to prove to him that I can,? Sam said.
When Crystal started posting video of Sam?s matches on YouTube a flurry of negative comments and then hate mail followed.
?There were horrible things written online. She just wanted to wrestle,? Crystal said. ?For her it was always a matter of having found something she was good and wanting to be able to do it.?
Despite the naysayers, Sam spent most of her time wrestling with boys either in practices or in dual meets because of the dearth of females in the sport. She actually came to enjoy wrestling with the guys more.
?It?s more stressful losing to a girl because I can do anything they can do. It makes it harder. I can go in and lose a match to a guy and come out on the other side knowing they are physically built differently than me,? she said. ?With a guy, you can just drive at them, but a girl?s flexibility makes it more difficult to win those maneuvers.?
Her lowest moment was wrestling at nationals for the first time as a sophomore. She lost her first match to a freshman in the second round and lost her head.
?I told everybody I was done with wrestling, but they told me to calm down and think about what I was saying,? she said.
Sam stuck it out and grew as a wrestler during the past two years, said Jay Goin, an assistant coach at McNary, one Sam credits with helping see her through.
?She was kind of timid when she came in as a junior and always asking if she was doing things right, but at the end of her senior year she would just go out and do it,? Goin said.
Wrestling, he said, has a way of revealing an athlete?s character and Sam is part of a slow seachange in the way people will eventually see the male-dominated sport.
?Every time we see a girl go out there?and compete well?win or lose?it puts little thoughts in everybody?s head. We start thinking girls can?t wrestle, except for that one. Once you start that people start believing that maybe other girls can, too,? Goin said.
As an example, he points to Sam?s performance in a Cleveland High School tournament where she and a young man from North Salem ended up in the final match of the night.
?Not only were all of our kids around cheering for her, but all of the people in the gym noticed that there was this tremendous battle going on between two wrestlers,? Goin said. ?As a coach, it?s always exciting to have that happen for one of your kids, but having everyone else get into it was cool.?
Sam pinned him in the third round.
Sam also developed a friendship with McNary junior, and the other Keizer national champ, Devin Reynolds, who she cites as her biggest influence on her approach to the sport.
?He makes me work twice as hard because he always says that we have to make everything look good so everybody behind us will continue to excel,? Sam said,
This fall, Sam heads to British Columbia?s Simon Fraser University where she will join the Clan and begin work toward her next goal, the 2016 Olympics.
?She is a good athlete with a stubborn, persistent attitude that I think will allow her to progress quickly in women?s wrestling,? said Mike Jones, Clan head coach. ?We will be looking at national collegiate results immediately, but will ultimately be looking for her to break into the international scene.?
There was a time when Jones would have counted himself among the doubters when it came to females in wrestling. The biggest hurdle he had to overcome was the idea of young men wrestling young women in a touch-and-feel sport.
?Once I observed?the sport with women against women,?I quickly changed my mind,? Jones said. ?Young women like Sam are changing the perception just by doing it.?
Sam?s largest looming fear in making the transition to college wrestling has nothing to do with her likely competition, it?s leaving her support group behind.
?At nationals, I talked to my mom about wrestling maybe not being my plan,? she said. ?I?m going to have to cut weight and be sore, but in the end there will be a lot of good things I can get out of it. Even when I?m older I?m going to walk through a wrestling room and think, ?I was here.??
The day of the national finals, Crystal sent Sam a text message that read: ?I know your hands are freezing right now, but you just have to get through this.?
Sam?s nerves before a match rear their head by turning her hands cold every time. By that point, she?s already talked through the match with her father, Brandan, but the cold hands are mom?s department. When she can, Crystal blows into them before a match to warm them and tells her daughter she?s awesome. The final component of this prematch ritual is music. Sam?s earbuds blare the band Disturbed?s Stupefy which ends with the lyrics, ?Look in my face/Stare in my soul.?
Whether it?s her face or soul, when looking at Sam Urban, all you should see is her heart, and it?s all wrestler.
Source: http://keizertimes.com/2012/08/03/tougher-than-you-lady-celt-snags-natl-wrestling-title/
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