Meeting Recap Feb 19 - Katherine Fulp-Allen
Posted by Joe Brennan
Katherine Fulp Allen is a returning hero to Half Moon Bay
She is an alumni of Half Moon Bay High School where she excelled in wrestling, drawing wide attention and moving the sport forward locally and in the Bay Area. She graduated from Menlo College where she again excelled in wrestling moving the sport forward locally and nationally. She is two time College National Champion and University World Champion. She has continued her wrestling and has been a member on three national teams and Bronze Medalist at the Olympic Team Trials. We are fortunate to have her drop in to address us as she just flew in from Sweden to participate in a friend’s wedding before heading to Russia and on to Mongolia.
She is an alumni of Half Moon Bay High School where she excelled in wrestling, drawing wide attention and moving the sport forward locally and in the Bay Area. She graduated from Menlo College where she again excelled in wrestling moving the sport forward locally and nationally. She is two time College National Champion and University World Champion. She has continued her wrestling and has been a member on three national teams and Bronze Medalist at the Olympic Team Trials. We are fortunate to have her drop in to address us as she just flew in from Sweden to participate in a friend’s wedding before heading to Russia and on to Mongolia.
Katherine is currently a trainee for the 2015 World Team Trials and the 2016 US Olympics Team at the Olympic Training Facility in Colorado Springs Colorado. There are three Olympic training facilities; Chula Vista, CA (mainly for track and field), Lake Placid, NY (for winter sports) and Colorado Springs, CO (for everything else). Para Olympic training is included at Colorado Springs too. All US Olympic competitors come through Colorado Springs plus visiting athletes from all over the world. Her life includes lots of travel, training and having a home and household…including a dog. Time management is the central issue and she is learning to be selfish to make it work to the best advantage. This means being able to tell people what you need and getting out of situations what you need is the “selfish” learning.The hardest part is she wants to give back to her sport. The biggest sacrifice is being away from her home and family.
Her wrestling career began with her dad who wrestled on the USA teams in the 1956 and 1960 Olympics and was to be a coach for the (boycotted) 1964 Olympics. She says he was an “old school guy" but he had a vision for women in the sport and apparently that started at home. Katherine has a sister three years older and their father had hopes that his daughters would take up wrestling - and they did very successfully! Katherine began competing on a Club Team then went on to wrestling at Cunha Middle School and Half Moon Bay High School. Both sisters attended Menlo College where women’s wrestling was added three years later?
After college she moved to the Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center where they have mens and womens freestyle and women’s GreccoRoman wrestling. These are live aboard programs and have room for just the top three in each sport in each weight category. The training regimen includes weight training, nutrition and sports psyche. She does four to six hours of training a day. A typical trainee’s day includes; wake up, light morning practice, lunch, session (medical, nutrition or psyche), heavy training session and then recovery. The weight lifting is done there days a week with Yoga on the other two days.
The International Olympic Committee in 2013 voted wrestling out of the core sports for the 2020 Olympic Games.This was a terrific upset and departure with tradition which fractured the Olympic community. A partnership of a number of countries including the US and Iran campaigned together to get wrestling included again. It was intimidating to fight to be re-incorporated into the core program but in the end it worked. Adding weight classes and putting women’s wrestling at the forefront really tipped the balance to get wrestling back into the 2020 games. Women's weight classes are in kilos and the approximate equivalanet in pounds is: 105, 116, 129, 138, 150 and 163.
One of the training exercises is on “The Incline” which is an old cog railroad bed a mile long with a 2,000 feet elevation gain from the base at 6,000 feet. This requires the athlete to walk quickly up using the railroad ties for footing. Katherine says it is almost impossible to “run” the incline but some super athletes can do it in 20 minutes. Katherine has done the incline many times.
Looking forward to 2016 she says Japan and Russia will be their biggest competitors, Katherine is currently rated between first and second on the team as she and another are at the top of their games.
