Toccara Montgomery

Montgomery began her sporting career at the age of fifteen, when she checked out a practice for the newly formed wrestling squad at East Technical High School in Cleveland.[3] Despite that the sport had been exclusively competed only by men, Montgomery joined and then trained full-time for the team under her head coach Kip Flanik. During her stellar high school career, she won the 2000 U.S. junior national title under the 68-kg division.[4]

After graduating from high school in 2001, Montgomery attended the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Kentucky, where she competed for the Cumberlands Patriots wrestling club. During her collegiate career, she helped build the team into one of the top women's wrestling programs in the nation. She compiled a perfect 29–0 dual record, and also claimed the 2004 Women's Collegiate National Championship title in the 158-pound division. In 2006, Montgomery graduated from Cumberlands with a bachelor's degree in education.[2]

In 2001, Montgomery joined the U.S. world wrestling team, and eventually earned her first senior berth at the World Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria, where she took home the silver medal in the 68-kg division.[5] On that same year, she became the first ever American to be named the Women's Wrestler of the Year by USA Wrestling because of her outstanding success to the sport in her major international debut.[6]

While competing internationally, Montgomery achieved four U.S. junior and senior national titles (2001–2004), and obtained two Pan American championship trophies in 2002 and 2003. She also captured the gold medal over Canada's Ohenewa Akuffo in the 72-kg division at the 2003 Pan American Games in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and then picked up her second silver at the World Championships in New York City, New York, falling short to Japanese wrestler and four-time defending champion Kyoko Hamaguchi by a 4–1 deficit.[7][8]

Montgomery qualified for the U.S. women's wrestling squad on her major debut in the women's 72 kg class at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. Earlier in the process, she won a silver medal at the World Championships, and then guaranteed her spot on the U.S. team by overwhelming her rival Kristie Marano from the Olympic Trials.[9][10] Montgomery suffered another defeat from her longtime rival Hamaguchi in the opening match with a tough 4–8 decision, but wrestled her way to pin Bulgaria's Stanka Zlateva within the halfway mark of the six-minute limit to close the prelim pool.[11] Despite missing a spot on the semifinals, Montgomery seized an opportunity to compete against Canadian wrestler and her former rival Christine Nordhagen in the classification match, but failed to overwhelm her for another time in the mat at 3–8, placing seventh in the final rankings.[12][13] As she left the Olympic Games empty-handed, Montgomery made an early retirement from competitive wrestling at the age of 21, and instead turned her focus to being part of the coaching staff in Cumberlands.

While attending the University of the Cumberlands, Montgomery helped build a women's wrestling program that had been immediately turned into one of the top sporting ventures in the United States. Because of her enormous contribution to the needs of the nation's college sport programs, she was promoted to a full-time position as a graduate assistant coach for the Cumberlands Patriots wrestling squad upon her early retirement from the sport in 2004. After officially receiving her master's degree in instructional leadership from the Cumberlands in 2009, Montgomery accepted a major offer from Lindenwood University in Saint Charles, Missouri to serve as the head coach for the Lindenwood Lions, making her the third American woman to do so on the women's college varsity wrestling squad.[2]