Tina George

Tina George is a Cleveland native. She began wrestling in 1996, her junior year at Cleveland Heights High School, and made the boys varsity team at 125 pounds. She won two matches that season. She attended the University of Minnesota Morris for two years, then moved to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to train.

She joined the U.S. Army in October 2001, spent nearly a year off the mat for basic and advanced training, and then trained with the Army's World Class Athlete Program. In July 2002 she beat Stephanie Murata to win the U.S. World Team Trials in Minneapolis. At the 2002 World Championships in Greece she reached the final at 55 kg, about 121 pounds, and lost to Saori Yoshida of Japan. The Army named her its 2002 Female Athlete of the Year.

In August 2003 she won the Pan American Games title in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. She beat Sandra Roa of Guatemala and Marcia Andrades of Venezuela and beat Tonya Verbeek of Canada twice, 4-3 in the final. In September she reached the World final again, at Madison Square Garden in New York, and again lost to Yoshida.

In October 2003 she wrestled on the U.S. team that beat Japan 14-13 for the Women's World Cup title in Tokyo. In 2006 she took bronze at the U.S. Nationals in April. In June she beat national champion Sharon Jacobson of the Gator Wrestling Club in two straight matches at the World Team Trials in Colorado Springs, making her seventh U.S. World Team.

Her Santo Domingo title is one of four gold medals, a U.S. sweep, from the first women's wrestling tournament the Pan American Games held.