The stories of Miranda and other elite American woman wrestlers have been chronicled in newspapers, magazines, wire services and online publications.

Miranda, who first became "excited and challenged" by the sport as a Redwood Middle School eighth-grader, worked through years of mental and physical challenges as the only female wrestler competing for Saratoga High School and Stanford University.

Now, at age 25, she has a serious chance to win the first gold medal in the newest Olympic sport.

"Competing in the Olympics is an amazing opportunity," Miranda said during a recent phone conversation from the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. "I can't believe I'm in this position.

"This is an exciting time for women's wrestling."

Gone are the days of putting up with taunts from teammates and opponents alike. No longer is Miranda referred to as "a joke," as she was in the 11th grade by a heckling spectator in the bleachers.

"That was the most scarring thing that happened during my junior year," Miranda said. "That hurt, but probably helped my decision to never quit."

The 1997 Saratoga graduate is one of 13 contenders in the 48-kilogram (105.5-pound) weight class, the lightest of the four categories to be contested this month at the Summer Games in Athens.

The 48-kilo championship will be the first Olympic women's wrestling title to be determined on Aug. 23. Weigh-ins are set for Aug. 21, and the competition is slated to begin the next day.

Highlights of each day's competition will be televised by MSNBC. The gold-medal bouts will be aired sometime between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. (PDT) on Aug. 23.

Miranda claimed her position on the U.S. team by defeating Clarissa Chun by scores of 6-3 and 10-0 in a best-of-three finals at the U.S. Olympic Trials held in May in Indianapolis, Ind.

And, since the U.S. team was finalized at the trials, the attention around the four team members has heightened. Even NBC's Today show came calling.

The team made an appearance on Today in late June. Considered "most articulate" by her teammates, Miranda was the team spokeswoman. She was interviewed by the show's hosts while teammates Tela O'Donnell, Sara McMann and Toccara Montgomery demonstrated wrestling techniques. Miranda explained some history of the sport and details about the team and its goals.

Miranda enjoyed the TV experience as an ambassador for her sport.

"For years women have been pushing for acceptance in this sport," Miranda said. "We are reaping the spoils to be able to step out there. My big investment into the sport seems to be paying me back."

Miranda certainly has earned every accolade she has received, as her first nine years of wrestling included few all-female competitions while at Stanford and none in high school.

She remembers winning about half of her matches during her last two years of high school, while under the tutelage of coaches Lloyd Asato and Ryan Bocks. She placed fourth in her league championship meet during her senior year.

Winning in college, however, was a different story.

"Just competing in practice was the goal most of the time," Miranda recalled. She was a "walk-on" for coach Chris Horpel and, later, Steve Buddie, competing against mostly scholarship athletes. They were bigger, stronger and technically more skilled than the competitors were in high school.

At 5 feet tall and a natural weight of 110 pounds, Miranda was trying to crack a Division I college lineup that's lightest weight class was 125. The discrepancies of size and strength always have been concerns with her high school and college coaches and her father, Dr. Jose Miranda, a Saratoga resident.

Years of hard work

Miranda invested hours upon hours of hard work, physically and mentally, in order to compete against her male opponents.

"Leaving a three-hour practice without scoring a point--many times--and not knowing when I would get into a match," Miranda admitted, "that was tough."

How come she just didn't quit? What kept her going?

Much of Miranda's character started to take shape as a 10-year-old dealing with the sudden, surprising death of her mother, Lia. Six years later, Miranda shared some of her ideals in an interview with the Saratoga News.

"My mom thought that whatever you do, do it well," Miranda, then 16, said in the 1996 interview. "I want to look back and have no regrets. If I try and fail, I can live with that."

Always a good student of her sport, Miranda took the words of her high school coach to heart when he said that "having tenacity" is a trait of a good wrestler.

Miranda's tenacity was obvious in her work ethic.

"I kept working at getting better technically and stronger," she said. "Outworking them was the only way I was going to be able to wrestle. I learned great positioning, so I wouldn't get squashed by some big guy."

After two years of "outworking" the guys, the guys began to realize that Miranda was a serious competitor.

In addition to her studies at Stanford, which gave her life outside of wrestling, she met a friend in teammate Levi Weikel-Magden. Coached by his father at an Oregon high school, Weikel-Magden entered the Stanford wrestling program at the same time Miranda did.

Weikel-Magden finished his career as a 157-pounder, but he entered college closer to 125, the same as Miranda. The two often competed against each other in practice and often advised each other on strategy and technique.

"Levi was a big influence and still is," Miranda said. "He has known me for seven years. He's been with me from the beginning. He coached me through college and is with me here (in Colorado Springs).

"He is my emotional coach."

Meanwhile, during the Stanford off-seasons, she was cashing in the experience for some success in women's competition.

She was the silver medalist at the 2000 world championships and placed third in the 2001 National Open. She was first alternate on the 2001 World Team.

As she began her fifth season, including a redshirt year, Miranda still had not won a match.

Her profile printed in Stanford's 2002 media guide read, in part, "Patricia seeks her first collegiate victory in the men's division, but in women's freestyle, she remains one of America's best female wrestlers."

"It really was a mental challenge, dealing with that fact," she confessed. "Each day I would have to make a small goal for myself, like getting one takedown."

Miranda started the season fourth on the depth chart, but cracked the lineup when the three men ahead of her for various reasons were unable to compete. She finished the season 3-13, including 1-7 in league matches. She was proud not to have been pinned in any of her losses.

During the year, she pinned a woman in a tournament, won a league match by default, and--finally it happened--won a decision against a man.

"The first and only college match I won was in Reno," Miranda said. "It was very satisfying. I finally put together seven minutes of wrestling good enough to win. It ended four years of losing--a major milestone. It validated what I was doing."

The year 2002 indeed was a watershed year for Miranda's wrestling career. Not only did she get her long sought-after victory in the men's division, the IOC accepted women's wrestling as a sport.

"I was finishing my college career when I heard about it," Miranda remembered. "I went from wrestling men, with people just assuming I would lose, to wrestling only women with me expecting myself to win."

But she takes nobody for granted.

"I don't have that weakness," Miranda said. "College taught me to never underestimate anyone. Usually I give people too much credit."

Yale will have to wait

After earning Stanford degrees in economics and international policy, Miranda was accepted to Yale Law School. She then gained a deferment of enrollment until this fall, after the Olympics.

She next moved to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs with the rest of the national team. She began competing with women and training in earnest to gain a spot on the Olympic team.

"I began training like a mad person," Miranda said. "It was a two-year sprint, giving everything I have to get as good as I could get."

During that concentrated stretch of training and competition, Miranda captured three straight U.S. championships. The most recent was in Las Vegas, Nev., a month before the Olympic Trials.

But it has been a dominant run through international competition that has made her a strong contender for Olympic gold. She closed out 2002 by winning three international competitions. Last year she was the 48-kilo champion in seven of 10 international events, including the Pan Am Games and the World Cup.

"All of us won gold medals at the Pan Am Games," Miranda exclaimed about herself and her three teammates. "That is one of my fondest memories so far in my career."

At the World Cup event, held last October in Tokyo, Miranda won all six of her bouts and earned the Outstanding Wrestler title.

Her performance in Tokyo was salve on a wound opened up in the final bout of the World Championships a month earlier at New York's Madison Square Garden. She was leading Irena Merlini of the Ukraine 3-1, but lost 5-4.

"It tore me up," she said, remembering the bout as if it were yesterday. "It was a painful loss. Right away I was trying to figure out how to improve."

While Weikel-Magden is Miranda's "emotional coach," she credits much of her success to Terry Steiner, her technical coach.

"The appointment of Terry Steiner as national coach really has helped," Miranda said.

Steiner, a three-time college All-American at Iowa, took the job, in part, because of a conversation with Miranda. She explained to him that she was putting off law school until after the Athens Olympics.

"I got a sense of her commitment for the sport," Steiner said after taking the job. "I realized that these women are every bit as into it as I ever was when I competed."

"With a lot of traveling, you need patience," Miranda said. "You learn to be mellow in these situations."

Miranda remembers one tournament when "nobody came to meet us. Nobody knew we were coming." Another time, in Kiev, Ukraine, "everything seemed to go wrong, including not being able to find toilet paper."

One of the more enjoyable wrestling travels was "believe it or not, going to Siberia--4,000 miles east of Moscow. It was neat. The stands were packed and they cheered for you. Wrestling is the national sport there."

An early challenge Miranda faced was at home, getting her father to allow her to wrestle. Jose Miranda tried to discourage Patricia and threaten Saratoga High officials, but eventually relented and tolerated the activity as long as she maintained an "A" average.

Of course, determined to do whatever it took to keep wrestling, she kept up her end of the bargain. She was an honors student at Saratoga and finished with a 4.1 grade point average (including advanced placement courses).

Jose Miranda plans to travel to Athens to watch his daughter compete, Patricia said.

Her mental toughness

"Me being on the Olympic team is symbolic for my father," said Miranda, whose toughness may be hereditary.

Her parents were student leaders during the revolt against the Brazilian government in the 1970s. Eventually, Jose and Lia Miranda found refuge in Canada, before settling in Saratoga.

Patricia's toughness began to shine through after getting "excited" in eighth grade "about the mental and physical engagement" of wrestling. She was so eager to learn more that she called the high school coach, Lloyd Asato, and asked to work out in the summer with the team.

"He probably did the best thing for me. He encouraged me, but he didn't protect me. He warned me that I would have some opposition."

And there was.

"Older wrestlers saying mean things, trying to beat me down mentally," Miranda remembered. "That was really the worst thing they could do--it made me even more determined.

"In my first year I made a goal to be captain in my junior and senior year, and it came true."

Over the years, during the many hours of practice, many questions have weighed on her mind.

"I'd say to myself, 'Am I delusional?' or 'What am I doing?' " she explained. "But I loved wrestling. It was something I had to work at. It never had anything to do with gender. It gave me such an adrenaline rush.

"Wrestling helped me figure myself out."

And the sport is constantly providing her with new challenges.

"Challenging situations keep popping up," Miranda said. "There's always something else for me to do or try to fix. I have learned to deal with challenges by setting goals, sometimes small so I can hit them."

Since her defeat last September in the World finals, Miranda's efforts have been directed at the ultimate goal of winning Olympic gold.

Miranda and her teammates, coming off a challenging month of "very intense" training in Colorado Springs, left on Aug. 8 for Greece.

No matter the Olympic outcome in Athens, Miranda will leave the sport behind and move on to law school at Yale without regret.