mschifarticle

       Rachel Donaldson was perched in the corner of a wrestling ring in a steamy St. Louis warehouse. A tall, muscular young woman climbed onto her shoulders, straddled her head and flipped her onto the mat.
       Rachel landed flat on her back with a metallic bang, loud enough to make onlookers cringe. She seemed dazed for second but quickly rose to her feet, ready for more abuse.
       "That's a move you don't want to practifce a lot," said Dan Velten of St. Louis, a professional wrestler who was helping the women train for their next match. "The risk is so great, and the toll it takes on your body...You need to save it for the shows."
        In wrestling circles, the move is known as a hurricarana. The women also worked on powerslams, drop kicks, clotheslines and monkeyflips on a recent Thursday night.
        Rachel, of Belleville, is a 1993 graduate of Belleville Township High School East. She works as a genetic researcher at Washington University in St. Louis and teaches at Adam's School of Dance in
O' Fallon.
        Rachel also is one of the newest members of Gateway Champioship Wrestling, a St. Louis-based group that hosts professional wrestling matches throughout the region and broadcasts shows on local cable televsion.
         "I've been a wrestling fan since I was a kid," Rachel said. I can remember going to Grandpa's house on weekends and watching "Wrestling at the Chase. I loved it."
           Rachel is no hulk, standing 5-foot-5 and weighing in at 155 pounds. But her backgorund in dance and martial arts has helped her meet the physical demands of wrestling.
           Rachel's stage name is MsChif, a play on the word mischief. She won her first match July 19, an outdoor spectale at the Jefferson County Fair in Hillsboro, MO.
            "It was great," Rachel said. "It was awesome. My character is a 'heel,' so my job is to go out there and make the crowd as mad as I possibly can."
             That include harrassing her arch enemy Christine Van Horn of Florissant, a "baby face" who uses her real name in the ring. She's the only other female member of Gateway.
              Rachel bolsters her dark image with a simple outfit: a black leotard and tights with silver studs. She wears heavy eye makeup and dyes her long, brown hair with black and green stripes.
              "She's a natural entertainer," said Gateway wrestler Ben Oliver. "She goes out there and screams and yells and fights with the crowd. Some people, you you have to tell them to do that. But not her.
             "You can teach wrestlers the moves and train them how to do spots," Ben said. "But they've got to entertain people. That's a part of wrestling these days."
             GCW has about 30 members who perform 25 to 30 shows a year in armories, schools and banquet halls with high ceilings.
Gateway members range from 19 to 37 with a variety of occupations. Christine is a college student and a sales clerk at a Dillard's department store.
             Rachel earned a bachelor's degree in zoology at SIU-Carbondale and worked in a molecular biology lab before getting a job at Washington University two years ago.
             Rachel and her colleagues are doing research that "will tell us how to target genes for complex diseases, like diabetes, schizophrenia, alcoholism and heart disease," she said. "It should help the pharmaceutical industry develop medications to treat the diseases."
             Rachel always has been athletic. She started taking dance lessons at 2 and continued for 15 years. Today, she teaches ballet, tap, jazz, pompom and acrobatics at Adam's School of Dance.
             Rachel's other interest as a youth was professional wrestling. After watching it on television, she started going to Kiel Auditorium (now Savvis Center) in St. Louis to watch live matches of the WWF.
             "They are incredibly exciting," Rachel said. "You have 18,000 people that are screaming at the top of their lungs for their favorite wrestler. It's just a very loud and wild atmosphere."
             Rachel's early heroes included Bruiser Brody,a brutal character who was fatally stabbed in the late-80's, and the Undertaker. Today, her favorite wrestler is a no-nonsense heel known as Triple H.
             Rachel joined GCW about two months ago. Her husband, Todd, works security for the group, keeping excited, sometimes angry, fans away from the wrestlers.
              "I have yet to have a problem," Todd said. "But I've seen it on TV. It can happen. You never know how many drinks somebody has before they come into a show."
              Todd has considered taking up profesional wrestling, but he's nursing an injured back at the moment. Instead, he watches his wife in the ring.
              "It's fine," Todd said. 'I'm cool with it. She does what she wants...I think it's pretty neat that she's trying to do something liek this. She's not out here about T & A ad all that garbage, and that's all over in mainstream wrestling.
               "She wants to learn and know the moves and get respect that way. She's taking the bumps just like the guys are. They're not being soft on her, and that's good."

LET'S RUMBLE!!!

Gentle genectic researcher gets into mischief inside the wrestling ring

By Teri Maddox
Belleville News-Democrat

Excerpt taken from Belleville News-Democrat (IL) article, Sunday, August 19, 2001
Copyright @2001 Belleville News-Democrat www.bdm.com