When the Olympics open in July, a group of teenagers from the Lincoln Park-De Paul area will crowd around the TV with an extra reason to cheer: One of their own will be competing.
She’s Hillary Wolf, 19, and is ranked the No. 5 woman’s judo wrestler in the world in her 120-pound weight class.
Wolf, who graduated last June from Chicago’s Francis W. Parker School, is currently in Colorado Springs, where she’s training day and night, six days a week, for her expected faceoff with the Japanese and Cubans, who rule the judo universe.
“It’s pretty intense right now,” says Wolf, who qualified for the big dance in January by having the most points in world competition and defeating her top American competitors. “It was an amazing feeling qualifying,” she notes, “but it wore off fast. Making the team is one thing. Training for a win is another.”
The grind is actually a comparative vacation for Wolf, who began her days in high school at 5 a.m., driving with her mother to the Gaulter Life Center, at Foster and Francisco Avenues, where she’d work out until it was time for school at 8:15. At 3:30 p.m. she’d go to a gym at Barry and Sheffield Avenues and run on a treadmill till dinner, after which her father drove her to Buffalo Grove for judo.
All that and schoolwork she managed around a movie career. She’s been in a number of films, including both “Home Alone” flicks.
“People ask us how we could let her do all that,” says her mother, real estate dealer Marilyn Wolf. “But there’s no stopping her. I can’t believe she’s my daughter.”
The Wolfs realized early on that Hillary was a gifted athlete. She got into judo because of her older brother, but soon surpassed him. She was the first American ever to be junior world champion, and at 14 she became the youngest ever Senior National champ.
But now she has Atlanta on her mind and a Cuban competitor who leads the world rankings right now.
“She beat me once before,” says Wolf, with quiet menace. “But I’ve improved a lot since then.”
I’d hate to be the one to test her.
