Charles Ariola threw a big fish in Teshya Alo’s small pond, and the phenom didn’t get eaten up.

Alo, a senior at Kamehameha and four-time state champion, will compete in the Olympic Trials in April in Iowa City, Iowa. To help her prepare, her coach flew in 23-year-old Chiho Hamada of Japan for a few days of workouts. Hamada is a 2014 world champion at 121 pounds and had much to share. Alo wrestles internationally at 128 pounds.

“She’s only been here for two days and already I have learned so much,” Alo said. “Three different moves on the ground I learned from her, three different leg laces that I can’t believe I didn’t know until now. I was like ‘What the heck?’”

Getting Hamada to tutor Alo wasn’t easy — the Japanese are renowned as the queens of women’s wrestling — but Ariola had the contacts needed to pull it off. He has hosted Japanese wrestlers before, and one of his friends knew Hamada’s mother — that sealed the deal.

“That’s why it is so hard to get them out here,” Ariola said. “They don’t show anything. Like us Americans, we show our moves to everyone else and everyone knows our stuff. They keep their stuff very secret and hush hush.”

After two days of knocking heads with a world champ and giving as much as she got, Alo feels refreshed for the journey ahead. She finished a media event at B.J. Penn’s UFC Gym in Honolulu on Thursday by asking Hamada for another workout, something to help her with her balance. Hamada immediately joined Alo in drills to improve her footwork.

So is Alo ahead of where Hamada was when she was a teenager? Alo, who considers negative thoughts her greatest weakness, offered up that she would “get beat up.”

Hamada, who was training three times a day six days a week back then in the country’s rigorous program, isn’t so sure.

“I don’t know if I would win, but I would fight to not lose,” Hamada said through an interpreter. “It is going to take her a lot of work. It’s not going to be that simple, but it is up to each individual and Teshya is headed that way.”

Alo is already on the U.S. Senior National team along with Roosevelt grad and Olympic medalist Clarissa Chun but will have to clear her bracket to punch her ticket to the big show at Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, this summer. She is currently behind Alli Ragan in the rankings and is looking forward to a rematch with one of the few women in the world who can boast a win over her. Ragan is 24 years old and has been on the National Team for three years now and doesn’t have the benefit of time that Alo does.

“I have a long history with all of them. I challenged everybody before, but there is one person in my mind I have to beat,” Alo said. “I don’t want to say her name out loud.”