Editor’s note: This month marks the 50th anniversary of Title IX. To commemorate this watershed event, the Star-Advertiser will publish a series of stories celebrating the achievements of female pioneers and leaders with Hawaii ties.
STORIES: June 23—Patsy Mink and Donnis Thompson. Upcoming—Patsy Dung, Deitre Collins.
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Clarissa Chun acknowledged luck and timing played a part in where she is today, but there is more to the story than that.
“For me, it was always striving to be my best. It was instilled by my parents at a young age that I shouldn’t start anything that I wouldn’t finish, and all they asked of me was to do my best,” she said in a Zoom interview. “They never put pressure on me to win or anything like that — that was me just putting it on myself to strive to get there.”
She’s gotten there — and beyond.
The Roosevelt High School graduate became a trailblazer for female wrestlers on many different levels.
She won a state wrestling title in 1998, the year Hawaii became the first state in the country to sanction girls high school wrestling as a sport. She also won the next year as a senior.
The 4-foot-11 dynamo parlayed her passion into a championship wrestling career, including winning four U.S. Open titles.
In 2012, the two-time Olympian won a bronze medal at the London Games, becoming the only Hawaii wrestler to win an Olympic medal.
Seven months ago, Chun was named the first coach of the University of Iowa women’s wrestling program.
Earlier this month, she reached the pinnacle, being inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Okla.
“When they said I was going to be inducted, I felt very honored that some people felt that I belong in the hall, because there are amazing athletes and coaches that are on the wall at the National Wrestling Hall of Fame,” she said.
“I never really looked at my career and stopped and appreciated it as much as I did that weekend,” she added. “Throughout my career, I always felt that I wish I did more as an athlete. I wish I made one more World team, one more World medal, one more Olympics. I think that’s just me wanting to do better and cement my career a little bit more.”
Chun’s career started on a different mat and in the water.
She grew up competing in club judo along with her older brother. She won five junior national championships as a judoka. Her first glimpse of wrestling occurred in the mid-1990s when she attended tournaments to support her male judo friends.
“That was the first time I saw girls wrestle, but they wrestled boys,” Chun said in an interview last year with the Star-Advertiser. “I didn’t think ‘I’m going to do that one day.’ I never thought that.”
She started out on the swim team her first two years of high school before joining the wrestling team her junior year.
“Some of the guys on the wrestling team who have done judo would be like, ‘Clarissa, you should really wrestle,’” Chun said.
The transition was seamless, as Chun used her judo technique to help her win the 1998 state title. The next year, along with another state title, she placed third in the United States Girls Wrestling Association High School Nationals.
“Clarissa had to create a path for herself,” Joel Kawachi said.
Kawachi, who coached Moanalua to three consecutive state titles (1999-2001) in girls wrestling, remembered Chun and wrestlers from other schools tagging along with his and Reggie Torres’ team from Kahuku to the national tournaments on the mainland.
“(Moanalua) was successful as far as numbers in a growing sport, but Roosevelt didn’t,” he further explained. “We really enjoyed having her. She’s just always a positive personality, and awesome to be around.”
Chun said Roosevelt had just one other girls wrestler but she competed in a different weight class. Her high school coach told her that she could “’wrestle off for the boys 103-pound spot if you want.’ So I did. I wrestled boys in a dual meet and whenever there was a tournament, then I would wrestle girls in 98 pounds.”
Today, Chun has transitioned into coaching wrestling. In November, she was named the women’s wrestling coach at Iowa, which was her dream college coming out of high school.
In her office in Iowa City, Chun has a framed document from the Hawaii State Senate in 1999, congratulating her for her aforementioned accomplishments. She summarized the last paragraph, which stated that she planned on attending the University of Iowa to major in communications and pursue her wrestling career at the NCAA level.
Iowa did not have a women’s wrestling team at the time, but its men’s team dominated college wrestling in the 1990s, when it won eight of its 24 national championships.
“I applied, just thinking, ‘Maybe I’ll be a manager, maybe they’ll give me a place on the mat to practice,’ even though I knew there probably wouldn’t have been any chance,” she said. “Wrestling wasn’t accepted to that capacity in the late ’90s/early 2000s.
“I think that was my lack of understanding of what it meant that Hawaii was the first state to sanction girls wrestling as a high school sport,” Chun added. “I knew that other states didn’t, but I don’t think I understood what that really meant as far as opportunities and where the sport was at that moment.”
Chun attended Missouri Valley College instead, where she was a member of one of the first collegiate women’s wrestling teams in the United States and won two University Nationals championships before accepting an invite to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Twenty-two years after she applied to Iowa, the school added women’s wrestling to its intercollegiate athletics program, becoming the first Power 5 school to offer the sport. Iowa hired Chun two months later to be its first head coach.
“It’s exciting because now, these young girls feel like they could have some equitable opportunities,” she said about the milestone. “Up until this year, the programs that offered women’s wrestling were smaller schools, private schools, NAIA or Division II/Division III schools, and maybe some student-athletes want to study something specific that a private school doesn’t offer.”
Hawkeyes women’s wrestling won’t begin until the 2023-24 school year, but its wrestlers, who will be redshirting this year, are allowed to compete this year as independents. They’ve announced the official signing of 11 wrestlers so far, including Makawao native and four-time Hawaii state champion Nanea Estrella, who wrestled for Lahainaluna High School.
Most Division I coaches have a roster to work with when they’re hired to be a program’s coach. Being the first coach of a program meant Chun was tasked with building a roster from scratch while following Division I recruiting rules to remain NCAA compliant. Now, she is in the process of determining how she’ll distribute scholarships.
One thing Chun has known from when she was hired is the culture she wants to establish for the program.
“I like that competitive team atmosphere, meaning they’re going to compete for each other,” she said. “Wrestling sometimes feels like an individual sport because you’re on the mat against someone else. It takes a team to get there because you train together, you push each other, and you raise each other up. The expectations are to work harder for each other.”
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Clarissa Chun
Wrestling champion, current Iowa women’s wrestling coach
Education: Roosevelt High School, Missouri Valley College, University of Colorado Colorado Springs
High school career:
Two-time Hawaii state champion (1998, 1999) … first girls’ wrestling state champion in Hawaii, because the weight class she was in was the first final to take place in 1998 … finished third in 1999 United States Girls Wrestling Association High School Nationals … five junior national championships in judo
Post high school wrestling career:
Qualified for the 2008 and 2012 Olympics … first wrestler from Hawaii to qualify for the Olympics … finished fifth in Beijing in 2008 … bronze medalist at the 2012 London Olympics. …four-time U.S. Open champion … 2008 World Championship gold medalist … four-time Pan American champion … two-time University Nationals champion
