Maui Style Wrestling began in the 1990s; now it has a pint-size Tulsa Nationals champion

Far away from home, at the Tulsa Nationals in Oklahoma on Jan. 19, third-grader Izabella Morikawa pinned Penelope Gamez of Arizona in 1 minute, 35 seconds.

With that victory in the finals of the 8-under girls 85-pound weight class, the pint-size Morikawa became the first competitor from Maui Wrestling Style to win a championship at the Tulsa Nationals, one of the sport’s most prestigious youth tournaments in the nation.

It was quite a feat. Maui Style Wrestling has been around since the 1990s. It was started by local high school coaches as a casual group of youth and high school wrestlers and over the past three decades had grown to 12 clubs and more than 400 wrestlers throughout Maui County.

But Maui Style Wrestling had never produced a champion at the Tulsa Nationals in Oklahoma until Morikawa, who attends Sacred Hearts School and is a member of the Nakamura Wrestling Club in Wailuku.

She won all three of her matches at the event by pin. Her first match lasted only 55 seconds and her semifinal match went 1:25.

Morikawa smiled when asked what the experience in Tulsa was like, saying: “It was cold and fun. There were big piles of snow all over the place.”

Morikawa has support from her family and a great teacher: Grant Nakamura, the head of the Nakamura Wrestling Club. He was the state champion at Baldwin High School in 2001, a three-time NCAA qualifier at Iowa State University and a U.S. Olympic trials competitor in 2008. He went 2-2 in the 2008 Olympic trials and then retired from the sport. One of his losses was to eventual 2008 Beijing Olympics gold medalist Henry Cejudo, 5-0. 

Nakamura returned to the mats competitively in 2022 at the masters level and in 2023 and 2024 he captured bronze medals at the Veterans World Championships.

The 41-year-old Nakamura gets on the mat with Morikawa, dueling and teaching her. He said he is impressed with what he sees from the 8-year-old.

“She’s doing great,” Nakamura said. “We’ve never had something like that on Maui. We’ve never had a kid win Tulsa. We’re not really too focused on it. I mean, we just want to make sure that she competes at her best and has fun.”

At the Tulsa Nationals, Evelyn Tauʻa, a 12-year-old, homeschooled sixth-grader and teammate of Morikawa at Nakamura Wrestling Club, also did well. She placed third in the girls 12-under, 120-pound weight class, which featured 16 wrestlers.

Morikawa lives in the Mahinahina area of West Maui and commutes to Central Maui five days a week with her father to practice at the Nakamura facility on Mill Street.

Morikawa has grown close with Tauʻa, saying: “She helped me a lot. Every time I lost a match (prior to Tulsa) she would comfort me until I kind of felt better. So, now, someday maybe I can go to the Olympics and win a gold medal.”

Tauʻa said she enjoys helping teammates, especially younger ones like Morikawa and Tau’a’s two younger sisters, who also made the trip to Tulsa.

“I always try to help them with technique because I’ve kind of been around a little bit longer than them,” Tauʻa said. “And then showing them how do the moves and in particular what the specific move is and what it can do to help them.”

When recalling the moment Morikawa stepped to the top of the podium to receive her gold medal, Tauʻa said: “I was so proud and so happy because that’s somebody from this little island, from our town going out and winning that big tournament with all those girls. It just makes me proud that we live here and we train together. From this little island, we can still win big things.”

Morikawa, who also practices jiu-jitsu and judo, has been wrestling for two years. She comes from an athletic family, said her father Randall Morikawa. His great-grandfather was a sumo wrestler in Japan and his nephew Lucas Tamayose is the wrestling coach at King Kekaulike High School. Randall Morikawa also is a second cousin to PGA Tour golfer Collin Morikawa, who has strong ties to Maui.

“The world today is different, so my kids need to protect themselves,” Randall Morikawa said of the decision to start Izabella in wrestling at the age of 6. “She has to take care of herself, but she loves wrestling. … Izabella surprised me because she is so focused. No electronics when we are at meets. When she is on the mat, all she does is look at her opponent.”

But he added: “Our main thing is homework. ”

Izabellla was quick to say “wrestling” when asked which sport she likes best: “I like it because jiu-jitsu is based on choking and judo is based on throwing. In wrestling, there’s different types of styles: freestyle, folk style, Greco (Roman). That’s why I like it.”

Izabella Morikawa won her division at the Tulsa Kickoff Classic in November with a pair of pins, in 33 seconds and 36 seconds. She can finish off a rare youth wrestling triple crown in April at the Reno Worlds in Nevada.

Nakamura said it helps for Morikawa to have a supportive father to drive her to practices and also be supportive in the gym.

“Izabella comes here with a good attitude, respects all the coaches and she listens,” Nakamura said. “She’s a great kid. She’s got a bright future.”

Nakamura is a lieutenant in the juvenile department for the Maui Police Department and sees the large value in the wrestling clubs.

Nakamura’s mother died when he was 15, and he said “wrestling saved my life, for sure. I could have definitely gone down the wrong path when my mom died.”

Nakamura now runs the largest club in Maui Style Wrestling with approximately 120 youngsters. He said wrestling can do the same for other youngsters that the sport did for him: “I’m very biased. Wrestling has done a lot for me and my family and my friends. If there’s a troubled teen out there that can get into sports, get into our gym, we offer scholarship programs all the time to help kids out.”

The 12 Maui Style Wrestling clubs are: Nakamura Wrestling, 4MG, 808 Wrestling, Hana Takedown Club, Lanaʻi Wrestling Club, Kihei Maulers, Molokaʻi ʻĀinapaʻa, Molokaʻi Takedown Club, Napili Surfriders, Lahaina Roughnecks, Upcountry and Haʻiku, a new team this year.

The 10-meet Maui Style Wrestling 2025 season, which carries a dues fee of just $25-$30 per wrestler to cover USA Wrestling sanctioning for insurance purposes, begins in March:

• March 29: South Maui Community Gymnasium, hosted by Kihei Maulers.
• April 5: Jojo Dickson’s fieldhouse in Kahului, hosted by Napili/Lahaina.
• April 12: tentatively hosted by Molokaʻi.
• April 19: Hana High School gym.
• April 26: South Maui Community Gym, hosted by 808 Wrestling.
• May 3: South Maui Community Gym, hosted by 4MG.
• May 10: State tournament, at South Maui Community Gym, host to be determined.
• May 10, 17, 24 and 31: freestyle tournaments, all at Old Wailuku Gym.

Mike Donahoo was the head coach at Baldwin and Lindsay Ball was the head coach at Maui High in the early 1990s when Maui Style Wrestling was born. It was a process that developed over time, but it got a big boost when the Hawai’i High School Athletic Association added girls wrestling in 1998.

Both were impressed when they heard of Morikawa’s breakthrough victory in Oklahoma.

“It’s great for Maui Style, Maui County and the state of Hawai’i because of those exposures,” Ball said. “That’s great for her individually, but it also is great for other future Maui Stylers as well.”

Ball said it shows Maui competitors are not walkovers. “That kid from Maui can wrestle. The kid from Hawai’i can wrestle. Because when we first started going to the mainland (in the 1990s), it was not easy for us.“

Seventy-year-old Donahoo, who still referees the sport, remembers when his son Mikey Donahoo started on the mats at age 5 and a group from Maui traveled to a tournament on Oʻahu as the birthday of Maui Style Wrestling.

“It was at McKinley High School and all of our kids competed barefoot,” Donahoo said. “I remember one of our guys had a Local Motion shirt on and they asked us what we wanted to be called because it was a club tournament. We said ‘Maui Style.’ Back then it was the state championships on Oʻahu, but now the state championships are held on Maui. That kind of shows how far we’ve come.”