Monday Morning MIL: Wrestler Nanea Estrella sets sights on Olympics, world team, after third-place finish at women’s collegiate nationals

Decorated Lahainaluna wrestler Nanea Estrella’s college career may be over, but she’s far from done with the sport that she’s dominated since she was a Luna.

The University of Iowa senior is setting her sights on the Olympics and world team berths after finishing third in the National Collegiate Wrestling Championships in Coralville, Iowa, on March 8.

Estrella — arguably the most successful wrestler to graduate from a school in the history of the Maui Interscholastic League, male or female — is not used to finishing anywhere below the top of the podium, but the satisfaction shone brightly on her face as she held her trophy after the first fully healthy season of her college career.

Estrella, a four-time state champion for Lahainaluna High School from 2017-20, finished 30-3 on the season in the 138-pound weight class, but the main story was that she finished a complete season after injuries shortened three of her previous seasons in collegiate wrestling.

“I’m extremely proud of myself, ever since I started college I’ve had not the best or easiest go at it,” Estrella said via phone on Friday. “Every year around season time, I’ve gotten really bad injuries.”

Estrella’s first year in college was wiped out by COVID-19 in 2020-21 at Menlo (Calif.) College. During her official freshman eligibility season in 2021-22 at Menlo she finished as runner-up at 130 pounds at the NAIA national championship meet despite a shortened season due to tearing her Lisfranc ligament in her right foot in the summer prior to the season.

After transferring to Iowa in the fall of 2022 to compete for coach Clarissa Chun, an Olympic bronze medalist from Roosevelt High School on O‘ahu, Estrella suffered a severe concussion that ended her first season in Iowa City.

“I got a concussion with a convergence deficiency and I had to go to vestibular therapy, so basically I lost vision — I was able to see, but I lost the ability to focus my eyes. And that took me several months to recover,” she said. 

Vestibular therapy is a specialized form of physical therapy designed to address balance and dizziness issues that can occur after a concussion.

In the 2023-24 season, she was able to wrestle the beginning of the year and then in a tournament in December 2023 she tore the Lisfranc ligament in her left foot, an injury that cost her the rest of last season.

“In the middle of a match my foot dislocated and tore my Lisfranc ligament in my left foot, so on both feet my Lisfranc ligament has been torn,” Estrella said. “It’s extremely rare. The doctors were joking that they were going to do a case study on me.”

Each of the foot injuries required surgeries and the concussion recovery was arduous, but she has never wavered.

“I had to deal with being almost great and then immediately shutting down because my body just gave out on me,” Estrella said. “So to be able to work through what I’ve worked through and to go through all that I had to get to my senior season — including a transfer, including all the emotional sides of everything — to get to my senior season and have a whole season healthy and successful. Not even a year ago I wasn’t able to walk. 

“I’m very proud of myself and I’m hopeful for the future because I know how far I’ve come in a year and how far I have to go.”

Estrella has more in mind on the mats before she plans to move home to Maui to use the marketing degree she will finish in May.

“My ultimate goal is to be a world champion and to place at the Olympics,” Estrella said. “I 1,000% would love to win. I would love to do that, but my goal is just to take wrestling as far as I can go. I’m striving to win, I’m striving to be an Olympic champion.”

To get to the Olympics, which will next be held in Los Angeles in 2028, Estrella would have to do well in tournaments like the U.S. Open and Senior Nationals to qualify for the Olympic trials, which she has a good shot to do if she stays healthy. She would then have to win the trials tournament to make the U.S. team. The Olympics allow only one wrestler per weight class per country. There are only six weight classes and one style — freestyle — for women in the Olympics.

Estrella plans to compete in the U.S. Open in Las Vegas, Nevada, April 24-26. She has several options to continue her career, including staying in Iowa City, perhaps as a graduate assistant working with the team she just helped to a second straight national team championship. 

Iowa was the first women’s wrestling program from an NCAA power conference. Out of seven recruits in Chun’s first recruiting class in 2022, Estrella was the first from Hawai’i.

Estrella was one of 15 Hawkeyes to place in the national championship meet. Her decorated career also includes the Tricia Saunders High School Excellence Award in May 2020, an honor from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame & Museum; a 2020 junior national championship; a gold medal at the under-20 Pan-American Games in 2022; a berth in senior nationals at 59 kilograms in 2022; and three straight years of being ranked in the top 10 nationally in high school.

“They deal with a lot of pressures, and we do a great job being able to manage such vigorous schedules, academic schedules, alongside the training schedule,” Chun said on the University of Iowa athletic website. “They’re amazing, and they really all do love each other so much. We lift each other up and push each other forward, and I’m just so grateful for this team.”

After losing a tough 8-7 decision in the national quarterfinals, Estrella won four more matches to help the team to the victory with a 6-1 record at the tournament. She scored the most total match points in the national tournament, with 70.

None of that surprised her coaches and fans on Maui. Zane Monteleone coached her in high school and traveled to the national meet to watch her final go-round as a Hawkeye. Monteleone moved to Na‘alehu, Hawai‘i, last spring to open a new restaurant called Hana Hou. Estrella listed several coaches from Maui as having big, positive effects on her path, including Lahainaluna coaches Shane Cunanan and Todd Hayase, and Baldwin High School coach Grant Nakamura.

Monteleone got to know Estrella and her brother Kainalu well when they left the Lahainaluna boarding department to stay with him and his wife Cynthia five days a week. He said that “watching her compete for me was one of those life achievements.”

“For her, overcoming going from Menlo to the big leagues, winning all the accolades she’s got, I saw so much emotion from her with her team, it seems like she’s very centered,” he said. “It’s a really good bond they have at that high level of wrestling. They’ve got Olympic medalists, all kinds of world champs, and she’s right there with the best of best.” 

Monteleone did not hesitate when asked where Estrella can get to with a healthy physical base, which is still being built back up after all the setbacks.

“The fact that she came from our little Maui County, Maui Style Wrestling community, is so, so, so big,” Monteleone said. “And rewarding for Lahaina, too, that she set such a huge example for all these younger generations that are looking at the sport. When she’s home she’s really one of those people that is with the kids for every minute that she has to spare.”

“Monday Morning MIL” columns appear weekly on Monday mornings with updates on local sports in the Maui Interscholastic League and elsewhere around Maui County. Please send column ideas — anything having to do with sports in Maui County — as well as results and photos to rob@hjinow.org.