By: Aliocha Perriard-Abdoh
On August 23, SFU’s Justina Di Stasio took the world stage in Paris to compete in the World Championships for wrestling. Her efforts won her the bronze medal, an exciting accomplishment for both her and SFU’s wrestling program.
Di Stasio’s first two matches proved to be a breeze as she dominated her opponents with strength and fitness. She clenched a victory over India’s wrestler, Pooja Pooja with a 7–0 finish, before defeating Moldova’s Svetlana Saenko with a 10–0 technical win. Di Stasio commented that she was confident from the beginning for both of her first two matches, which she attributed to her strength and conditioning coach.
Di Stasio then lost her third match to Vasilisa Marzaliuk from Belarus. Reflecting on the day now, Di Stasio comments that “[she] stayed in the ties way too long, and gave up a big four in the second round off of a mistake [she] made.” The loss was shattering to Di Stasio as it made it impossible for her to achieve her goal of winning a gold medal at the World Championships.
“I had it written on my wall next to my bed at home and in my journal that I was going to be a world champ, and I said I was going to, and for the first time I believed that I could do this, and then I didn’t.”
Coming back from her loss, Di Stasio had two more opponents to face on her way to a bronze medal. “I just told myself I would do anything to win. I was nervous in the first one and the score was very close, 6–4 [against Aiperi Kyzy from Kyrgyzstan]. I played super defensive once I had the lead.”
The win over Kyrgyzstan put Di Stasio in the bronze medal final. She says that it was probably the coolest match she’d ever wrestled in terms of atmosphere, but also very uneventful as nothing happened until Di Stasio hit her opponent with a ‘pancake.’
“While we were lying there and I was trying to pin her all I could think was ‘please call the pin’ . . . and then the ref called it and I have never jumped up like that or been so excited to place third, but I think I just felt really proud of everything everyone helped me do actually paying off.”
Leading up to the big day, Justina Di Stasio wrestled mostly with the boys which was something that challenged her both physically and mentally.
“I think the goal was to make practices harder than the tournament, and I definitely felt the level of conditioning I needed to make it through a practice with boys compared to girls.”
And it’s not because the girls at SFU can’t wrestle, on the contrary. We’ve had many talented women come out of the training room here at Simon Fraser. Women like Carol Huynh, Helen Maroulis, and Danielle Lappage. All three competed at the Olympics and won World medals for both Canada and the United States (Maroulis). However, for Di Stasio, it was important for her to find opponents in practice who would be just as big and strong as she is. Di Stasio competes in the 75 kg weight class.
It was also very hard on her mentally, she recalls one week in particular.
“There was one week where I think I scored a total of only six points in three full on live practices, and to make that week feel like a positive and [like] I had actually gained something from it was quite a challenge for me.”
“I tried to keep telling myself that how hard it was every day at practice would match the World Championships . . . this really helped me. I also complained like crazy to anyone who would listen, and everyone was so positive, like coaches, teammates, and my family, telling me I was going to be OK.”
Di Stasio is also a student in SFU’s PDP program of which she has only one semester left to complete. She notes that balancing the program with wrestling can be a challenge, but it’s also very rewarding.
It isn’t common for SFU’s wrestlers to compete in front of the home crowd very often, yet Di Stasio’s next tournament will be the Commonwealth Games trials here at SFU in October. Di Stasio will be hoping to use the games as an opportunity to earn a spot on the World Cup Team.
Aliocha is a teammate of Justina’s on the women’s wrestling team
