Clarissa Chun

Occupation: Women’s wrestling head coach at the University of Iowa
What school you grad? Roosevelt High ‘99
College: Missouri Valley College, University of Colorado Colorado Springs
Location: Iowa City, IA

A two-time Olympian, Roosevelt High School graduate Clarissa Chun won a bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics and a world championship title in 2008 in Tokyo, becoming one of the most accomplished U.S. women’s wrestlers and the first Olympian from Hawai‘i to medal in wrestling. After a decorated 18-year career in competitive wrestling, which includes five U.S. Open titles and four Pan American Championship gold medals, she became a leader in the sport. In 2017, she spent four years as an assistant coach with Team USA Wrestling’s women’s national team. During that time, she helped guide the team to 17 World Championship medals—seven gold, four silver, and six bronze—along with four Olympic medals, including a gold. In Sept. 2021, the University of Iowa became the first-ever NCAA Division I Power Five school to add women’s wrestling as a sport and tapped Chun to lead the new program.

As a high school junior, Chun was Hawai’i’s first high school state champion in 1998, the year that Hawai‘i became the first state in the country to sanction girls high school wrestling as a sport—and won it again the following year. She was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as a Distinguished Member in 2022, becoming just the fourth woman to receive the honor. She is also a member of the Missouri Valley College Hall of Fame, the National High School Hall of Fame, the Hawai‘i Sports Hall of Fame and the Roosevelt High School Hall of Fame. She attended Hongwanji Mission School, Kawānanakoa Middle School and Roosevelt High School.

Q: What was your journey like after high school?
A: I went to Missouri Valley College, it’s in a small town of Marshall, Missouri about an hour and a half from Kansas City. It was a culture shock for me, going from Hawaii and going to Missouri. I spent three years there and then transferred to University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) in 2002 because that’s when the International Olympic Committee recognized women’s wrestling to be in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. So I trained at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and finished my undergrad at UCCS. I spent almost two decades there and I spent time back in Missouri helping the men’s program at Mizzou and West Virginia and then back to Colorado and now to Iowa. So the end of my athletic career and the start of my coaching career took me all around the country. 

Q: Why did you choose this career path and what do you enjoy most about it?
A: Meeting people. Whether it’s from across the country, across the world, or coming back home and meeting the younger generation—just connecting with people. I tell my student-athletes all the time that this is bigger than sports. The people you meet and the memories you make along the way are more valuable experiences. Connecting with others and sharing experiences are memories that can last a lifetime. 

Q: What makes you #PublicSchoolProud?
A: We have great education in public school systems. For me, every experience that I had at Roosevelt has been a positive one. I feel grateful for the time that I’ve had at Roosevelt and I am proud to be a Rough Rider. I feel that there are so many people who say they would never want to go back to their high school days, but that’s not how I feel about my time at Roosevelt. I’ve had such a great experience with my friends, my peers, teachers, security guards, administration. I just felt that Roosevelt created an environment where I could thrive and find my best self there. They all challenged me as a student and athlete to bring out my best version of myself and I’m proud to be a part of the public school system. 

Q: Name of a teacher or mentor you’d like to thank?
A: My guidance counselor, Dayna Kaneshiro, and my oral interpretation English teacher, Lori Hamel. I feel like they’ve helped me in so many ways in my high school life as far as just being there to sit and talk through things. I’d also like to thank my history teacher Ms. Dudoit. She took a group of us to Washington, D.C., and got us traveling, understanding the government and life experiences. I feel like those were big impact opportunities of learning and growing and direction of where to go next in life. My Japanese teacher, Ms. Fujinaka, she was really strict and really hard and I absolutely hated it but it was one of those things that really challenged me and when you’re in it, you’re wondering why. But looking back at it now, it was all to challenge me and grow and to not to take the easy road.  

Q: Favorite subject in school?
A: The sciences. I really do think that having a good teacher makes the learning experience more enjoyable and I had really good biology and chemistry teachers. I also had a really great leadership teacher, so those were my favorite subjects.

Q: What type of extracurricular activities were you involved in?
A: I did bowling and swimming my freshman and sophomore year and wrestling my junior and senior year, and judo for all four years.

Q: Hawai‘i became the first U.S. state to sanction high school girls’ wrestling in 1998. What was it like to be a part of the inaugural season?
A: I tried out for wrestling my junior year in high school. As a junior in high school, I didn’t really know what it meant that Hawai‘i was the first to sanction the sport, just that I got to compete against other girls. Before that, we would compete against the boys. Even then, when the state tournament happened, I didn’t really understand what sanctioning girls wrestling as a high school sport really meant. I didn’t think that the rest of the country wasn’t in that place where Hawai‘i was the first to sanction it. I think that was something that became of notice when I got to college and my teammates were coming from other states where they only wrestled boys in everything and that they didn’t have a state tournament for girls.

Q: What advice do you have for students?
A: Focus on your track and where you are. In this day and age, it’s easy to compare yourself to others, but your life is your own journey on its own. It’s a unique one. Finding yourself in who you are and putting your best efforts toward where you want to go and not worrying about the outside noise or outside things that might bring you down. Be true to yourself.