Kainalu and Nanea Estrella pose for a photo in Kaupo last year. The siblings are both former state wrestling champions for Lahainaluna High School who are now competing in college. ISAAC ESTRELLA photo

Nanea Estrella has seemingly always been ready to show her best on the wrestling mat. Her brother Kainalu knows that first-hand.

Nanea, a four-time state champion from Lahainaluna High School, was stopped from competing collegiately during her first season at Menlo College in the 2020-21 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, with her extraordinarily unconventional freshman year in the books, her career appears ready to take off in a big way very soon.

As the 2020 UWW Junior Nationals champion at 55 kilograms, a crown she won in November, she will compete for a spot on the United States national team at the Senior World Team Trials scheduled Sept. 3-5 at a site yet to be announced.

Winners at that tournament will make up the U.S. team that will compete in the Senior World Championships in Oslo, Norway, Oct. 2-10.

With the pandemic wreaking havoc on her original college plans, Estrella has been a near nomad for more than a year.

“I have been kind of everywhere, I guess,” she said.

Kainalu Estrella is entering his junior year of eligibility at Utah Valley University, a wrestling member of the Big 12 Conference. Kainalu, the first NCAA Division I wrestler from the Maui Interscholastic League since Baldwin graduate Grant Nakamura finished at Iowa State in 2004, hopes to challenge for a starting spot at 133 pounds for UVU in 2021-22.

“I feel like I’m at a level now that I can compete with these guys at this level,” said Kainalu, a four-time MIL champion for Lahainaluna and state champion at 132 in 2018.

He has a 16-28 record in his first three seasons at UVU.

“It was a big step coming from being a state champ in Hawaii to wrestling at this level,” Kainalu said. “I didn’t really know what to expect when I made the jump. It was a big learning curve.”

Still, he never lost his optimism in the sport. He is majoring in software engineering and recently started a minor in business management and has two years of eligibility remaining.

“There’s opportunities in front of me,” he said. “And I have the opportunity to become the best wrestler I can be and test myself at the highest level.”

While her brother has been entrenched at UVU for three years, Nanea Estrella had several decisions to make when her first collegiate season was called off by Menlo College officials.

“When I was about to go to school, I was faced with a choice because our school was not having any on-campus housing and everything,” she said. “I was faced with a choice of going to school, around just going to California and living around with some teammates or going to Idaho, which is where one of my club teams is — American Falls Wrestling Club — and training with them for nationals.

“I would have been training in California, but it wouldn’t have been the same kind of training and I wouldn’t have been competing. I did want to compete at the junior nationals, so I ended up making the choice to go to Idaho.”

She went to Idaho in September, trained for a couple months and took off for the junior national meet in Nebraska. But four hours into her drive from Idaho, she ran into a blizzard that shut down roads in Wyoming. She quickly had to change her itinerary and drove to Salt Lake City, where she booked a flight to Omaha, Neb. — the last-minute change in plans required three connecting flights, each one of which were delayed.

“I made it in time, I made weight,” Nanea said. However, her club coach had not been so fortunate and was stuck with no chance to make it to the tournament in time.

“I didn’t have a coach in my corner, so I was really stressed to find one because I didn’t really know anybody,” Nanea said. “So, about two minutes before my first match I got a text from my coach back in Idaho and he said, ‘Turn around and tap that guy on the shoulder that’s next to you and tell him to be your coach.’ ”

She did just that and Bill Mitchell, whose shoulder she tapped on, sat in her corner for all of her matches and guided her to the junior national crown.

“I said, ‘Hi. My coach said to tell you to coach me, I’m on the mat right now,’ ” Nanea recalled. “So I turned around and I ran to the mat. I had a complete stranger coaching me in my corner. He knew my coach from Idaho — that was nice. … It was, kind of, a very weird experience. I had a tough first match, but I bounced back and I won all of my matches.”

Nanea Estrella was named the winner of the Tricia Saunders High School Excellence Award in May 2020, an honor from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame & Museum — the award recognizes the nation’s most outstanding high school senior female wrestlers for their excellence in wrestling, scholastic achievement, citizenship and community service.

After the odyssey to get to Nebraska, she was finally a national champion.

“That felt so good, that was such a long title in the making,” she said. “I was waiting for that one for forever and by winning that I also qualified myself a spot for the Senior World Team Trials.”

She took online classes for the first semester of her college experience and when the school opened in January, she went to live in Menlo.

Before that and after winning the junior national crown, she stayed with Kainalu in Utah for a month, until mid-December.

Last month, she wrestled in the junior and under-23 world team trials. She was fifth in the junior division and third in the U23 division, which qualified her for a national spot in that age division.

“I have a title of being on the national team and I can go compete internationally under Team USA,” she said. “I haven’t figured out my schedule for that yet.”

Nanea also watched her cousin Waipuilani Estrella-Beauchamp compete at the U.S. Olympic Trials in March after the Baldwin graduate won an NAIA title for Midland University. Estrella-Beauchamp will also compete at Senior World Team Trials.

Nanea Estrella clearly has big things in mind.

“I am super, super excited,” Estrella said. “I know that that’s the level I need to be if I even want to consider being in the Olympics one day. And I’m so happy that I’m able to break into that world at the start of my Olympic journey.

“This experience is going to be super, super valuable to me because it is going to teach me a bunch of lessons.”

Kainalu Estrella has no doubt his younger sister will be great.

“She’s a beast,” he said. “She’s pretty mentally tough when it comes to those situations when she just goes out there and just competes.”

His little sister has been impressing him for many years, and that trend is only ramping up now.

“I’m really excited to watch her. It’s going to really interesting to watch her compete at the college level,” he said. “Her situation the last year was kind of sporadic and she was kind of — I don’t want to say homeless — but she was kind of bustling around up here on the Mainland.

“She didn’t get anywhere close to a consistent training schedule until January. She was able to find success without even having a consistent season of development.”

Nanea was in Orem, Utah, last month with her brother when a large group of Maui youth wrestlers competed in the Western States Championships. The Estrella siblings helped with the coaching of the group while they competed.

“I definitely have had to do some major character development during this time,” Nanea said. “I had to learn a lot of lessons and grow up really fast, moving in this fast-paced world, especially with where I’m at and where I want to be. I definitely had to grow a bit and learn a lot of lessons about dealing with people, and dealing with friends and family, and also remembering where I came from and the people that supported me.”

* Robert Collias is at rcollias@mauinews.com.