Facing the Storm: The Brave Freshman Season of King’s Viktorya Torres

Tory Torres at the 2020 U23 Nationals in Omaha, Nebraska. Photo courtesy of Tony Rotundo / WrestlersAreWarriors.com

Torres was a double All-American last fall in Omaha, taking 4th in the Junior division and 2nd in the U23 division. Photo courtesy of Tony Rotundo / WrestlersAreWarriors.com

by Derek Levendusky, AWW staff writer
Twitter: @AWWderek

BRISTOL, TN - “Your dad’s been shot and is being rushed into surgery,” her mother’s voice said on the other end of the phone, calling from far away in the northwest U.S.

King University freshman Viktorya “Tory” Torres sat in a teammate’s dorm room in Bristol, Tennessee, stunned. It was early November and it had already been a hard year. She was far from home. Covid-19 made her early college experience strange and difficult, having to follow restrictive protocols that kept her from even getting to know her new teammates in the women’s wrestling program. Now this. Within a few weeks, right in the middle of competing at the 2020 Junior & U23 Nationals, her grandfather, who had been one of her biggest fans and such a big part of her wrestling career, would pass away.

“Not going to lie, I very badly wanted to go home but I knew that I had to be mentally strong,” says Torres. “I just had to focus on the task ahead of me…I honestly just tried not thinking about [it all] as much as possible and acted like everything was normal. I went to practice and class like everything was fine so the more I did it, the more I believed it. Growing up, the biggest thing my dad preached was being mentally tough.”

It was this mental toughness, preached by her father, cheered on by her grandfather, that gave Torres the strength to persevere through a season in which most people would have taken an exit ramp. In the end, the Washington state champion and 2-time high school national champion came away with a U23 finals appearance last November and an All-American finish at the National Collegiate Women’s Wrestling Championships in March.

“This year was a little unexpected,” admits Torres. “I bumped up to the 155 weight class, which I’ve never wrestled so high before. I held my own though…My training partners are Ashlynn Ortega and Ana Luciano so I was getting pushed mentally and physically every day in the room. My wrestling has definitely improved but I’ve still got a very long way to go.”

Tragedy
Torres’ father Rene was her coach from the time she started competing at 8-years-old, though her early memories are being by his side as he coached other wrestlers in the program he founded, Victory Wrestling Club in Granger, Washington. Her first big splash on the national stage was in 8th grade, when she took 3rd at Fargo. Eventually Torres became a 12-time USA Wrestling All-American, including two appearances in the finals at Fargo. Her overall high school varsity record was 124-5, making the podium four times at State, and earning a top 5 national ranking during all four years of high school. She also excelled in academics, making the National Honor Society and boasting a 3.8 GPA.

Wrestling has become a family affair as her two younger siblings, Rene Jr (12) and Vanessa (10), are both developing in the sport. Her younger sister competes at national tournaments, already notching her belt with a few youth national titles.

“My family is very close and always was growing up,” tells the 19-year-old King freshman. “If my parents weren’t at work we would all be staying in my parents bed snacking and watching movies. We loved to stay in and just spend quality time with each other. Once my wrestling career started to get serious, my dad being my coach would obviously be with me on every trip. My mom would stay home with my two younger siblings but would always have my favorite meal when I got back.”

The Torres family is of Mexican descent and lives in a small Latino community in the middle of Washington. It was here that a nightmare unfolded for Rene and the family last fall.

It was just a normal day on the farm—working at his father’s business that provided hay for local dairies—until the evening sun started moving toward the western horizon. That was when a gunshot could be heard ringing out over the sprawling farmlands while Torres was driving down one of the fields in a tractor that cuts the alfalfa. Suddenly the back window of his tractor shattered and he felt a sharp pain in his elbow, like a knife was jammed into his arm.

He’d been shot.

And the shooter wasn’t finished. More shots rang out.

Rene quickly moved across the field to safety and called his brother. His help soon arrived and he was raced to the hospital. “My father had lost a lot of blood and was rushed into emergency surgery and that’s when I got the call,” explains Tory. After she got off the phone with her mother, she remembers, “I had a million questions run through my head. I didn’t have details and I had thought the worst. I didn’t know what was going on. I left the room visibly upset and went for a walk to try to calm myself down.”

After a long night of angst, suspense, and uncertainty, Torres fell asleep without answers. It wasn’t until 3 p.m. the next day that she finally got an update. Her father was going to live, though it would be a long and painful recovery. The surgeons decided to leave the bullet in his arm. Torres explains, “There were too many bullet fragments and if the doctor would have pulled them out, [he] would have risked leaving my dad worse than just leaving them in.”

Life sometimes can come down to inches. A little to the right, and the bullet would have torn through his abdomen, puncturing vital organs.

Though Rene had to be in a cast and a robotic brace for a long time, he eventually returned to work.

The whole ordeal was a heavy emotional weight for Torres, so far from home. “My dad had called me almost every day,” she says, “so I was just grateful he was still alive. He’s the most important person in my life and the thought was very scary of not having him anymore. Not going to lie, I very badly wanted to go home but I knew that I had to be mentally strong.”

And it was back to the wrestling room. Junior and U23 Nationals were coming up soon.

The freshman star had barely caught her proverbial breath when more bad news came only two weeks later, and that even heavier: Her grandfather had suffered a heart attack and had slipped into a coma. At first the family held onto hope, but it wasn’t long before another heart attack took his life. He never woke up again. In a moment, it seemed, he was gone.

It all happened while Torres competed at the Junior and U23 Nationals in Omaha, Nebraska, last November. She’d been told her grandfather was ill, but it wasn’t until after the event, where Torres was a double All-American and made the U23 finals, that her father told her the hard news.

“It was very sudden and very fast,” laments Torres. “He was active during his daily life when all of sudden he got very ill. He was very special to me. He was the root of my family. He took care of us all. I greatly appreciated him and had so much respect for him. He funded all my trips and helped me get to where I am today with my wrestling career. I couldn’t have done it without him.”

Back to the grind
After these heart-rending situations, it was nose to the grind for Torres. “Talking to my dad every day helped,” she says, “and I knew that life was going to continue on so I must continue on.”

Over the course of the season, she grew close to her teammates, especially Melanie Mendoza and Skylar Novak. “[They] stayed with me almost 24/7 [during the hardest parts of this],” said Torres. “We never really talked about it but I preferred it that way. They just made sure I was okay and they kept my mind busy and focused on other things.”

It’s been a whole new experience for Torres wrestling in a women’s program. “Wrestling wise, it’s way different being on a girls team since I was so used to being the only girl on my team back home for years,” she says. “I’m learning and getting pushed every day.”

Though Torres had offers from all over the country, she chose King because head coach Jason Moorman was a leader she could follow. “I think what ultimately made me decide King is Jason Moorman, because he reminded me of my dad,” she explains. “My dad had been my coach my entire life and I felt that JM was the best fit to take over that position in my life.”

She didn’t place as high on the podium as she wanted in her freshman campaign—taking 5th at the National Collegiate Women’s Wrestling Championships, the national tournament for NCAA programs—but teammates, coaches, and college wrestling fans who know her story appreciate her perseverance and are inspired by her courage to overcome it all and compete.

For Torres, her freshman season was a life experience and a learning experience. “College is a whole other ballgame,” she admits. “These aren’t little girls that can be pushed around anymore. It seems like everyone has a chip on their shoulder and it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve accomplished, someone’s always coming to take you out. And as a freshman I had to learn that right off the bat because I had to be the one to show them only because I’m a freshman doesn’t mean they’re gonna be able to push me around.”

The storms could have pushed Torres around, but the mental toughness she learned from her father—a man who found a way to survive getting shot at and getting shot, along with the painful rehabilitation that followed until he was back to work in the fields—is the same mental toughness that got her back on the mats. Of all the accolades and tournaments she won in her past, perhaps her biggest win to date was the way she faced the storm of the 2020-2021 season. No doubt a man like her grandfather would agree.

And as far as the rest of her story, stay tuned. There’s so much more ahead for Viktorya Torres.

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