Senior Level: Mensah-Stock's Road to Gold
2019 World Championships in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan (pc: Tony Rotundo)
by Derek Levendusky, AWW staff writer
“You need to quit wrestling,” said the bully, slamming the high school sophomore against the lockers. Little did the mean girl know, she was saying that to a future world champion. Tamyra Mensah would not quit wrestling. And last week, she won a world title.
As scores of wrestling fans saw, Mensah-Stock dominated her way through the bracket at Nur-Sultan, finishing her tournament with an American flag draped over her back, circling the mat with that authentically joyful and pure smile so many wrestling fans have come to love.
Once she ran her victory lap, she walked off the mat and began to embrace her coaches, these rocks that she had leaned on. And when she hugged them, the world watched as this paradox of a woman—happy, sweet, rugged, and tough all at the same time—melted with tears.
“There was a flood of emotions going through my mind,” Mensah-Stock explains. “I was just telling myself, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I did it! I just ran around with the [American] flag, not only at Pan Am Games, but at the World Championships where everybody said that I was able to do it and I actually did it!’ It was like fireworks! Me drinking horchata! Me getting a great night’s rest! Me going on a roller coaster! Going through all those emotions—they were all coming at me at once.”
She was also moved by her love for her coaches, who had supported and believed in her throughout her journey. “I think that’s why I started crying even more,” reflects Mensah-Stock. “They put so much work into little ol’ me. And they trusted me, I trusted them. And when I hugged them, all I could do was be thankful for what they had done for me not only this year but years before.”
The champ was actually trying to pull them on stage, telling them, “Get on stage with me! You guys deserve it too!”
Coach Terry Steiner and Izzy Izboinikov had played a major part during the tournament in Tamyra’s confidence.
“The mental game is like 90% of wrestling,” says Mensah-Stock of her mindset. “I train year-round physically. So my body is capable of doing whatever it’s capable of doing. But mentally…” She said that happens on competition day, before you step on the mat. It’s the voices you listen to before you face the giants.
“I was able to believe in myself because they told me before every single match that I was capable,” says Mensah-Stock. “It was a game-changer. They believed in me and when they said I could do it, I believed.”
This was a different mentality than 2018. “Last year, I was like, ‘I dunno!’ But this year I was like, ‘This year I can do it. I can beat them, right Terry? I can beat them, right Izzy?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, you can beat this girl. Absolutely! No doubt in my mind!’ Both of them were saying that before every single match.’”
They gave her the mental edge she needed to carry that flag. But like any coach that finds their joy in watching the athlete shine, Steiner and Izboinikov stayed off the stage. They told their young star that her it was her time.
And indeed it was.
BATTLING INJURY, BEATING THE BEST
As she dominated opponent after opponent, no one in the wrestling community was surprised. Mensah-Stock had, after all, achieved the rare feat in July of becoming the only American, ever, to win the prestigious Russian tournament, the Ivan Yarygin Grand Prix, three times.
What no one knew was that at Worlds, Mensah-Stock was nursing an injury along the way. During Round of 16 match against Blessing Oborududu of Nigeria, she hurt her knee and had to keep it loose the rest of the tournament.
Her semifinal was the anticipated match against defending 2016 Olympic champion Sara Dosho of Japan. But Mensah-Stock wasn’t impressed. Her marching orders: “My coaches said I could pick her apart, so I picked her apart.”
Dosho looked like the lesser athlete, unsuccessfully spending her time trying to defend Mensah-Stock’s powerful attacks, the first of which came less than ten seconds into the match. Tamyra kept up the pace and the attacks, cruising to a 10-1 victory over the stunned Olympic champion.
She wrestled her finals opponent, 2016 Olympic bronze medalist Jenny Fransson, twice before this year. The first time was in Sweden at the Lady Klippan in 2015, and Fransson teched her within two minutes. Then they met again in Spain a few years ago, and Fransson won the decision in match that came right down to the end. Mensah-Stock knew she had to beware of the Swede’s throws. “I had to pretend like I never wrestled her before,” she explained. “I knew it was going to be a slow match. I knew that if I didn’t tie up with her, I would have my shots.”
The one time she did tie up, Fransson hit her with her signature headlock, withering Mensah-Stock over her injured knee and causing her foot to get stuck. Mensah-Stock was in pain, but the resilient American was able to finish the match for the 8-2 win. When it was all over, Mensah-Stock stood alone, a world champion.
With the win, she also checked some boxes for her team, moving Team USA from 5th to 3rd place, assuring a spot in Pool A of the World Cup this November in Narita, Japan, and joining Jacarra Winchester and Adeline Gray as gold medalists, becoming the first team ever to have three world champions.
HER BEGINNINGS
It all began as a sophomore in Morton Ranch High School in Katy, TX when her twin sister Tarkyia, already on the wrestling team, invited her to try it. Tamyra had been involved in track & field. “I had my hoops, my straight perm, my make-up every time I went to track practice,” she remembers. “I wasn’t that ideal wrestler, but I was athletic.”
The new girls’ wrestling program was trying to recruit more women, so Tarkyia went after her twin. “Tamyra,” she pitched, “our coaches would love to have you on our team because you’re athletic!”
Tamyra was repulsed by the idea. “What team?” she asked. “Wrestling? Eww!”
She was against the idea for a long time, and when she finally gave in, she still didn’t like it. In fact, she disliked it so much, she wanted to quit. “I kept telling my twin,” she now laughs, “Tarkyia, I don’t want to do this anymore. This freaking sucks!”
Tarkyia kept telling her to wait until their first home dual. After a month and a half of training, the day came. She was 140-something pounds, and her coaches bumped her up to 165, where she would square off with a state qualifier. The coaches’ instructions were simple: “Tamyra, just go out there and double-leg her!”
She did just that. Mensah hit her with a double-leg takedown and put her right to her back for the fall. When they gathered as a team at the end of the dual, she said, “I could do this for a long time. That was fun!”
Morton Ranch coaches Mark Balser and Daniel Black had her hooked. And she would never look back again.
She ended up placing 2nd in the state that year. Over the next two years, she’d win two state titles, including becoming the first-ever state champ at her school as a junior, and then experiencing the special moment as a senior when both she and her twin sister, Tarkyia, won state titles together at 128 (Tarkyia) and 138 (Tamyra).
During these two years was when she began to dream of achieving at the highest levels of the sport. College wrestling was the next step.
WAYLAND BAPTIST
When they recruited her to Wayland Baptist, Tamyra Mensah told her future college coaches, Johnny Cobb and Aaron Meister, “I want to wrestle in the Olympics one day.”
“We can help make that happen,” they told her. They helped their star recruit to get into Titan Mercury Wrestling Club, where her training went to a new level, along with the workouts she’d get at Wayland Baptist.
Her sister Tarkyia was also a teammate in college. That’s also where things got more serious with her boyfriend Jacob Stock, himself a wrestler at the university, who had also been a high school teammate at Morton Ranch. They would eventually marry in 2016.
If anyone is wondering, she still can’t beat him in wrestling.
“Trust me, I’ve tried,” says Mensah-Stock. “I tried when he was retired for three years! I did a 45-minute grind match with this man and he just held me back like some freakin’ grown man just stiff-arming me the whole time.” Mr. Stock is 6’ 1½” and has his world champ wife by height and weight, notes the Mensah half. “He obviously knows how to wrestle because he wrestled for ten years before he retired. I could not deal.”
A GRATEFUL WOMAN
One thing that marks Tamyra is gratitude.
“My husband just being there for me,” she reflects, “at first as a friend on the same high school team, and then as a friend in college and then as a boyfriend and then as a husband, just going through these moments the past three years. He has been with me, literally since the beginning of my wrestling career. He has been there, whether it be friend, boyfriend, or husband—I so appreciate my husband Jacob.”
She’s also thankful for her twin sister, Tarkyia. “She says she’s proud of me, but I’m like, ‘You are my inspiration. I want to be like you!’”
She’s also thankful for her coaches. “Terry, Izzy, Clarissa—there’s so many people I could name! They’ve all been there for me.”
Mensah-Stock’s father passed away during her junior year of high school, though he did get to see her career begin as a state runner-up during her sophomore year. Her mother has been a voice of encouragement as well. “My mom has been there telling me I can do it and she’s always reminding me that my dad is looking down from heaven so proud of me. He was always in the crowd screaming for me.”
One more thing she’s grateful for is a vacation. Coming home from Kazakhstan to Colorado Springs has been days of jet lag, though there’s no need to adjust, because she’s back on a plane on Saturday with twin sister and pal Tarkyia to take a cruise…in Japan. Perhaps she’ll be there again next year when the Olympics are in Tokyo. She confesses that she’s already thinking about it. “At night,” she says, “I’m thinking, ‘I’m gonna go to the Olympics. I’m gonna terrorize them again.’”
Thank God she didn’t quit wrestling when she was slammed against the lockers in her sophomore year. Thank God she didn’t quit in the first month of wrestling. The United States has a world champion. And her name is Tamyra Mensah-Stock.