Paulina Jimenez, a recent public administration graduate of San Diego State University, won a national title over the weekend at Lincoln High School.
So did North Carolina software engineer Jared Faulk and retired Air Force Capt. Jay Scriven.
Competing in the shadow of a Camp Pendleton mud run and Sunday’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon, nearly 150 entrants ages 3 and up threw their weight and rivals around in the 1,500-year-old Japanese sport of sumo.
The event was the U.S. Sumo Federation’s national championships, which gives adult gold medalists the option (but not full expenses) to compete at the world tournament Sept. 7-8 in Kwidzyn, Poland.
Jimenez, 22, is a librarian studying for the LSAT exam and a place in law school.
A novice with the Honu Sumo Club in City Heights, she defeated Leah Mancillas, a 51-year-old second-degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (who teaches that martial art at Honu.)
Jimenez credits “Professor JJ” — Honu leader JJ Jones, who took third in the middleweight division Saturday while also being in charge of Saturday’s 5-hour event.
“He introduced me because of my wrestling background — and I loved it,” she said.
Jimenez starred at Serra High School and competed for Emmanuel University in Franklin Springs, Georgia — and also has done mixed martial arts (which she started at age 12).
She won all four of her light heavyweight matches in the 15-foot-diameter ring called a dohyō.
The keys to her success?
“Determination [and] good support group,” she said with a smile.
In Poland, she’s hoping for good competition, good spirits and to “have a good experience.”
Jimenez and others remarked on the turnout for sumo nationals, with entrants also from New Jersey, New York and Texas.
Entrant Ethan Swapp and his wife, Kortney, came from Cedar City, Utah. They cheered their 11-year-old daughter Peyton and 9-year-old son Oliver as they wrestled in competition for the first time.
Light heavyweight Swapp, 37 and 250 pounds, won two of his six matches at the Hornets basketball gym but didn’t advance far in the double-elimination tournament.
He said he tried sumo — where matches average about 10 seconds — because he was “looking for something easier on my body than the military was.” (He spent three years in the Army at Fort Lewis, Washington.)
The Swapps, planning a SeaWorld visit, also prize sumo for its culture of respect. No celebrating in the ring except for a diagonal downward hand sweep that victors give to honor officiating.
(No shoes allowed in the competition square either. Referees and judges wear socks or go barefoot.)
Purists look down on the shorts or yoga pants Americans are allowed to wear under the wrap-around loincloth called a mawashi. But all commands are in Japanese, including the shouted “go” signal: hakki-woi!
Swapp says it translates as “put some spirit in it.”
Two other relative newbies shined in their events — heavyweight champ (at 380 pounds) Scriven, 36, of San Antonio and middleweight winner Faulk, 25, who co-founded a sumo club in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Scriven grew up in Okinawa but didn’t see sumo. His inspiration was a 2023 Netflix series on sumo called “Sanctuary.” In his sixth ever tournament, he was hugged by his wife, Gabby, and Mighty Eagle Sumo teammates after defeating an experienced Eric Huynh, 34.
“It’s been a year, grinding and giving my best,” Scriven told me, saying his club “poured into me. They saw something in me, and I appreciate that.”
The father of three young children said of the upcoming world tourney: “I just expect to do my best and hopefully that yields a medal.”
Sumo brass are lobbying to add the sport to the Olympic menu, but don’t expect that until 2032, said experts in San Diego.
Greensboro resident Faulk — who played football, basketball and baseball as a youth — was in only his second tournament — after starting sumo three years ago.
“During COVID, I saw a YouTube video,” he said. “I saw a little guy sumoing, and he wasn’t that much bigger than me” and thought: “I could probably do it. It looks pretty fun.”
He said he’s always wanted to wrestle.
Faulk’s key: “I just really had to stay focused.”
The women’s heavyweight and open champion Saturday was no surprise — Kellyann Ball of Chino, who won team and individual bronze medals at last year’s world sumo championships. But her competition was no easy pushover: three other women who represented Team USA last October in Tokyo.
She is coached in part by San Diego’s Jones, whose bid to host nationals beat out ones from Texas and North Carolina.
After showing off his own bronze medal — third behind Faulk in the live-streamed event — Jones said: “We got future world champions all around us.”
He said of sumo’s future here and nationwide: “We’re [doing] bigger and better things all the time. Feb. 22, we have our SoCal Open.”
Mancillas, the silver medal winner, thinks she and her 17-year-old son Malik Benmoussa were the only mother-son entrants.
They became involved because of her association with Honu leader Jones.
“It wasn’t that I had a mad passion for sumo,” the mother said. “It was more being a female. Because I am a grappler, I am fairly comfortable standing up and doing something like this. It was more to support other females.”
She was moved from the middleweight to light heavyweight division so more women could compete together. (A record 27 girls and women took part in nationals.)
Mancillas believes there’s a different way men and women approach the sport.
While men may try to out “alpha” each other, women still bolster each other and don’t hold hard feelings regardless of the results.
Of female sumo, Mancillas said: “If you find something that you want to do, no matter what it is … then you should do it. And the community is incredible. It’s a support; it’s a family.”
Her son, who fought in the junior middleweight division, called it a proud son and mother moment.
Asked if it was hard watching her fight, Benmoussa said: “I have to be protective of my mom sometimes, but I know she been doing stuff like this forever, basically.”
“I love it,” Benmoussa said of sumo. “She’s the one who brought me into combat sports, so this has been my life ever since I was in diapers.” He has previous done karate, jiu-jitsu and kickboxing.
