Clarissa Chun has just been named the head coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s wrestling team. Iowa is planning on adding women’s wrestling to their teams starting in the 2023-2024 season and this is a huge pickup having a World Champion as their head coach.
Clarissa Chun is one of the most accomplished women’s wrestlers in this country so far with an Olympic Bronze Medal, and World Gold Medal in Tokyo 2008 down at the 48kg weight class, and 5 Pan-Am titles to add to that resume. The Hawkeyes picked up one of the best options as a head coach and this will lead them to great success right off the bat.
The Iowa Hawkeyes men’s wrestling team are the defending National Champions at the moment and especially with this notability they could be looking to pull in some of the biggest women’s wrestling recruits. Especially now with a lot more to offer than just the Brands brothers and their already stacked men’s side of the team.
A couple of the Iowa Hawkeye wrestlers have sisters that do compete in the sport but the biggest one would be Tony Cassioppi’s sister Rose Cassioppi who is one of the top prospects in high school right now as only a junior. She competed as who’s number one against Lillian Freitas. She did not come out on top of an already insanely stacked 164 pound field which also included Kylie Welker who just made a senior world team at 17 years old.
If Iowa’s women’s wrestling team can keep this rolling they will have some huge recruits headed their way. As of right now they are the only power 5 school who has announced that they will be adding a women’s team. Although with the huge success that women’s wrestling has had in these past couple years it is hard to imagine that schools like Penn State and Ohio State won’t be soon to follow on this and add women’s wrestling programs of their own.