Santa Maria High’s Vanessa Gudino is one of the Saints’ top wrestlers and an aspiring artist. She uses chalk, paint, pencil, and pastels to express her creative side. But her favorite thing to put down on a canvas? Her opponents’ faces, of course.
With only two years of wrestling experience, Gudino completed the regular season with a dazzling record of 22-2. She also placed in the top 12 of the CIF Tournament, which opened an opportunity for her to compete at the Masters Tournament this year.
Gudino got her first taste of wrestling when she accompanied a friend to practice. It was her sophomore year, and wrestling tryouts had already ended. But after seeing Gudino in action, the girls’ wrestling coach, Natasha Sandoval, was impressed and let her join the team.
“She was strong and natural. She threw girls around even though she was smaller. She had a natural build for it, too,” Sandoval said, adding that her policy usually didn’t allow for latecomers to join the team, but after she saw the potential Gudino had, she made a one-time exception. “She was one of the wrestlers that was there for the right reasons.”
Though Gudino possessed the qualities of a great wrestler, she said it took her plenty of losses and a lot of hard work to launch her to the level she’s at today. She went from placing in only a few of the tournaments she entered her first year, to placing in every single tournament she entered this year.
“My first year, I was super nervous,” she admitted. “I had the mentality that I was going to lose. But this year was different: I knew what I was doing. I had the mentality that I was going to win, that I had to win. I wouldn’t settle for losing.”
Her evolution as a wrestler didn’t happen without stumbling blocks. Gudino said there were times she wanted to quit wrestling, but her parents helped her stay positive and motivated.
“I was tired of running, being sore, having to lose weight, and having to worry about what to eat. There was a time where I wasn’t really liking it, but they still made me go,” Gudino said of her parents.
“They told me that I shouldn’t be a quitter,” she continued. “They related it to life and said things like, ‘You don’t want to quit now, because if you quit now you’re going to be a quitter for the rest of your life.’ They put that in my head. I think it’s good. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m thankful that they did it.”
This article appears in Mar 8-15, 2012.