2025 High school wrestling preview: Change in outlook pays off for Columbia's Youstina Hanna

Youstina Hanna has put in countless hours training and studying to become one of the most talented wrestlers in Lorain County (and beyond), but this past offseason, she realized there wasn't much more she could achieve without rethinking her approach to the sport. A two-time state qualifier, Hanna, now a senior at Columbia, placed eighth at the state tournament in 2024 as a sophomore but failed to place last year, and after going 0-2 at the Fargo nationals in the summer, she reached a breaking point. "I was down on myself and just putting all this pressure on myself like, 'I placed last year, I've got to win this year,'" she said of last season. "I felt like that all season, it wasn't even just at state. I had some good wins, I won sectionals and districts, but honestly … I wasn't proud of that because I was not in a good place mentally." Hanna started distancing herself from people and took that mentality into last year's state tournament where she went 1-2 — a finish she said broke her heart. "After that, I was like, 'All right, something needs to change. I'm too good to let this happen again. I love wrestling too much to let this happen again,'" she said. "Honestly, I started to hate wrestling. It just felt like a chore every day. I didn't want to be there anymore." Hanna spent the rest of the offseason reflecting — training her mind as much as she was training her body — and worked hard to fall back in love with wrestling. "I had really overworked myself last season," she said. "I was just obsessed with trying to get better, but your body needs rest, so I focused on having fun. I was still focused on getting better but I wasn't going insane over it. … I was focusing on loving the sport again and having fun. "I think that kind of cleared my head, so it was refreshing." Her new approach hasn't gone unnoticed by her teammates and coaches, either. "I would say one of the biggest areas of growth that I've seen has been in her head," Columbia coach Marti Belfi said. "The ability to remember that, at the end of the day, this is supposed to be fun. Let's put on our playlist of songs that make you smile and get into that zone to where we're having fun while we're doing this. "Physically, Youstina's kind of sharpened her knife into this instrument over the course of three years. Mentally, she's made some big strides in the offseason to make this fun again, and the accolades that come along with being that good is also fun for you. And it should be." Hanna describes this new outlook as a more mature approach to wrestling. She understands herself better as a wrestler and as a person and has freed herself from the overwhelming pressure that nearly made her quit. "I understand where I'm at in this sport," she said. "I understand my ability level. I understand my goals and I understand what I've got to do to reach them. I understand how my attitude should be. I understand how my diet should be. I've come to an understanding and I'm trying to reach my goals the right way. I feel like in the past, I had these goals, obviously, but I just wasn't doing it the right way. I was not focusing on the mental part at all. I was just go, go, go." Hanna is the first person to tell you she would not be the wrestler she is today without her teammates, too, who provided support and positivity when she needed it most. Fellow seniors Claire Ondrejko, Cailyn Demagall, Piper Erman and Gabby Grace have come up in the program along with Hanna and have dedicated themselves to making the Columbia wrestling program as good as any. Demagall is a two-time state placer herself, while Grace was named a state alternate last season. "Every day I feel like everyone just has a good attitude," Hanna said. "I love all of them. I just love all their personalities and, for example, I was cutting weight one day and they were all super supportive. We're all very supportive of each other and they're great partners as well to practice with." "You can only get so good if you don't have a good partner to train with," Belfi added. "There are plenty of drills and exercises that are individualized, but when it comes down to the applied science of wrestling, you need a drill partner and you need a drill partner that's going to push you to be the best — and we have that. "(Hanna) has gotten as good as she has because of them, and they've gotten as good as they have because of her. Those girls have been together and they've pushed each other." To put it plainly, Belfi said Hanna is the hardest worker he's seen, and that work ethic has rubbed off not just on her fellow wrestlers, but her coaches, too. What makes her such a talented and competitive wrestler, he said, is her endurance and ability to push the pace of a match, describing her move set as "the Library of Congress" and emphasizing her seemingly never-ending desire to be a student of the sport. "She is a lead-by-example type of kid," he said. "I've been around state champions, I've been around college All-Americans (and) she's the hardest worker that I've seen. She pushes herself to the brink of exhaustion just to get better. She understands the sport is a sport of inches, for lack of a better term. You're not necessarily going to get better in leaps and bounds over the course of a couple weeks, but if every day you're a little bit better than you were yesterday, you are improving, and she understands that. "Everything in Youstina's life is about doing it the best she can. She has matured exponentially over the last three years to where she still strives for perfection every time she steps on the mat, but she also understands there is always room to get better and that motivates her, which helps her motivate the team around her." Heading into her final high school season, that motivation is the same as it's been the past three years — win the state tournament — but Hanna's healthier mindset has allowed her to approach this season excited about the prospect of winning, but not afraid of the possibility of losing. "For me, a successful season would probably just be enjoying my time, enjoying the process, enjoying every practice and being with my teammates and my coaches for the last time," she said. "I think with that, the results I want will come, because if I keep that positivity and I just enjoy everything, then the hard work is going to come with it, the wins are going to come with it. "I'm not going to lie to you, my goal is to win state and I'm probably not going to be happy with anything less, but I will be happy if I gave all my effort and I enjoyed my time. That's it. Just give everything I have and enjoy my time. I don't want to have any regrets." "I tell them all the time, 'You are writing a history book on girls wrestling in the state of Ohio and you've all been given your own pen. What story do you want to tell?'" Belfi added. "Well, Youstina is writing one hell of a story." Contact Marissa McNees at (440) 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.