North Central’s Yelena Makoyed produces successful college and international wrestling careers

CEDAR RAPIDS — Yelena Makoyed is placing her lasting stamp on women’s college wrestling, while continuing to make her mark in international competition.

The uber-talented Makoyed has carried her dominance at home to abroad, winning the inaugural College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin Championships on Jan. 29 before winning the Zagreb Open Ranking Series senior-level tournament in Croatia Feb. 4. That’s right. Domestic and overseas gold in the same week.

“It keeps me on fire for the sport,” Makoyed said about balancing both careers. “It keeps me fueled and motivated. It’s easy to become complacent in collegiate athletics sometimes, if you’re not getting a challenge or feel like you’re not wrestling hard enough tournaments, and go backwards in your wrestling, technique and conditioning.

“Knowing that I have bigger things like international competition and other bigger and harder tournaments to go to keeps me motivated. It changes the perspective.”

Makoyed opened with two straight pins, taking steps closer to a fourth straight finals and third consecutive title at the National Collegiate Women’s Wrestling Championships on Friday at Alliant Energy PowerHouse.

Makoyed helped North Central grab the team lead with 113 1/2 points after Day 1. King (Tenn.) University is second with 103 1/2 and three-time defending champion McKendree (Ill.) University is a distant third at 83.

The Cardinals’ top-seeded 170-pounder decked Aubrey Yauger of Texas Woman’s University in 1:03 and pinned McKendree’s Alexandra Castillo in 1:07 to reach the semifinals and secure her fourth All-America finish.

“I feel good,” said Makoyed, who improved to 23-0. “I think the coaches do a really good job at peaking us at the right moment. I think that is key. Anyone can work and train hard but I think timing is also very crucial to the preparation. I think the coaches are timing the rest and recovery perfectly.”

Makoyed has produced a banner year, winning women’s freestyle titles in Italy, Spain and Tunisia last summer. She also beat Turkey’s world champion Yasemin Adar at the United World Wrestling World Cup in Coralville in December.

The latest trek led to Hungary and Croatia. The former Bella Vista High School prep from Orangevale, Calif., enjoyed learning about different cultures. She also realized an important lesson that motivates her to constantly get better.

“Know that you might be the best in the world right now, but tomorrow there could be another one,” Makoyed said. “I got to wrestle some of the girls that I didn’t get to wrestle at the tournament at the camp afterwards. I just saw that there were certain things they were good at that I might not have been good at. I learned the areas I need to polish up and work on. It was a great time.”

The desire to travel the world fostered her international aspirations. Wrestling was the perfect vehicle to experience other lands and people, getting out of the “little box” she lived in America.

During high school, she became discouraged wondering if it would ever happen, feeling she wasn’t good enough. So, she put it in the back of her mind and focused on training. Her work ethic caused her dream to become a reality after all.

“I just wrestled really hard,” Makoyed said. “Then, traveling and competing internationally was a byproduct of working hard and doing the right things.”

A moment of clarity occurred at a wrestling camp in Ukraine. It was her second trip to the Eastern European nation, which came after her gold-medal performance at the Junior Pan Am Championships in Mexico.

“I was like ‘Oh my gosh, I’m in Ukraine, right now. This is crazy. We’re at the Olympic Training Center at Ukraine.’ That just blew my mind,” Makoyed said. “I was like ‘I’m in Ukraine.’ In a year, I’ll be going here and then to Croatia and Hungary. All these places.

“I was grateful and thankful. I had to write it down in my notebook. I feel like in 10 years, even now, I’m starting to take it for granted.”

Makoyed has claimed the last two 170 national crowns after a runner-up finish as a freshman. She recalled the program not having much to offer at the start, unable to fill a full lineup her first season. Makoyed was hooked by the passion and confidence of Cardinals head coach Joe Norton.

Now, she’s been at the heart of a program that qualified the maximum of 15 wrestlers with every one of them earning All-America honors. The Cardinals have 10 alive on the front side and five who won consolation bouts to move into the top eight of their weight classes.

“She does everything right,” Norton said. “She’s a great student. She’s a great teammate, roommate and sister. Everything she does, she wants to be the best at it. She holds herself to a very high standard. Sometimes she’s a little hard on herself. That’s just the nature of who she is.

“She is the perfect person to lead our program and someday she will be leading team USA into the Olympics, too.”

This and that

North Central and King University led the way with 10 semifinalists. McKendree is next with five semifinalists. ... Among the five McKendree wrestlers in the semifinals, Emily Shilson (109) and 191-pounder Sydnee Kimber are still alive in their title hunts. They are both looking to become the first four-time NCWWC champions. Shilson won crowns at 109 for Augsburg (Minn.) each of the last three seasons, transferring to McKendree this year. Kimber is attempting to claim her fourth gold at 191. ... Shilson and Kimber entered the tournament as top seeds. All 10 No. 1 seeds advanced to the semifinals.