Staying on task: How family/focus led Isabella Gonzales to Iowa

The week of November 18, 2024, will always be a special one for Isabella Gonzales.

Over the span of just a few days, she’d realize a dream that had been years in the making – announcing on Instagram her commitment to the University of Iowa women’s wrestling program.

A Tuesday night Zoom call was the moment the Fresno (Calif.) native informed her future coaching staff that she was ready to become a Hawkeye.

Two days later, she was officially accepted into school.

And by that Friday evening, the rest of the wrestling world learned that one of its best young prospects was headed to Iowa City.

For more on all that Gonzales – ranked the #3 pound-for-pound high school wrestler in America – brings to the Hawkeyes on the mat, I’d encourage folks to read our initial story on her commitment.

The rest of this piece won’t be so much about her considerable athletic talents. Instead, a 45-minute interview with Hawkeye Report highlighted several elements of her journey to this point that make it just as compelling as the wildly promising Iowa wrestling career ahead of her.

This is a story centered on the people and perseverance that made her recent commitment (and subsequent signing) possible. And it began long before the Iowa women’s program ever existed as a goal for Isabella Gonzales to relentlessly pursue.

Learning together

Wrestling was not in Geoffrey Gonzales’ background growing up in the Philippines.

So, when his eldest daughter came home from school one day in fourth grade and said she wanted to give the sport a try, both he and his wife (also a native Filipino) were reticent.

“At first they were a little scared just because it’s a contact sport and they knew nothing about it,” recalls Isabella.

But upon insisting she wanted to get on the mat – in part to avoid the colder winter sport alternative that was basketball (which is played outdoors in the Clovis school district) – her father quickly jumped aboard with his customary all-in attitude.

“My dad was like, ‘OK, we’ll go through this together.’”

From that moment onward the pair have been inseparable.

A self-described “terrible…chubby little kid” in her first year of wrestling, an undeterred Isabella came back the following year determined to improve.

“I’m like, ‘Hey, I actually want to take this seriously, and I actually want to be good at this.’”

“So, that’s when me and my dad kind of started working through this…He helped me learn all of this, and he was learning on the way too, just because he’d never experienced anything like this before.”

Ever since that first conversation in fourth grade, the father/daughter duo has been on a journey of improvement – together every step of the way.

“We kind of just grew up from there,” says the future Hawkeye. “So, yeah, he’s always been my number one coach.”

A commitment to the task at hand

A key term that Gonzales and her father apply to wrestling is “tasking.”

“You go out there and you have a task, and you just have to go out and complete it,” says Isabella of a simple, yet effective mindset which has allowed her to thrive on the mat over the past 18-24 months.

“I feel like I’ve just matured over time into telling myself, ‘You don’t have to be emotional while you’re wrestling. You just have to focus. You just have to task.’”

Their partnership has progressed all the way through the Clovis school system and beyond. Once wrestling novices both, they’ve now traveled around the country/world together as Isabella continues to improve (and win).

Pull up a video of almost any competition featuring Gonzales and you’ll find her father stationed in her corner. It could be down the road at a local high school tournament or across an ocean at the Under-17 World Championships (where she reached the semifinals in Amman, Jordan this August).

Either way, the two are together – embodying the same disciplined, task-oriented mindset that Isabella is proud to share with her father.

“I like to admit that I’m a lot like him,” says the 17-year-old in a somewhat surprising admission from a high schooler about their parent(s).

“He’s very persistent. He’s very like, ‘We’re gonna get this right. We’re gonna learn how to do this properly.’”

“And I see myself in him a lot like that – where I’m like, ‘No, I have to do this right. I’m gonna keep going until I get this right. And if it’s not right, then we gotta fix that.’”

“Something that’s always been a part of me”

Now eight years in, wrestling has become a major source of aspiration for Gonzales (both collegiately and beyond). But it’s not the oldest dream she’ll get the chance to live out in Iowa City.

That’ll fall on the academic side of the ledger – tracing back as far as her preschool days.

“As early as they could ask you, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I already knew in my head I’m going to be in the medical field. I wanted to take after my mom,” says Gonzales of her academic intentions at Iowa.

A nurse practitioner (NP) for nearly 20 years, Jennifer Gonzales has long inspired her daughter to pursue medicine as well. And while Isabella wasn’t always certain exactly what that would look like, she now wants to become an ‘NP’ herself.

As fortune would have it, there may be no better place for her to chase both her nursing and wrestling ambitions.

This September, Iowa’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program was ranked fourth-best nationally and tied for first among public universities according to U.S. News & World Report.

“As I started looking at schools, I knew that I wanted a program that had both (wrestling and nursing),” says Gonzales.

This opportunity to pursue both at the highest level also lends a unique sense of satisfaction given their different origins in her life:

“Wrestling is something that I’ve kind of built – and then I built on my dreams for that.”

“But nursing is something that’s always been a part of me. So, then seeing that it’s coming together, it’s just like, ‘Wow, this is amazing. And I get to do this.’”

A sister to lean (and beat up) on

The familial support/inspiration for Isabella Gonzales doesn’t end with her parents, however.

She also has two younger sisters, the eldest of whom joins her on the Clovis East high school team for the first time this season as a freshman.

Sophia – a nationally ranked wrestler in her own right – trains with Isabella daily. The sisters even have a full mat/workout set up in their garage at home.

It’s an opportunity that Isabella relishes, especially now that the two are on a more level playing field age-wise.

“I just love that we’re able to scrap because before it was a little bit one-sided,” says Gonzales.

“The fact that we’re able to wrestle together and compete together as my last year and her first year – I think that’s something I’m really looking forward to.”

In addition to her own goals for her senior season – including a third state title – Isabella would love to set her sister up to best her high school career in a few years’ time:

“I’m really pushing her to get that (freshman state title) so she can be a four-timer, unlike me. As much as I hate to admit it, I really want her to one-up me in that case.”

But lest one think it’s always so magnanimous between the two, they’re still siblings, and it is still wrestling, after all.

Isabella describes Sophia as “a feisty one” who’s regularly chirping at her during workouts.

“I hear it every day,” says the older sister of the claims that their age difference is the only reason she holds an edge.

And like any good older sibling, she’s confident the status quo remains the same – even though the gap may be shrinking.

“She’s catching up to me, but I’ve still got it on her – for sure.”

‘Fearless’ support

Another name that warrants significant credit in Gonzales’ journey is Ray Blanco.

The long-time Clovis school district employee has joined the Gonzales family throughout every stage of Isabella’s wrestling journey to date.

“When I started wrestling in elementary school, he was my wrestling coach,” says Gonzales of Blanco. “He sparked my interest and encouraged me to pursue this. There was a seed planted in my mind, and he got my family involved.”

Described as a “Mr. Miyagi” type figure by her father, Blanco also provided Isabella with individual lessons/instruction at night. In time, he founded the ‘Fearless Youth Wrestling Club’ – a non-profit, free-of-charge club where Isabella and her sisters have since competed – and where they now (alongside their father) volunteer as coaches for other Clovis-area kids who are finding wrestling just as they once did.

“We wouldn’t have discovered wrestling if it wasn’t for him,” says Geoffrey Gonzales of the instrumental role Blanco has played in his family’s now-indelible relationship with the sport.

In turn, Blanco (a wrestling alum of Clovis West) has become more than just a coach to the Gonzaleses.

“He is a coach and mentor, and really, has morphed and became family,” says Isabella.

“He is Uncle/Coach Ray.”

The lessons learned haven’t been geared merely toward the present either. Blanco was one of the first people to open Isabella’s eyes to a possible wrestling future beyond her club/school pursuits.

“When opportunities for women’s wrestling started opening up at the collegiate level, we would imagine and dream of how I was going to be a part of it,” she says.

And because of those early dreams, Isabella was primed and ready three-plus years ago when a tantalizing, first-of-its-kind opportunity arose for young women’s wrestlers around the country just like her.

Interest in Iowa

Like many of the current Hawkeyes, the announcement of the Iowa women’s wrestling program in September of 2021 sparked an immediate interest for Gonzales.

Then a high school freshman – “It clicked in my head that, wow, this is something that I could go to,” she says.

The possibility felt even more tangible when fellow Californian Nyla Valencia committed as part of Iowa’s inaugural 2022 recruiting class.

“Me and Nyla have been at camps together for some time now, so I’ve been seeing her around and I’ve been looking up to her.”

“And then I saw that she’d committed to Iowa…I was like, ‘Wow, this is actually a possibility.’”

Later, another current Hawkeye (and friend) – 2024 signee Val Solorio – would provide valuable insight into the process Gonzales was about to embark on.

“(Solorio) kind of gave me her timeline…when they started talking to her seriously about college recruitment, when she applied, when she got accepted,” says Gonzales, whose own journey would unfold in a similar manner.

Things really kicked into high gear following her (second) state title as a junior.

In fact, as she recalls a ‘congratulations’ message from Iowa head coach Clarissa Chun, the moment still elicits palpable joy in her voice all these months later.

“I was so excited about that,” says Gonzales. “I was like, oh my goodness, this (Iowa) could be a real thing.”

“One-and-done”

It was mid-September when father and daughter made it to Iowa City for Isabella’s official visit.

Sandwiched between her trek overseas for U17 Worlds and an East Coast trip for FloWrestling’s ‘Who’s Number One’ event (where she prevailed for the second-consecutive year), Gonzales joined a star-studded group of recruits on campus.

The hope was that it’d be the only such visit she’d take.

(Spoiler: It was.)

“I know that I wanted Iowa to be my first visit just because if I loved it there and if it was everything that I was looking for then it could be my one-and-done,” says Gonzales of her approach to the weekend.

And while some anxiety did creep in given what’s expected to be a small 2025 class for the Hawkeyes, in the end, Iowa was the fit she’d been hoping for (and more).

Gonzales highlights the campus/coaches/teammates/facilities/resources/etc. as all being pluses from the visit. She also makes special note of a special Iowa tradition that caught her attention:

“Something I loved about the tour was that when we were at the football stadium, they did this traditional thing where they wave hi to the kids at the hospital.”

In conjunction with her aspirations in the medical field, moments like those made Iowa “better than what I thought it was going to be in person,” says Gonzales.

Following the visit, she’d officially made up her mind.

She was going to be a Hawkeye.

A commitment made, a focus forward

Says the 17-year-old of her future coaches’ reaction to her decision, “They were very excited that I chose to be a part of the Hawkeye family.”

That excitement is reflected by Gonzales, who still seems to be coming to terms with all her future now holds.

“Before, I was like, ‘Wow, what if?’”

“Or, ‘I could see myself there eventually.’”

“And now I know…I am going to be there…That’s what’s going to happen.”

“I’m going to go there. I’m going to see myself in that singlet. And I’m going to see myself in the black and gold.”

Making her way to Iowa from the Golden State! 🐥#Hawkeyes pic.twitter.com/VqeGj3CoZH

— Iowa Women's Wrestling (@IowaW_Wrestling) December 10, 2024

Growing up in California, she looked toward older girls from the ‘Central Valley’ who’d made it big in wrestling. Now, she relishes the opportunity to provide inspiration of her own to the next generation.

“I love that kids look up to me, and I want to set a good example for them – especially going to such a big-name school,” says Gonzales.

She’ll undoubtedly do so – when she first dons the Tiger Hawk logo across her chest, when she first strides down the tunnel at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, when she hears her walkout song and emerges before thousands of onlooking Iowa fans.

(All of these are thoughts that have crossed her mind.)

And she’ll do so one moment, one ‘task’ at a time.

The method long emphasized by her father and since adopted as her own has yet to lead her astray thus far.

New challenges and environments await Isabella Gonzales as a student-athlete at the University of Iowa.

But with her always is a family and a focus that has prepared her for any obstacle she may encounter.