On Nakamura's plaque: One of the program's most decorated wrestlers during arguably the program's most decorated era, he was a two-time NCAA All-America and three-time EIWA champion. He also was the Ivy League Wrestler of the Year as a senior and a two-time first-team All-Ivy selection. He was a member of four Ivy League championship teams. He was the Midlands champion at 157 pounds in 2001, becoming just the second Penn wrestler to win a title at one of the nation's top in-season tournaments. A two-time team captain, he also is an EIWA Hall of Fame inductee and a 1999 University Freestyle National Champion.
 
by Terry Toohey
 
If you had to use one word to describe Penn wrestling great Yoshi Nakamura, it would have to be resilient. Talented, hard-working and tough also fit, but resilient is the most appropriate description.
 
Nakamura has overcome more than his share of hurdles in his lifetime.
 
His father, Ryozo, passed away when Nakamura was 13 years old, leaving him as the man of the house. In high school, Nakamura suffered torn cartilage in his knee and had surgery two weeks before the sectional tournament as a senior. Yet he did not let that injury keep him from winning his second straight Ohio state championship.
 
At Penn, he missed the 2000 season with a back injury but bounced back to earn All-America honors as a junior and senior, and place at the NCAA Championships twice.
 
In March of 2020, Nakamura was all set to launch his own business when the COVID pandemic hit. He had to put those plans on hold and eventually started Naka Capital Partners where he is the founder and managing partner.
 
"I've learned you have to stay focused, you have to stay calm, and you have to stay resilient," Nakamura said. "That's where the grit came from. Life is good. I'm grateful for what I have."
 
Nakamura's grit and determination on the mat has earned him a very special honor: He is part of Class XIII of the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame.
 
"It means a lot," Nakamura said. "Getting in (to Penn) and going to the Wharton School and representing a different type of student-athlete that really isn't comparable to anything. You can't compare what we go through academically and athletically. My goal was to win a national championship. I didn't win NCAAs but I did win a freestyle national university championship. You don't realize what the gauntlet is what you go through. Athletes who go to other schools on scholarship and wrestle don't understand what it is to be an Ivy League student-athlete."
 
Nakamura had opportunities to go to those scholarship schools after a highly successful career at St. Edward High School in Cleveland. He was recruited by the likes of Michigan, Northwestern, Ohio State and North Carolina as well as Penn, Harvard, Princeton and Brown in the Ivy League.
 
He chose Penn because of its high academic standards as well as its highly successful wrestling program. The path to St. Edward and Penn, though, was not a smooth one.
 
"We had no money," Nakamura said. "We lived in a two-bedroom apartment. I had a younger brother and a younger sister who were five and three at the time. My mom—as much as I thought my dad was the strongest one in the family, it really was my mom. What she went through and what she sacrificed to get us to a private high school like St. Ed's and set us up to succeed to the point where I had the opportunity to get into the University of Pennsylvania is amazing.
 
"When I say we had no money, I mean we didn't have two nickels to rub together. It was peanut butter and jelly and Lipton tea for breakfast and then figure out what I'm going to have for lunch."
 
Nakamura got a late start in wrestling; He didn't begin until his freshman year at St. Edward. Yet Nakamura was no stranger to combat sports. He was involved in judo, where he was a six-time junior national champion. He picked up the sport through his parents. Nakamura's father was an eighth-degree black belt in judo and his mother was a fourth-degree black belt.
 
All that changed, though, through his father's strong network of friends. One of those friends was Tadaaki Hatta, a two-time All-America and national champion at Oklahoma State who went on to be an Olympic coach for the United States, Japan and Mexico and was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame earlier this year. Hatta's father, Ichiro, was Ryozo Nakamura's judo instructor when both lived in Japan. Both families eventually moved within 15 minutes of each other in Ohio and connected once again.
 
Hatta was the reason Nakamura went to St. Edwards and eventually Penn. Hatta convinced Nakamura to give wrestling a try in high school and one of the members of the St. Edward's team was Ben Hatta, Tadaaki's son, a state champion who also went to Penn.
 
"My wrestling style was so different than everyone else because in judo, you throw," Nakamura said. "In wrestling, it's more takedowns, muscling and brute strength. Being able to blend both and then being able to learn in a high-level program like St. Ed's, then to come to Penn with Coach (Roger) Reina and Coach Brian Dolph and having guys like Brandon Slay and Brett Matter around, I was able to use more judo in an effective way in wrestling.
 
"Judo is a lot about timing and technique. You get a lot of people pushing you, and in judo you learn to use that momentum to throw the opponent. I learned to do different things in wrestling where I used that push-pull methodology to my advantage."
 
Former teammate Brett Matter saw firsthand how Nakamura put judo to work on the wrestling mat. They were virtually the same weight, so they routinely worked out together.
 
"I think judo played a big role in making him who he was as a wrestler and still is as a person," said Matter, who won the NCAA title at 157 pounds in 2000. "Judo complements wrestling because of the athleticism you develop as a judo athlete. It's a positive for wrestling. I think the explosiveness that judo requires definitely bleeds over into wrestling. He could go from zero to 100 very, very quickly. He could flip a switch and just pop. It was impressive to watch."
 
Nakamura wound up having one of the most successful careers in Penn history. He still ranks fifth for career wins (115) and tied for second for victories in a season (36). He earned All-America honors as a junior and senior, finishing seventh at the NCAA Championships in 2001 and third in 2002 at 157 pounds. He was a two-time first-team All-Ivy selection, the Ivy League Wrestler of the Year, and a three-time Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA) champion. In 2015, he was inducted into the EIWA Hall of Fame. Nakamura also was part of four straight Ivy League championship teams.
 
While at Penn, Nakamura also won a freestyle national championship and finished third at the 2001 World Team Trials and sixth at the U.S. Olympic Trials in 2004.
 
These days he lives in Gates Mills, Ohio with his wife, daughters Arabell (13) and Penelope (10), and son Axel (4).
 
Being selected to the Hall of Fame had him reminiscing about his time at Penn, specifically what he said was the toughest match of his career, which came in the consolation semifinals at the 2002 NCAA Championships. He was the second seed in the tournament and was a little bit down after dropping a 2-1 decision in double overtime to Luke Becker of Minnesota.
 
"Usually, I wouldn't hear anything in a match because I was so zoned in and focused," Nakamura said.
 
This time, though, he said he could hear the crowd, the referee and Coach Reina, who was yelling to Nakamura to watch his back while he was in the middle of a takedown scramble with his opponent.
 
"All of a sudden I'm like, 'Whoa, I'm not going out like this,'" Nakamura said. "I snapped out of it and turned the match around, took the guy down, scored points on him and won the match (7-5). After that match, I looked myself in the mirror and said, 'Are you going to finish your career with a win or with a loss? Who are you? Are you a winner or a loser?' I said, 'I'm a winner. What do winners do? They win.'
 
"That's my motto still to this day," he continued. "I believe if you've been through the fire, if you've run the gauntlet, and you have the grit from all the obstacles life has thrown at you, you become a winner. Losing is not an option. I didn't win a national championship, but because of that loss and learning experience there have been many other, harder obstacles I've overcome. In life, you can sit back and let others win or you can be the winner."
 
Nakamura pinned Shane Roller of Oklahoma State in that third-place match to close out his collegiate career with a victory.
 
"I'm grateful for all the hurdles that have been thrown in front of me," Nakamura said. "It just shows that you can get through stuff."