Jerry Stravia and the unlikely rise of Dickinson girls wrestling

DICKINSON — On a bitterly cold Tuesday night in January, the Dickinson girls wrestling team makes the walk to their garage-like practice facility on the outskirts of the high school.

Inside, head coach Jerry Stravia is finishing up practice with a game of “cat and mouse,” an iteration of the popular children's game duck, duck, goose, used to test wrestlers' agility and speed.

Moments later, Jerry gets tagged and tries to track down one of his athletes, calling himself “agile like a gazelle” as he scampers around the mat.

It's a scene that five years ago felt unimaginable, with the simple concept of a girls' wrestling team in Dickinson being treated like a pipe dream.

But even 15 years ago, it was something doctors thought could be impossible.

“This was probably the last thing I thought I was going to do,” Stravia said, entering his fourth year as head coach of the girls wrestling team.

Battle after battle

That doubt was cast well before Stravia found his way to Dickinson in 2019.

A lifelong wrestler, Stravia enlisted in the U.S. Army after leaving Dakota Wesleyan University in 2005. During a deployment to Iraq in March 2007, his unit’s armored vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device.

The blast left Stravia with a traumatic brain injury and multiple other injuries. Though he remained with his unit for a time, his condition eventually required a medical evacuation. Over the next year, he was transferred through multiple military hospitals before ultimately being medically retired from the Army in San Antonio.

What followed was a decade-long battle to reclaim his health.

As many veterans face, he struggled with post traumatic stress disorder and lingering brain trauma, herniated discs and vertigo, all from his time overseas in Iraq.

“I was told I would be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life,” he said.

His wife, Rebecca, was the one constant through it all, by his side through Veterans Affairs facilities and nursing homes.

“My wife is my hero,” Stravia says, choking up.

A call from above

In 2015, Stravia noticed his body starting to cooperate with him again. A follow-up MRI revealed that the seven herniated discs in his back were no longer present.

Stravia believes the change was more than medical. He credits his faith for what he describes as a turning point in his recovery.

“That was 10 crazy years of my life,” Stravia said, “Figuring out how to be a human and dealing with some ups and downs from that, physical, emotional and spiritual.”

It was the spiritual side of that journey that he really leaned into, finding strength and direction through his faith.

“I just came convinced," he said. “I came to know God as a good God who cares about us and loves us, and that became my battle cry.”

It was a battle cry that would soon echo in the halls of churches in South Dakota. Soon after, he joined the First United Methodist Church in Mitchell as an associate pastor. When he and his family moved to Dickinson in 2019, he quickly became involved in the community.

He and his family help founded Prairie Winds Church, a nonprofit volunteer ministry run by three couples in Dickinson. Stravia is one of six pastors at the church, and still speaks to this day. It’s a job that gives him the opportunity to "yell from the rooftops," something his athletes on the wrestling team say is something he's never been afraid to do.

Kolbi McElwain – who Stravia calls “his prodigy” – had a list of adjectives to describe him as a coach.

“He is a very rambunctious man,” she said. “He has a lot of spirit and a lot of energy. And I feel like sometimes he might scare some girls with how excited and like, overly happy he is.”

The injuries Stravia suffered in Iraq in 2007 would eventually earn him a Purple Heart, though not right away. A mishap in his military paperwork delayed the award for years, leaving it stalled while Stravia moved on with his life.

“I got tired of trying to fight for something like the Purple Heart,” Stravia said. “It wasn’t fun, and it started to feel dishonorable.”

In 2024, the mistake was finally corrected, and Stravia was awarded the Purple Heart at his alma mater, Dakota Wesleyan, presented by U.S Senator Mike Rounds.

The moment brought a mix of emotions, but also a sense of closure, ending a chapter he had long stopped expecting to finish.

“I had just got this call from the senator's office.” Stravia said, “Filled with emotions: anger, happiness, bewilderment, because I've given up on it so many times. And they were like, ‘We got it done’”

Divine Intervention

Through every battle, one constant remained: wrestling.

When Stravia's kids began to show interest in the sport, he joined the local wrestling club. However, the desire for girls' wrestling in the area wasn't there. The boys team had just come off a Western Dakota Association Championship and a Duals State Championships, alluding that the talent was there.

He began gauging interest among girls ages 12-18 in the community, hoping there would be enough to start a team.

“We were told we needed six girls to start the program," Stravia laughed, “so the first year it was a like, just find six girls and try to keep them out for four months.”

The interest stretched from Dickinson to Belfield. McElwain, who attends Belfield High School, joined the team, and, through her own admission, quit after two weeks.

“Being the first girl wrestler in Dickinson, everyone was like, why are you wrestling in a boys' sport? So it kind of got to me,” McElwain said.

She’d eventually decide to come back to the team in her sophomore year. By then, the program had more than doubled, eclipsing 30 girls. It turned out to be a wise decision. In her sophomore campaign, she was one of only a handful of Mavericks to place in the state tournament.

Clancy Meyer began her career partly as a wager between families.

“I started out in sixth grade. I wrestled on the boys team with my older brother,” Meyer said. “It started out as a bet between my cousin Natalie, that if she went out, I would go out, because our families would always joke around about us becoming wrestlers. And eventually, the joke just became reality.”

Despite not winning a dual in their inaugural season, the interest in the sport continued to grow. Two years later, over 50 girls came out.

But not everyone was convinced.

“I'd be going to the grocery store, going to Menards, and somebody would always say, ‘I don't see why you think girls have to wrestle,’” Stravia said. “And I said, ‘I guess I just can't understand why you think that they don't.’”

Through it all, Stravia has not wavered in injecting energy and excitement into a program just half a decade into its inception.

The team's future

In 2024, Meyer became the first Dickinson wrestler to win a WDA individual title, and both McElwain and Meyer have eyes on a state championship after strong showings in this year's meets.

Beyond the wins and losses, it's the life lessons that drove Stravia to create the program, and it's also what's kept him in it almost five years later.

“Why should the sport that provides the best way to make people better just be for our young men?” Stravia said. “Especially at a time when there's so much vying for our young women's attention with social media and all of this other stuff.”

What felt like a pipe dream just five years ago, now feels inevitable.

If one of his wrestlers winds up competing for a state championship in late February, Stravia will be ready.

“I’ve got my suit and tie all ready to go,” he said.

Link: https://www.thedickinsonpress.com/news/local/jerry-stravia-and-the-unlikely-rise-of-dickinson-girls-wrestling