Wrestler Overcomes Childhood Injury to Win New York State Title

Just like any adoptive parent, Miguel Rodriguez will never forget the day he met his future son – August 23, 2016.

That day, after he had finished working summer school, Rodriguez and his wife, Marissa, headed over to Skudin Surf, an organization that offers surfing instruction for the Long Island community of Long Beach, New York, to meet a young boy who they were told had suffered severe facial trauma as the result of a chimpanzee attack.

The boy’s name was Dunia Sibomana. He had come to America on a medical VISA and was staying with his second host family when he first came in contact with the Rodriguez family. The connection he sparked with these new acquaintances, however, was all but instantaneous.

“We met him on a Friday, and that was it,” Miguel recalled. “By Sunday he was staying with us, and the rest is history.”

As the couple spent more and more time with Dunia, hosting him almost every weekend until he moved in full time in the summer of 2017, they also learned in further detail about the unthinkable tragedy that brought him to the United States.

When he was just six years old, Dunia, his four-year-old brother and another relative were rushed by chimpanzees while they played in a jungle in their native Democratic Republic of the Congo. Dunia’s brother and the other relative were both killed in the attack, but Dunia survived thanks to a Virunga National Park ranger who found him and sought emergency care.

The chimpanzees completely destroyed Dunia’s upper and lower lips along with much of the muscular tissue in his face, and bit off the middle finger on his left hand – a digit he and Rodriguez now lightheartedly refer to as “Dunski.”

He underwent a couple of preliminary surgeries in the Congo, but the severity of his injuries required reparative procedures that could not be obtained in his homeland.

“Because he didn’t have an upper or lower lip, his mouth couldn’t retain saliva, so he was drooling and dehydrated all the time,” Rodriguez said. “And he couldn’t really eat because every time he would try, he would have to bring his head up to keep the food in his body. He was losing weight dramatically, so it was decided that the best thing for him was to come over here and have more surgeries.”

Dunia was then transported thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean to Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, where he met Dr. Alexander Dagum, executive vice chair of surgery and chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Stony Brook Medicine, who agreed to perform the operations free of charge.

The first surgery at Stony Brook, which took place in January 2016, lasted 12 hours, as Dunia’s lips were reconstructed using tissue from his left forearm and one of his thighs. He has had a total of 14 surgeries to date, and he will need more in the future as his body continues to grow.

Weekends with Miguel and Marissa meant Dunia became immersed in their activities schedules. With Miguel, who is head coach of the Long Beach Middle School wrestling team, an assistant for the high school team, and director of the outstanding Long Beach Gladiators youth wrestling program, that meant Dunia would inevitably find his way to the mat, even if it was just as a spectator.

“He wasn’t allowed to do any physical activities yet because he still had a lot of surgeries that needed to be done, but he started traveling with the youth team in the offseason and he started showing interest in it, started liking it,” Rodriguez said. “He would have on a helmet full of gauze pads and he would be wrestling on the side (at tournaments) in full stitches. He would have 70 or 80 stitches in his face and head, and he would still be trying to roll around.”

Asked why he enjoyed wrestling (in a video package produced by Greater Long Island Media Group), Dunia responded, “it’s an aggressive sport, and it got me tougher and stronger.”

Once he reached a more advanced stage in his recovery, Dunia was signed up to start wrestling with the Gladiators. And while there was no way of forecasting his meteoric rise at that time, both Miguel and Long Beach head wrestling coach Ray Adams quickly discovered that Dunia possessed some special traits that would serve him well as he moved forward.

“Right away, we saw that he was full of energy,” Rodriguez said. “He was very competitive; he was having fun and he was super athletic. He had that little spark that you can recognize in an athlete and he was just way more athletic than a lot of the kids who had been wrestling for a long time.”

“The kid works harder than anybody and he’s a good listener and is very coachable,” Adams said. “He picks things up very quickly. He listens to what we’re trying to do with him, and he goes out there and implements it.”

In fact, Dunia’s wrestling progression happened so quickly over his first four years that it prompted an intriguing decision for Rodriguez and Adams to make ahead of the 2021-22 season. Under New York State Public High School Athletic Association (NYSPHSAA) bylaws, seventh- and eighth-grade students may participate in junior varsity and varsity competition provided they pass the physical maturity standards within the state education department’s Athletic Placement Process.

The coaches opted to promote Dunia to the varsity team and he proved his readiness emphatically, rolling through opponents to the tune of a 31-2 record and capturing a Nassau County Division I championship at 102 pounds, as well as the No. 3 seed in his weight class at the NYSPHSAA Wrestling Individual Championships.

For most 14-year-old eighth-graders, squaring off with the very best high school wrestlers in New York – some of them three or four years older and most of them significantly more experienced – on the state’s biggest stage would be an unattainable challenge. Beyond the disparity in physical development, the mental and emotional fortitude required to prevail in such a high-pressure environment is seldom seen in a middle school student. However, it goes without saying that not many eighth-graders see the world from Dunia Sibomana’s perspective.

“He is very mature for his age and he’s very humble,” said Rodriguez. “Along with his work ethic, I think those are some of the reasons why he is where he is. And for a young man who has been through so much in life, he’s very thankful for the opportunities that he has now. We talk about things like that.”

“He has a great temperament for (wrestling),” said Adams. “He never gets too high and never gets too low – always very evenkeeled – and that’s a great quality to have if you’re going to going to be successful at the highest levels.”

And successful he was.

At the state tournament, less than a month removed from officially becoming part of the Rodriguez family, Dunia showed just how unintimidated he was in the presence of New York’s finest 102-pounders. He dispatched 14th-seeded Freddy Pagan of Fulton in the first round and No. 11 seed Mason Mangialino of Comsewogue in the quarterfinal, then defeated second-seeded Luke Satriano of Montgomery Valley Central High School in the semifinal, with the latter two victories both earned by major decision. That set up a winner-take-all state championship bout with Chenango Forks’ Ryan Ferrara, the No. 1 overall seed.

Providing an example of Dunia’s ability to listen and apply new tactics, Adams pointed to Dunia’s execution in the final match, as he pinned Ferrara just 1-minute, 32-seconds in.

“(Ferrara) kept doing this one move where he was stepping up with his leg,” Adams said. “So, we watched the video of him leading up to the match, and our other coach, Coach Leo (Palacio), said, ‘get Dunia down here right away,’ and told him about how (Ferrara) steps up with his left leg every time and what to do to counter it. He did it, and he pinned the guy.”

“I really can’t believe it,” Dunia said in a post-match interview with LIHerald.com. “There was definitely so much competition and I’m so excited to win.

“What a great moment for me, my coaches and my family,” he told Newsday.

Toward the end of that same Greater Long Island video, Dunia is shown smothering Miguel in a celebratory embrace. Seconds later, there’s footage of him doing the same with Marissa, his baby sister, and his other family members who were in attendance to support him. In both instances, Dunia wears an unmistakable smile across his face.

In a way, these frames depict major victories along two separate journeys in Dunia Sibomana’s young life. One is his triumph on the mat; the other is the smile itself.

Reporting materials from Greater Long Island Media Group, Inc., Stony Brook University News and LIHerald.com were used in this article.