Tarleen & Tarnpreet Saroya – Wrestling Success Story

The Journey of the Soraya Sisters: Wrestling Champions in the Making

Meet Tarleen and Tarnpreet Kaur Soraya, twin sisters from a farm who are rewriting the narrative of women’s wrestling. Their journey began at the tender age of nine, spurred by their father’s enthusiasm for the sport. Over the years, their hard work and determination have transformed them into formidable opponents on the wrestling mats.

Chapter Overview:

0:00 – Introduction to the Soraya Sisters
0:07 Early Wrestling Days
01:23 Training Regimen and Challenges
2:16 Joining LPS and Weightlifting
03:21 The LPS Experience
04:08 Mental and Physical Struggles
07:25 Sacrifices and Dedication
11:17 Future Aspirations and Achievements
12:34 College Journey and Reflections

Early Beginnings

The Soraya sisters’ introduction to wrestling came unexpectedly. Their father, a wrestler in his homeland of India, noticed their eagerness and potential, surpassing their brother’s interest. Initially, wrestling seemed like a means to channel their sibling rivalry, as fights at home were common. They grew up in an environment that cultivated their physical abilities, practicing on ropes and monkey bars before they ever set foot on an official wrestling mat.

Their first wrestling practice was an enlightening experience. Unfamiliar with the norms, they showed up in their swim practice pajamas. Yet, their talent shined through, as their natural ability put them ahead of peers with years of experience. It was during this time they learned the “Nelson” move, which quickly became their signature.

Training and Growth

Their training regime was unorthodox yet effective. Without access to weightlifting equipment, their father enforced a rigorous schedule of push-ups and bodyweight exercises, instilling discipline and strength. This regimen laid the foundation for their physical development until they were ready to incorporate weightlifting in high school.

Under the guidance of Coach Neal and later Coach Clance, the sisters’ training expanded to a more structured program that included lifting. Despite initial muscle soreness and challenges, they found a supportive environment at LPS, a gym known for its advanced strength and conditioning programs.

Challenges and Sacrifices

Wrestling is not without its challenges. The sisters faced significant setbacks, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when they had to pause their training. Upon returning, they struggled to reclaim their dominance on the mat, which tested their perseverance.

Their lifestyle also meant sacrifices. Socializing took a backseat as they prioritized training and competitions. Dietary changes were essential; despite cultural traditions advising against meat, they became avid consumers for performance benefits, choosing personal goals over societal norms.

Strength and Motivation

Their success is not solely attributed to physical prowess; mental strength plays a pivotal role. The Soraya sisters credit their resilience to the life lessons wrestling instills. They have aspirations beyond the sport — aiming to be Olympic and World Champions and harboring dreams of entrepreneurship.

Onward to New Horizons

As they prepare for new challenges, including a full scholarship to attend college in Oregon, Tarleen and Tarnpreet are excited yet anxious. They are stepping into this new chapter, well-aware they’ll face ups and downs, but comforted by each other’s presence and their unwavering faith.

Conclusion

The Soraya sisters embody dedication, grit, and an inspiring refusal to conform to normalcy — defining their path with fierce commitment. Their journey is far from over. Their story motivates not only aspiring athletes but anyone who dares to pursue their dreams against all odds.

>> Watch more of our athlete success stories here.

TRANSCRIPTION:

I’m Tarleen Kaur Soraya. I’m 19 years old. I’m Tarnpreet Kaur Soraya. I’m 19 years old. And we’re the Soraya sisters. We started wrestling when we were 9 years old. My dad wrestled when he was back home in India. And he wanted to put my brother into the sport. But he saw that we had the potential to go in it too.

And we were more eager than my brother to join. Yes. He put us in. We were at home. Sometimes we’d fight a lot. Just like that. So he was like, I’ll put you guys with him. Yeah. We like grew up on a farm. So there was like a ropes and like monkey bars so we just wake up and climb the rope and I’d be on the monkey bars.

Yeah. The first time we went to a wrestling practice was back in like 2013 and we didn’t have like wrestling shoes. We didn’t even know what to wear. We were, we didn’t even know, anything about wrestling. We just showed up after swimming practice in our PJs. And yeah, the coach provided us shoes and we just went along with the practice, but we were better than some of the kids that had been doing it for a few years.

Our very first practice, we learned a move called the Nelson that soon became our infamous move. And the first time she did it on me, I started crying, because I had never felt that type of pain before. I didn’t know what wrestling was. And when she did that wrestling move on me, that was like the most pain I felt in my life.

But we got used to like the pain and then yeah, you’re more gritty When we were doing wrestling, we weren’t lifting any weights. My dad would just like the biggest do push ups all day Like for example, like we got in trouble like I don’t know we didn’t do a chore he tells us to go do push ups, or, we woke up, he’s go do push ups he was just always telling us to go do push ups yeah, we just did a lot of push ups, not, yeah.

I think the first thing he would ask every time he entered the door is, did you guys do your push ups, and, if we didn’t do our push ups, we’d have to do more push ups. It was like a minimum of a hundred push ups every single day. It was like, yeah. That was like, I would say mostly what we would do when we were younger, just a bunch of push ups, and then we started incorporating pull ups, dips, but at wrestling practices, we do a lot of bodyweight exercises that the coaches would tell us, but not really any weightlifting.

We found LPS through our coach, Coach Neal. He knew Coach Clance prior and he never wanted us to lift weights until the summer of grade eight because he wanted us to get our technique done before we could get that muscle and put it all together. So before then, he never let us even look at weights.

So the first time we ever came to LPS, my dad is so excited. He’s just like Coach Clance. He’s super strict on being on time, and he knew that it was in North York and we lived pretty far, so he estimated the time wrong, and we ended up coming to the gym before Coach Clance, and we were like, I think, half an hour early, and Coach Clance, we’d never been introduced, so he just let us in, and we were sitting in his office for half an hour till the rest of the crew showed up, and then we did a minute.

And I remember doing like a lot of muscle snatches and back squats, and I was really sore. And I had never felt that type of pain in my traps. I think Coach Clance allowed some kids from that organization to come work out here at LPS. And we were just doing a group session, and then at the end we did, What made me want to stay at LPS?

I think about this often. I don’t think there is another gym or any sort of strength and conditioning place that offers what LPS offers. To put it just say how it is. It’s I feel like we’re miles ahead of what all the other strength and conditioning gyms are doing. The strength I got here on that wall, it says steroid like effects.

Sometimes I’m just in my resting room, training, doing the warm up. And I’ll go into a front handspring, and I could feel my spring. I know it’s from all those clean snatches and my spring from my squat. I would say the reason we stayed is because, like, when you walk in, you could just feel the environment’s different here.

There’s a different atmosphere. The way everyone interacts with each other, they props each other. The coaches all have a wide base of knowledge. And they’re all very kind and helpful. Before what made me want to quit was just how difficult wrestling can be. I feel like wrestling the sport in itself is one of the most grueling sports out there because it’s so demanding physically, mentally, emotionally.

There was a point where I would let my external Environment affect me on the mat to the point where mentally I just was never there and I would be like getting beat up and losing to girls who I should be like running circle around and that just really messed with me. I was like, I needed I, I luckily had time off because of COVID.

But I was able to come around that. Sometimes I would say I still think about it. Like I haven’t faced those girls again after that, but I’m going to. I went up boy classes just to be with them again. And I’m looking forward to it. Yeah. I would say after COVID, like taking so much time off, like a lot of our competitors didn’t.

And like it really showed like when we stepped back onto the mats and like we were like a lot behind like before covid like we were a lot ahead and there was just no competition between us and like when we came back we were just getting smashed left to right and like It was just like a bruise kicked to our egos and we’re not where we were.

And you had to put in a lot of work to just even get back or start competing with those girls. And because of how like tough that was, like mentally and like physically, like we were working out like multiple times a day. It got tough. So you like wanted to quit. But at the end, like we were able to And like having that feeling of I worked so hard for this and I’m going to keep pushing and I did win.

That’s what like kept me going. I feel like I don’t really focus like too much on my competitors. I focus more on like improving myself. And like only when I’m like in the practice room and I see like she’s not like she’s competing with me then I’ll compete with her but I’m more focusing on myself I’m like trying to improve myself.

I think on those down days when You’re just not giving it your all, you’re just not feeling it that day, and I look over and she is, and even sometimes my coach will say what’s going on with you, and she’s doing this, what are you doing, then I have to pick it up, cause it’s like, it’s just like a reflection in the mirror, like this is what I could be doing, it’s a clear representation of what I could be doing, so you gotta get there.

I love all the coaches here at LPS, I think they’re all like, I have a different relationship with all of them, but it’s if one of them were gone from the pack, it would be would it feel the same? For Coach Clarence, I would say anytime he’s at the gym, I always make my maxes. I was telling him like the other day, I feel like he’s like my good luck charm or something.

Cause when he’s in the gym, it’s very rare that I miss a max. And then just the coaches that we see on a regular, like day to day basis, like Coach Menta, Coach Mel I feel like they bring the energy and they make me really look forward to coming to practice. And every day they push me.

And yeah, same with Coach Matt. He’s always, he’s a bit crazy sometimes. Pretty pushy, yeah. I really appreciate like what all the coaches do for us. Like I feel like when we let them know hey we got a competition coming up, they all put in the effort and help us get prepared for our competition.

And they’re always pushing us really hard. I think sometimes how me and my sister operate, we’re really like black or white. Like when we get in that gray area, we start to feel really guilty. So we’re like, We just want it or we don’t. And I remember in grade 10 is when we in grade 9 we didn’t really have friends.

And then in grade 10, we made a lot of friends. And we noticed how it would hinder our performances just a bit. We kinda, yeah, we’re like, we don’t need friends. We’re each other’s friends. We I’m, like, people sometimes look at us crazy you guys don’t have friends, but you don’t need a friend when you have a twin sister and even, like, all my other siblings.

I feel like that was, like, one of the sacrifices that we made is I was saying I can’t be distracted with friends. Another sacrifice is religiously, we’re not supposed to be, like, eating meat and Like any sort of like animal products like so milk or like eggs milk, sorry milk is okay, but not eggs or fish but we noticed that when we did go vegetarian for a while it hindered our performance as well we became like avid meat eaters like Obsessed with red wheat white wheat like if my mom made pasta for dinner And there was like ground beef on the side.

We’re like, no mom. There can’t be any faster than just the ground beef. Every night at dinner, it’s just me. We just want to meet mom. I feel like we sacrificed like I guess being normal like Sometimes like we get made fun of oh you look like a man like We have to sacrifice like even sometimes my mom thinks like you guys look way too muscular Like I want you guys to look pretty like she feels like that sometimes and like I feel we also sacrificed.

Yeah, like our time We’re always putting in the work. I feel like yeah, especially even what we eat. You want to be going out with the family or with your friends, but you can’t. You’ve got practice the next day, you’ve got to get to bed, you’ve got to shower, and go right to sleep again. I think for us though it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice at this point.

This just feels like this is my life, this is what I’m meant for, this is my journey and my path. And it feels like to anybody else it would seem like a sacrifice because it’s not considered the normal. But for us I feel like at this point it feels less like a sacrifice and it feels like this is just what I need to do to be and become who I want to be.

I think that when we’re on the platforms, I feel like, I feel a little weird when no one’s on the platform doing something. Because whenever we get on the platform, it’s me and her and we’re together. It’s one after the other. I know volume D is supposed to push the pace, but even sometimes you have to tell us, like on Max Day, it’s guys, slow down just a bit.

It’s one after the other, and I feel like, That is the only way that I know. Cause I feel weird if no one’s on the platform doing something. I think that helps me because, like that kind of conditioning that it builds, it translates to wrestling. Like when you’re in a match and, you’re mentally fatigued.

That’s what kind of helps you in the match push through that for me Like wrestling matches aren’t one like in the actual wrestling match. They’re one in your preparation So like you got to be if you want to be the champion, you got to be doing everything like the champion You got to be sleeping like a champion eating like a champion tying your laces like a champion so like even like when I walk into the gym, like I’m like I go straight face.

Even my brother sometimes tells me you’re looking mean you don’t have a smile on your face. I don’t even if I do look like that, I don’t really mind. That helps me prepare and dominate the weights and get prepared for my matches, get prepared for the tournament.

I feel like everything up until this point has like really prepared us. I feel like a lot of the core values our parents have instilled in us and like what we’ve learned on the mats, what we’ve learned here at LPS, I feel we’ll be like really successful. Like when we get there, I don’t know, like we’ll face challenges, but yeah, I feel we’ll get through them and they’ll just make us stronger.

I think with wrestling, wrestling teaches you so many like life lessons. So when, so my aspirations for when I’m done wrestling are to just be like a badass entrepreneur. I want to own my own business. I don’t want to work for anyone. I want to be like, I want to set a standard. Like the standard is the standard.

For in terms of wrestling, I want to be a multiple time world champion at the 68 kilogram division. And that’s like the Olympic weight class too. So before I retired, I want to go for the. She runs at the Olympics. And I want to not only place a medal at them, I want to, I want that gold medal.

For me, I want to become a multiple time world champion, multiple time Pan Am champion, and a multiple time Olympic champion. My accomplishments thus far are, I’m a 2023 off the champion at the weight 65 kilos. I also placed second at sorry, third at the nationals. and 2022 at 65 kilos. I’m a 2023 off the champion at 61 kilos and a 2023 bonds medalist at the national champions at championships at 62 kilos.

So we recently just got a full ride and an additional 1000 each offer to go down to Oregon at the college. I’m called Community College for two years. My feelings towards it are very mixed. Some days I’m like very excited yes, I got a fresh new start, fresh feeling I’m gonna go out there, new coaches, bunch of new drilling partners.

I’m feeling good. And then other days I’m like, I don’t know how to cook. I don’t clean my room. I’m like freaking out. I’m like, my mom’s not gonna be there. And I’m like just thinking in my bed, it’s late at night, I can’t fall asleep. So I’m like What am I going to do out there? But I think what always helps me is I’m always going to have God and my twin sister out there with me.

It’s like whenever I’m going to be facing any sort of challenge, I know I’ll have God and basically I’ll have my twin sister too. I think my younger self, like I really respect my younger self because some days I feel like she’s putting in more work than I sometimes feel like I am putting in now.

Just in terms of like mentally, physically, I think we’re both doing okay. But mentally, I feel like she, she gives zero zero, like nothing could faze her. But now I feel like, as you grow older, you like started things get to you, you have you get your own insecurities. And I think she would be telling me right now, screw everybody, you don’t need to feel any sort of way about anything like You know what you have to do?

Go do it. Don’t let the other background noise distract you. Advice I would give my younger self would be to have unwavering faith in God, because that’s what’s gonna get you there. You just gotta keep your head down, put in the work. You don’t gotta really listen to what others are saying, because they don’t know.

They don’t know who you are or what your goals are. You know what your goals are, and you just gotta put in the work.