As the bouts began, the women tried to find a room to change. They were unsuccessful. Instead, three women wrapped their mawashis around themselves while they crouched behind the near-empty bleachers.

“I want it corset-tight,” Soule said.

Tran wanted to compete in the middleweight division, but there was no one to fight. So she entered the open division, where she finished third.

“You have to trust your body,” said Kendra Brinker, a massage therapist from Idaho Falls who will compete internationally for the United States. She fought in electric blue eye shadow and pinned her hair in a regal Mohawk.

Hamilton, one of the smallest wrestlers who qualified to compete at the world championships in August in Taipei, won her weight division, as did Soule and Tran. None were sure whether they could afford the trip.

“If you spend your money doing sumo, you don’t have money to do other things,” Hamilton said. “It demands a lot. And you have to make choices.”

As the day wound down, Celine VanHoye, a 125-pounder from Highland Village, Tex., watched a 400-pound man make a rhino-like charge on an opponent. VanHoye, 18, won a junior open title that morning and a silver medal in the women’s lightweight competition in the afternoon.

She stood with her arms clasped, quietly studying the enormous man’s moves. Her mawashi was still wrapped around her waist.

Could she take him on? She wrinkled her brow.

“I could try,” she said.