By Ryan Smith
Days drenched in sunlight, nights in the limelight: in the business of looking good — better than good — that’s work.
Such is life for Ivan (Matt) Rusilko, the 26-year-old Meadville native who currently holds the title of Mister USA. And he’s just arrived in Korea to compete in Mister World 2010, the largest male models’ pageant in, well, the world.
The 17-day event is the second in as many years in which Rusilko’s competed on the global
stage. He was crowned Mister USA in the first-ever Mister USA pageant in Boston in 2008, and traveled to Taiwan to represent the United States in that year’s Mister International pageant, where he placed among the top 15 finalists.
This time out, “I’m definitely going to try my best to win it,” Rusilko said during a recent hometown stop by way of Las Vegas and en route to Korea.
“Mostly, people think it’s just standing up there in your skivvies and flexin’ it” a la muscle-ripped bodybuilders, he said, but in male pageantry — especially in a contest to be crowned the most handsome and desirable man in the world — “you have to look good with your clothes on and off.”
The contest’s judges also look at other attributes, according to Rafa Delfin, the director of the pageant firm that owns and produces Mister USA. “What sets Mister World apart from the other male pageants is that besides physical looks, it also values talent, intelligence, volunteerism and community service,” Delfin said in a recent news release. “They’re looking for someone who could be the ideal role model for young men all over the world, and Ivan — with his unique good looks and impressive background — clearly and strongly fits the bill.”
A son of Meadville residents Susan and David Rusilko, the 2002 Meadville Area High School graduate is a fourth-year medical student at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (he took a year off to tend to his Mister USA duties) and has routinely done much of his course work at Meadville Medical Center. After returning from Mister World at the start of April, he plans to move to Miami, Fla. to complete a one-year osteopathy internship at Westchester General Hospital.
“My medical career is my number one career,” he said.
A certified sports nutritionist, Rusilko’s also a former Bulldogs hockey standout, having been ranked fifth in career goals (142) and points (289).
He’s into photography and the outdoors, and he continues to call Meadville home. Rural northwestern Pennsylvania “is my Mecca,” he said.
And when he’s here, he said, he considers himself to be on vacation from the work-is-a-party/partying-is-work world of the aesthetes.
“That’s why I play Scrabble with Susie here every night,” he said with a smile at his mother.
Whether it’s in the form of a Scrabble night, a backyard fire, a hunting trip or a hike in the woods, that sense of ‘home,’ he said, “is amazing. It really is. I wouldn’t trade that for any Fashion Week in the world.”
Ryan Smith can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at rsmith@meadvilletribune.com.
