on theMat - International Regional Magazine Association

M
at
Me
e
l
t
t
on the
F
The Iowa Style Builds
Our Wrestling Heroes
The greatest show on mats spans the floor
of Wells Fargo Arena (top).
Logan-Magnolia cheerleaders (above, left to
right: Taylor Olsen, Courtney Oviatt, Haleigh
Rife) root for one of their boys.
Woodbury Central (Moville) wrestler Nathan
Ryan (opposite, left) meets Aaron Bartenhagen
of Durant-Bennett (Durant) on the mat in the
112-pound Class 1A semi-final.
rom the top-tier seats of the Wells Fargo Arena, it
looks like an eight-ring circus. The action in each
circle spirals kinetically to its own clock as hundreds
of pairs of young men in brightly colored singlets grapple with
one another. Young girls dressed in matching school spirit cheer
frantically and rhythmically, pounding the edge of each mat.
Outside the rings, wrestlers prepare for impending battles.
Some meditate. Some practice yoga, calisthenics, and visualization. Some vomit. Coaches give last-minute instructions, often
as mantras. Winners rejoice, losers retire from their mats in rage
or despondence, and cheer squads and coaches scurry to whichever ring will star their next wrestler, assigned on a “first mat
available” basis.
In the stands at the 92nd annual Iowa High School Athletic
Association (IHSAA) wrestling tournament, large congregations
from every county in Iowa root for their boys. Even those fans,
from 245 high schools across the state and filling the arena’s
[ story by Jim Duncan | photography by David Peterson ]
40
Iowan.com
THE IOWAN January/February 2012
41
17,000 seats on championship night, dress in uniforms and repeat
mantras. The Tri-County-Montezuma followers wear theirs on
matching t-shirts: “Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.” This is
serious business.
Sport
and Spectacle
Business is just as serious outside the arena. The January 2011
Lincoln (Des Moines) cheerleaders (top,
left to right: Paige Neel, Leslie Chareunsab,
Andrea Powers) explore possibilities
presented by Glam in the arena’s corridors.
Valley’s Kyle Larson (West Des Moines)
warms up for his 125-pound Class 3A
quarterfinal match.
42
Iowan.com
event poured $1.5 million into the Des Moines metro economy.
Hotelier Bob Conley says it’s the most important sports event
of the year, particularly for downtown’s hospitality industry.
“As far as economic impact goes, March Madness is a myth
of the past. Basketball tournaments haven’t done much for us
in decades. Those fans just drive in for their games and leave.
Wrestling fans feel a need to be here, near the event, day and
night, all week long.”
Owner Stacey Fox of Stacey’s Prom in the northwest suburb
of Urbandale has been able to capitalize on the tournament’s
widely cast economic net. “It is our busiest week of the year,
and nothing else is close. It seems like it was designed just for
us. You have to understand, for the boys it’s about wrestling,
but for the girls it’s about prom dresses,” says Fox, who provides
a shuttle bus to and from Wells Fargo Arena. “Even if only one
boy qualifies from a school, that means every girl in the school
comes to cheer for him. And to shop for prom.”
Another suburban prom shop, Glam in West Des Moines,
goes even further. The business helped sponsor last year’s
tournament and maintained a concession stand in the corridors of the arena, with dresses and accessories on display. Some
browsing cheerleaders, on condition of anonymity, revealed that
modern girls shop for something else during the tournament.
“We already bought our prom dresses, but we’re all getting
tattoos today,” explained the group’s spokesperson. “In places
our parents won’t see them.”
There’s nothing like the spectacle of
the Iowa high school wrestling tourney.
USA Today proclaimed it the state’s top
sports attraction. Over 400 credentialed
members of the media and 77,000 plus
fans pack Wells Fargo each year, selling
out Saturday night’s final session for
22 years in row. That’s the largest high
school wrestling crowd in the nation.
Ohio set a personal record last year with
66,000 and Pennsylvania drew 53,000.
Both those states have nearly four times
Iowa’s population.
Fans pour into The Well for the Friday
afternoon session (top).
National rules prohibit jewelry on certain
body parts. Turkey Valley cheerleaders (left
to right: Victoria Berst, Larissa Ruckdashel,
Abby Huber, Jordan Bruess) demonstrate their
compliance at check-in.
THE IOWAN January/February 2012
43
Victory
Why do Iowans embrace this sport more than others? Olympic
Our History with
A 171-pound Willie Miklus claims the Class 3A
title for Southeast Polk (Pleasant Hill).
Pam Larson and daughter Courtney share
a victory moment as son and brother
Ross Larson wins the 189-pound Class 2A
championship for Ballard (Huxley).
44
Iowan.com
Gold Medalist and University of Iowa Wrestling Coach Tom
Brands thinks the answer lies in the state’s heroic tradition.
“People crave a winner. Throughout the decades, in the
state of Iowa there has always been a winner in the sport of
wrestling,” he says. “Frank Gotch started it, and it continued
with Dan Gable, and it’s carried on to this day. Since the early
1900s little boys, and sometimes girls, grow up wanting to
stamp their name on the wrestling world.”
Gotch and Gable are quite arguably the two greatest
sports heroes in state history. Gotch grew up on a farm
south of Humboldt to dominate professional wrestling
in an era when it was both brutal and honest. In 1908 he
defeated Georg Hackenschmidt, “The Russian Lion,” for the
world championship. (The shoes he wore in the match are
today part of the Frank Gotch collection in the Dan Gable
Wrestling Museum in Waterloo.) He kept that title until he
retired to Humboldt in 1913, becoming one of America’s
first great sports celebrities and a favorite guest at Teddy
Roosevelt’s White House.
In 100 Greatest Sports Heroes, Mac Davis wrote: “As the idol
of millions in the United States, Canada and Mexico, Gotch
made wrestling a big-time sport in his day. He drew larger audiences than did the heavyweight champion of boxing.”
Gable overcame psychological scars, left after his sister
was murdered in the family home, to become the first Iowa
high school wrestler to complete his career undefeated. He
won a gold medal in the 1972 Olympics without giving
up a single point, an unprecedented feat that made him
as famous in Russia as he was in Iowa. As coach at the
University of Iowa from 1976 to 1997, his teams won 15
national championships, including an unprecedented nine
in a row, while inventing a mystique of dominance that
became known worldwide as “The Iowa Style.”
Victory hooked millions of Americans and hundreds
of thousands of Iowans, explains Coach Brands. “That
lure to a very tough but very rewarding sport has never
left the roots of the working class in the state of Iowa. It
is loved and appreciated by spectators and participants
alike. It is very personal and never leaves the fiber of who
Iowans are.”
Jack Hathaway (top) manages a 6-1
win to claim the 125-pound Class 3A
championship for Iowa City West.
Cedar Falls’ Cassy Herkelman (above)
became the first female wrestler to win
a match at the state tournament when
Linn-Marr (Marion)’s Joel Northrup
forfeited. The 112-pound Class 3A
wrestler lost her second match.
THE IOWAN January/February 2012
45
takedown!
The 2012 IHSAA State Wrestling
Tournament comes to Wells Fargo
Arena February 16-18 (Thursday–
Saturday). This year’s event will follow
the State Dual Team Tournament,
formerly held in Cedar Rapids but
moving to Des Moines this year to
be held Wednesday, February 15.
View complete schedules and ticket
information online at iahsaa.org.
Tipton’s 135-pound Class 1A champion
Drew Proctor revels in his victory.
Future
Three-time state champion Cory Clark (Pleasant
Hill’s Southeast Polk, top, in yellow headgear)
keeps his undefeated record intact after a
119-pound 3A match against Kegan Wakefield
(Iowa City West).
A hard-won first-place team trophy is prized by
Class 1A Logan-Magnolia wrestler Zach Hatcher.
46
Iowan.com
Heroes
IHSAA’s tournament today is designed to create heroes.
While other high school sports in Iowa are divided into as
many as six classes, wrestling uses just three, refusing to dilute
the significance of championships with volume. Contrary
to myth, smaller schools do just fine. Since 2000, Council
Bluffs Lewis Central (the 45th largest school last year) has won
the big-school class three times, Oskaloosa (51st) once, and
Waverly-Shell Rock (52nd) four times.
The tournament also creates unlikely rivals. LoganMagnolia, in western Iowa’s Loess Hills, won the small-school
title in 2005 and again last year. Don Bosco, from Gilbertville
in northeast Iowa, won all four years in between and finished
second to Logan-Magnolia last year. Only in wrestling, where
championships are determined without regional elimination,
would high school rivalries be so geographically inconvenient.
Former Don Bosco coach Tom Kettman said last year that
the Logan-Magnolia rivalry must never become a distraction.
“We simply teach taking care of our own business and the rest
will fall into place,” he explained.
As Stacey’s Prom’s Fox points out, whole towns might
follow a single potential hero to Des Moines. This year, a 43rd
annual Grand March will introduce medal winners with great
pageantry. A handful or so will be inducted into the IHSAA
Hall of Fame. Four current Iowa high school wrestlers could
well be going for something much rarer.
Only five Iowa wrestlers have ever completed their
high school careers undefeated — none since Eric Juergens
of Maquoketa in 1996. Gable was the first. Jeff Kerber of
Emmetsburg, Dan Knight of Clinton, and Jeff McGinness of
Iowa City West High did it between 1979 and 1993.
As this season began, Cory Clark of Southeast Polk and
John Meeks of Des Moines Roosevelt were on pace to complete
their fourth years in Iowa with unblemished records. Two other
Iowa wrestlers were also on the verge of a similar accomplishment, though not entirely in Iowa. Topher Carton of Davenport
Assumption did it twice in Illinois before transferring last year.
Thomas Gilman of Council Bluffs, who attends school in
Omaha, could also pull off the unbeaten career feat competing
in Nebraska.
Iowa spotlights will glare on Clark and Meeks as they try
to include their names among the Iowa Hall of Pride’s 19 other
four-time winners while completing perfect careers. They will
do it rather differently. The muscular
Meeks looks like a Greek statue and
intimidates opponents. He’s sensitive
about that. In last year’s finals, he taped
his head as precaution against illegal
head butting, something that tends to
happen to him.
“I’m not a mean guy. I just love to
win,” he explains.
Clark looks like the proverbial boy
next door. Several opponents last year
appeared to be so much bigger that one
could assume Clark was an underdog.
He compensates with relentless scrambling. Both young men personify Iowa
wrestling, a subject for which the last
word must be given to its living legend.
“The state of Iowa, given that it’s an
agricultural state and involves a lot of
independently hardworking people, fits
wrestling’s mentality,” says Dan Gable,
underscoring the discipline the sport
demands. “The more one is known
throughout the world for productive
action, the better off you can be. Both
farming and wrestling take this state to
all corners of the world.”
Sage words offered from a perspective no one else has ever attained. Yet.
THE IOWAN January/February 2012
47