Iowa
Iowa women’s wrestling coach Clarissa Chun awarded USA Wrestling Women’s Coach of the Year
Iowa wrestling’s Clarissa Chun previews NCWWCs
Iowa wrestling’s Clarissa Chun discusses team going for Olympic Trial spots, Kylie Welker’s impact on team
Iowa women’s wrestling coach Clarissa Chun has been awarded the USA Wrestling Women’s Coach of the Year award, her second coach of the year award this season.
Chun led the Iowa Hawkeyes to a team title in their inaugural season of competition, as well as coaching six individual national champions in Emilie Gonzalez, Ava Bayless, Felicity Taylor, Reese Larramendy, Marlynne Deede and Kylie Welker. In total, Iowa had 12 NCWWC All-Americans and 15 qualifiers.
“We’re just getting started,” Chun said after the NCWWC’s. “Our women just grew closer each moment and opportunity out on the mat. They know what it means to fight for Iowa.”
Iowa concluded its dual season with a 16-0 regular season record, outscoring its opponents 593-108 in duals this season. If you take away the three matchups at the Las Vegas Desert Duals, where the Hawkeyes were without several starters and were forced to forfeit multiple matches with several wrestlers competing at Senior Nationals, Iowa outpaced opponents 510-54.
A total of nine Hawkeye women qualified for the US Olympic Trials, the six title winners plus Rose Cassioppi, Brianna Gonzalez and Nyla Valencia.
Chun was awarded the NCWWC Coach of the Year award following the Hawkeyes’ title in Cedar Rapids. In addition to that, she also won the USA Today Woman of the Year in the state of Iowa.
The Hawkeyes, under Chun, are primed for another successful season in 2025, returning four national title winners and 10 All-Americans to the fold as well as a talented crew of freshmen.
Eli McKown covers high school sports and wrestling for the Des Moines Register. Contact him at Emckown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @EMcKown23.
SOLDIER, Iowa (KTIV) – After the riders rode off from Turin, they made their way down Highway 37 onto their second stop of the morning in Soldier Iowa.
The Soldier Volunteer Fire Department hosted a breakfast for riders and community members to enjoy on Sunday, July 19. Riders rolled into town so early, and the fire department opened their doors an hour early.
“We’re a town of less than 200 and to serve this amount of people and this great of people, it’s fantastic,” said Warren Jensen, the department’s fire chief.
There is no specific plan for the money raised for the department, but the Jensen says that it will help keep them running and serving those in their community.
“We try to stop at all the fire departments or local legion calls for sure because they definitely have the best breakfasts for sure,” said Andy Bernholtz, a RAGBRAI rider from Ankeny, Iowa.
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What is an indictment? Here’s what you should know
In American courts, an indictment is a formal notification that an individual has been charged with a crime.
A shortfall in funding is endangering one of the last lifelines for imprisoned Iowans seeking to challenge their criminal convictions.
Affiliated with the national Innocence Project, the Midwest Innocence Project investigates and litigates wrongful conviction claims across five states, including Iowa. That work is at risk after recent federal funding cuts have forced the organization, founded in 2001, to slash staff, and raise the possibility it may have to close altogether.
Ken Nixon ― a board member who was himself exonerated and freed from a life term because of the work of innocence advocates ― said the recent federal cuts have affected close to half the Midwest Innocence Project’s annual budget. The loss of funding has crippled the group’s ability to pursue the time- and resource-intensive work of proving a jury got it wrong.
“We’re accumulating documents that are sometimes decades old, tracking down people that have moved and may be in different states, having to travel sometimes. That requires a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of manpower for cases that can be extremely old sometimes,” Nixon said. “So, when you factor in that the Midwest Innocence Project lost close to $1 million in funding just from the federal government alone, that’s a problem.”
The project already has had to cut a quarter of its 12-person staff. It has enough money to continue operating through the end of the year, Nixon said, and is actively fundraising online, but if its finances don’t improve it faces further cuts or even closure.
“If the Midwest Innocence Project eventually has to close its doors, which I don’t think it will, just to be clear, that would affect lots of people,” he said. “We are the only organization in the region fighting for this cause, and the last resort for a lot of innocent people. It would be a travesty if that were the end result.”
Currently, the organization is serving 21 clients, Nixon said, with 10 cases under investigation and 11 in active litigation. Some of those cases are in Iowa, where the project has teamed up with the Iowa Public Defender’s Office to represent clients like James Mayberry, who is challenging his conviction in a 1985 Iowa City murder.
Erica Nichols Cook, who leads the public defender’s wrongful conviction unit, said the Midwest Innocence Project has been an important partner not just in litigating cases, but in research and advocacy to prevent future false guilty verdicts.
“They’ve just played such an integral role that losing their experience and knowledge and advocacy will set Iowa back even further in our efforts to ensure we have a more just system,” she said, noting she faces certain constraints as a public employee. “Midwest Innocence Project has been really important to advocate without being part of the Iowa legal system and figure out what’s working and what’s not.”
Midwest Innocence Project also provides post-exoneration support
The Midwest Innocence Project also supports people after their exonerations, both with short-term needs such as housing and a longer-term sense of community.
Teresa Engberg of Council Bluffs was convicted of manslaughter in the death of her infant in 1997, but her conviction was reversed the following year. More than 20 years later, she met a Midwest Innocence Project staffer at an event organized by Nichols Cook, which resulted in an invitation for her to attend a national conference.
“Let me tell you, that was something else, to go to an Innocence Network conference where there’s all these other exonerees who understand what you’ve been through,” she said. “It was extremely emotional, but it’s also been very healing.”
Today she continues participating in a biweekly support group for exonerees that the project organizes, and said she’s deeply concerned by the organization’s financial woes.
“It would be just devastating to think about all the people that, for starters, aren’t going to have somebody working on their case,” she said. “And then for all of those that have gotten out already, they’re losing that connection and that support locally.”
William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com or 715-573-8166.
A proposed data center in Clinton, Iowa, is dividing residents
Recently, a split City Council in Clinton chose not to place a moratorium on any new data center projects.
A recent item on DesMoinesRegister.com invited Iowans to share their thoughts about data center construction and how their elected leaders are handling to push to build more of the facilities. Below is a selection of the responses we received.
Don’t give public benefits to data centers few people want
Anyone remember the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008? The Chrysler Motor Co. bailout in 1979? How about the savings and loan crisis in the 1990s? These all involved large, for-profit companies owned primarily by shareholders.
Big companies have come to expect preferential tax treatment, subsidies and bailouts. They expect taxpayers to pick up the tab if they fail.
If Big Tech falters with its intention to impose data centers on our society, the same thing will happen.
Data centers and the CO2 “Pipeline to Nowhere” present some similar threats: water resource exploitation, decreased property values, higher utility rates, health and safety risks, and dismal prospects for human employment. Taxpayers will be expected to carry the load despite the fact that hardly anyone wants the data centers or the pipeline.
The top seven Big Tech oligarchs increased their wealth by $1.7 trillion since 2024. They are likely to come crying if things don’t work out. Let’s collectively decide that data centers are a problem and show resistance. Pay attention to what is going on with decision makers. Especially at the local and county level.
Jeff Milks, Oelwein
How long will data centers’ consumption be sustainable?
The mayor of Council Bluffs got it right. Mayor Jill Shudak proposed a moratorium on new data centers to the Council Bluffs City Council. The council voted it down, citing a possible loss of economic growth.
Council Bluffs is home to two of Google’s hyperscale data centers, which are massive computing facilities, typically spanning over 10,000 square feet and housing 5,000 or more servers. These facilities consume massive amounts of water and electricity.
A third hyperscale center is under construction. Given the massive consumption of our natural resources, a pause or moratorium makes sense, we need to figure out what is sustainable in the long run.
Patricia Fuller, Council Bluffs
Companies shouldn’t need our help to build data centers
Why are our elected officials in such a hurry to give our resources to big tech, especially by moving forward with or without the approval of the communities they serve, such as Palo?
The officials who believe these data centers will be such a benefit to their communities should be talking to the people who are already affected by these centers. The U.S. Department of Energy has directed grid operators to order some large data centers to switch to on-site backup generators so there will be enough power for regular citizens. It does not require an extensive search to find information as to why so many people who live where data centers already exist are opposed to them; higher energy costs, massive water consumption, noise, just to name a few.
The data centers should cover their own costs rather than receiving billions of dollars in financial incentives from state and local governments and not be built in communities where the community members oppose them.
Lori Amos, Center Point
Each data center forever changes Iowa’s landscape
“Take your medicine, it will be good for you. And here is a little something extra to make it taste better,” said every developer coming into Iowa who wants to gobble up more precious land for a project with questionable merit.
Iowa soils have a structure that once disturbed may take years to recover from, if they ever return to past productivity.
Hog confinement buildings represent thousands of acres of disturbed soil covered with concrete. Housing and urban sprawl continue to eat up fertile land. Wind turbines cover their development tracks by leveling and seeding disturbed soils at the project’s conclusion, but during development each turbine build causes a shocking amount of soil destruction.
And now we have data centers creating a huge footprint over the soils of our state. As energy needs rise with the growth of data centers comes expansive new power plant builds. Any of these endeavors alone might be causing minimal loss of acres, but this is all happening together. We need to stop and seriously assess what this means for our future as an agricultural state. Who is benefiting by exploiting our land?
Every developer has a well-thought-out strategy to convince us this is all good for us. We don’t need manipulative strategy. We need transparent and honest information and an Iowa-first strategy going forward. This is for us to decide. not them.
Berleen Wobeter, Toledo
Data centers are OK if resources are available
If the water resources are readily available to handle the needs of these centers, I think they are something local governments should consider.
John Torbert, Clive
For data centers, the product doesn’t at all justify the cost
I am worried that data centers are a significant drain on our resources, contribute to increased energy bills for residents, and are primarily used to gather data that is sold online.
Furthermore, if people are against traffic cameras and government surveillance, it follows that they should also be against the data centers that collect and store this information.
John Moore, Newton
Don’t invest to enable government surveillance
They are called data centers. What they really are is mass surveillance centers. They will be leveraged for government and corporations to track individuals and much more. Building them and disrupting wildlife and Iowa’s beautiful landscape is just sinful.
Mary Crist, West Des Moines
No new data centers in Iowa
Data centers are a huge concern for thousands of Iowans. That’s what Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement learned from a statewide survey we did in May.
They gobble up our water, energy and farmland, among other things. And they also gobble up our tax dollars to the tune of billions each year through property tax abatements, sales tax exemptions and other subsidies.
The technology that data centers use may be new, but the underlying story has been around a long time: big corporations profit by extracting and over-using our finite resources, while offloading the costs onto taxpayers and our communities.
People are turning out in large numbers to tell their elected officials: No new data centers in Iowa! So far, nearly 20 Iowa counties have passed data center moratoriums. More are needed.
Analysts say the current AI data center expansion far exceeds what we need for our normal, day-to-day lives, which makes me wonder: Is this mostly about putting a lot more money in the pockets of Big Tech’s wealthy tycoons?
Let’s use some common sense and put a long pause on this too-fast, too-much expansion. Prudence will serve us well.
Hugh Espey, Des Moines
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