With four individual champs, Team Iowa wins team title at Junior men’s freestyle national championships

The state of Iowa’s high-school wrestling renaissance has been constructing for a couple of years, with increasingly more in-state wrestlers competing and profitable on the nationwide scene.

They’ve completed it individually, with nationwide titles and age-level world-team berths. They’ve completed it collectively, with two consecutive Junior freestyle nationwide duals championships and a Junior Greco-Roman nationwide duals crown, too.

This week, an meeting of Iowa’s prime high-schoolers unveiled one other masterclass efficiency, solidifying the state’s standing because the nation’s prime vacation spot for premiere prep wrestling.

Workforce Iowa eviscerated the sector on the Junior males’s freestyle nationwide championships inside North Dakota State’s FargoDome. With 4 particular person champs and 13 whole All-Individuals, Iowa scored 214 group factors over the three-day competitors, cruising to the group title over second-place Pennsylvania (116) and third-place California (115).

► MORE: Workforce Iowa wins 16U ladies’s freestyle nationwide group championship

The Junior males’s freestyle portion of the Underneath-16 and Junior nationwide championships, USA Wrestling’s largest national-level highschool competitors, is arguably the largest of the six tournaments that happen throughout this weeklong wrestling extravaganza.

And Iowa fully dominated in an all-time group efficiency sort of means.

Iowa’s Junior nationwide match group title is the eleventh all-time and first since 2008. The 4 particular person champs — Southeast Polk’s Nate Jesuroga at 120, Waverly-Shell Rock’s Ryder Block at 138, Waverly-Shell Rock’s Aiden Riggins at 160, Bettendorf’s Bradley Hill at 220 — ties for essentially the most in state historical past, matching the full from 1983.

Behind the 4 champs:

• Nashua-Plainfield’s Jayden Rinken (100), Fort Dodge’s Dru Ayala (106), Linn-Mar’s Tate Naaktgeboren (182), and West Delaware’s Wyatt Voelker (195) all took third;
• Norwalk’s Tyler Harper (100) and Southeast Polk’s Joel Jesuroga (145) each took fourth;
• Bondurant-Farrar’s Reid Foster (100) and Waverly-Shell Rock’s Jake Walker (285) each took seventh;
• and Iowa Metropolis Excessive’s Kolby Franklin earned runner-up honors, falling to Hill, 10-7, in an all-Iowa last at 220 kilos. Hill scored a pair of 4-pointers to prime Franklin in a matchup that may absolutely unfold hundreds of occasions extra within the Iowa Hawkeye wrestling room over the subsequent 5 years.

Iowa’s 13 whole All-Individuals — California and Wisconsin have been the subsequent closest states, with 9 medalists every — ties for the second-most in state historical past, matching the totals from 2018, 2010, and 2008. (Iowa’s most-ever: 14 in 1978.)

► RELATED: Incoming freshman Dreshaun Ross wins 16U freestyle nationwide title

Iowa’s total demolition of the Junior freestyle area, simply two days after Iowa received the 16U ladies’s freestyle match, was an insanely spectacular encore to final month’s sweep on the Junior Nationwide Duals in Oklahoma. But it surely was pieced along with some unimaginable particular person performances between Sunday and Tuesday in North Dakota.

Three Iowans — Rinken, Harper, Foster — completed on the rostrum at 100 kilos. All of them made the quarterfinals, then met one another within the wrestlebacks: Harper beat Foster, 14-3, within the comfort quarterfinals, then Rinken beat Harper, 14-4, for third.

Nate Jesuroga went 7-0 with seven technical falls to win his first Junior nationwide title. He outscored his opponents 74-2. Joel Jesuroga went 9-2 total and received seven consecutive wrestleback matches for his first All-American end.

Ayala, Naaktgeboren and Voelker all rallied for third after robust semifinal defeats. Hill outscored his seven opponents by a mixed 79-14, and Franklin outscored his first 5 foes 59-14 to make the ultimate. Walker went 6-2 and rebounded from a quarterfinal loss with an emphatic 34-second pin within the bloodround to earn All-American standing.

However arguably the 2 most spectacular performances got here from Ryder Block and Aiden Riggins.

Block had beforehand competed at Fargo twice, in 2019 as a 16U wrestler and final 12 months as a Junior. He went 5-2 and missed the rostrum each occasions. This 12 months, he received all of it, going 7-0 and outscoring his opponents 68-14, capped by an authoritative 12-2 technical fall over Ohio’s Ismael Ayoub in Tuesday’s finals.

Riggins had taken second at each main nationwide competitors during the last 4 years — on the 2019 Cadet folkstyle nationals, the 2019 U15 freestyle nationals, the 2021 Cadet world group trials, and final 12 months’s Junior freestyle nationals. This time, Riggins went out on prime, with a come-from-behind 15-8 finals win over California’s Nico Ruiz.

An hour after his finals match, Riggins stood with Voelker and Naaktgeboren and Block and Ayala and the remainder of Workforce Iowa on the staged mat contained in the FargoDome, posing for footage with the group championship trophy, all smiles for a second years within the making.

Cody Goodwin covers wrestling and highschool sports activities for the Des Moines Register. Comply with him on Twitter at @codygoodwin.