Hawkeye women thrive in postseason debut
Two distinct parties were taken to the proverbial ‘woodshed’ during Friday’s NCWWC Region V Championships held at Simpson College (IA).
The first included most of the other athletes who had the misfortune of running into an Iowa Hawkeye wrestler in their bracket during the day-long competition.
And the second? The second was me sitting in front of my laptop trying feverishly to somehow cover it all.
(Pauses for sympathy)
But in all seriousness, as a wrestling fan Friday was an absolute blast to follow from start to finish.
Not only was it a first time to see how this Iowa program would handle a postseason environment and all the stakes that entails, but it was a great platform to watch athletes from all nine schools in attendance lay it on the line in hopes of making their national tournament (NCWWC) dreams a reality.
For the Hawkeyes the overarching objective of the regional was simple:
40 separate qualification spots across 10 weight classes were up for grabs entering the day in Indianola (that’s four per weight for those math majors at home). Per NCAA rules Iowa had the chance to collect a whopping 37.5 percent of them all for itself.
And that’s exactly what it did, putting on a dominant, across-the-board display that would leave Iowa tops in the team score (220 points) at day’s end by a comfortable 27-point margin over second place McKendree (IL).
How’s this for a few telling statistics:
- The Hawkeyes posted a combined 40-11 record on Friday, with three of those losses coming against teammates in the regional finals at 101, 116 and 155 pounds.
- Of its 37 wins against non-Hawkeye competition, Iowa tallied bonus points in 28 of them (75.7 percent).
- All 15 Iowa entrants advanced to the semifinal round, and all were able to qualify for NCWWC’s without having to wrestle in a winner-take-all ‘true fourth-place’ match.
Was it a perfect performance? Hardly.
But I can’t imagine head coach Clarissa Chun and her staff are anything but ecstatic with the team’s first-ever foray into postseason collegiate wrestling.
So, here’s the plan for the rest of this recap:
Much as I’d like to go match-by-match for all 48 of Iowa’s bouts at the regional, the editor’s conscience in the back of my mind – whom I rarely listen to – is desperately shouting that it’d be better for the long-term health of both myself and any readers out there if this recap didn’t approach the encyclopedia-esque length of my preview article for the event.
So, with that in mind I will at least attempt to restrain myself, in part, by publicly stating said goal within the very article to which it applies – a clever ruse if I may say so.
Obviously, we’re still going to cover all 10 weight classes, but with the aim of brevity – relatively speaking – in mind.
(I cannot wait to see how this mad science experiment plays out.)
With my notes sitting here in front of me, we’re just going to go in descending order, not of ‘importance,’ but of whichever weight jumps out at me at first glance.
That said, there can only be one place to get things started.
143 – Reese (bleeping) Larramendy.
The most anticipated weight class of the regional delivered in spectacular fashion on Friday.
That’ll happen when you add a two-time national champion/2023 fifth-place Senior World Championships finisher to a bracket that already includes the numbers two-through-four ranked wrestlers in the country.
Oh yeah, and it’s especially true when that marquee addition – McKendree’s Emma Bruntil – goes down in the finals to an opponent more than 4.5 years her junior.
Enter Hawkeye redshirt freshman Reese Larramendy.
Ranked #2 in the country, yet a prohibitive underdog entering their finals match-up, she stood in there with the senior national teamer for a full six minutes and never looked the least bit out of place.
Larramendy scored a two-point exposure late in the first period off of a low Bruntil shot to take a 2-1 lead into the break.
She’d show little, if any back-down after intermission, taking ground and looking for offense of her own.
A step out point for the Hawkeye, plus a penalty point for each athlete (grabbing fingers?) left things at 4-2 with 1:20 to go, and Larramendy was able to keep Bruntil at bay for the remainder of the match to secure what is almost assuredly the biggest win of her wrestling career to date.
I still get fired up just writing about it.
Elsewhere in the bracket, #4 Ella Schmit would secure her own NCWWC berth with a fourth-place finish.
Prior to Larramendy’s triumph, it was actually Schmit who nearly pulled off the monumental upset first. If not for a questionable exposure call awarded in the dying seconds of their semifinal, it would’ve been the Bettendorf native who knocked off Bruntil on Friday.
Alas, it was not to be, and Schmit would ultimately finish in fourth after losing her final match of the regional by fall to third-ranked Athena Willden (William Jewell).
(Like I said, just a ridiculous bracket.)
130 – With ice in her veins, Emily Frost stamps her berth at nationals.
This next weight is not even one of the six that Iowa crowned a champion at on Friday.
And why is that?
It’s because going into the regional it was the weight at which I was least certain the Hawkeyes would ultimately qualify.
I even had questions as to whether Iowa had been positioning to make a lineup switch, swapping out Frost for either of 136-pounders Lilly Luft or Emmily Patneaud. Turns out, not only was that theory put to rest, but Frost also silenced any doubts that she too would punch her ticket to Cedar Rapids next month.
The true freshman from Troy, New York dropped a competitive semifinal bout to Wartburg’s sixth-ranked Kylie Rule (8-4), leaving Frost needing at least one win on the backside to put herself in good position for the requisite top-four finish.
She’d do so in resounding, come-from-behind fashion, hitting one of her signature headlocks to secure the fall after trailing 6-2 in the first period to a dangerous Cayden Condit (Lindenwood).
But Frost wasn’t content to stop there.
Having already secured her spot at nationals courtesy of other results, she’d prevail in the third-place match over #7 Jennifer Soto (McKendree) by 8-5 decision after once again overcoming an early four-point deficit.
To my knowledge it was Frost’s highest ranked win of the season and could help to position her for a more advantageous seed at NCWWC’s in two weeks.
Now that’s getting it done.
123 – Rose answers another late-season question.
Similar to 130 pounds, this was another weight with a bit of mystery after Felicity Taylor elected to move back down to 116 for her final collegiate postseason run.
Stepping up in her place would be true freshman Ava Rose (Princeton, New Jersey), who entered regional action 22-12 in her first year as a Hawkeye.
While a top-four finish felt probable given the rest of the field at the weight, it would be made all the easier by advancing as far as possible in the championship side of the bracket.
Rose would do just that, following a quick first round tech. fall with a gutsy comeback in the quarterfinals.
Trailing 8-0 in the second period against a familiar foe, #4 seed Alexandra Waitsman (William Jewell), Rose stormed back for the 11-8 win aided by a trio of leg laces.
Though she’d lose in the next round to top-ranked Shelby Moore (McKendree) she’d already put herself in a good enough position that one more win in the consolation semifinals would likely punch her ticket to NCWWC’s.
A 7-1 victory over Emarie Bolosan (William Jewell) would suffice, and Rose’s 8-5 loss for third place – her fourth meeting of the year with Waitsman – would ultimately be inconsequential to her qualification goals.
Question asked, question answered at 123 pounds.
155 – A national championship preview?
The first of three all-Iowa finals we’ll detail, Friday’s 155-pound championship bout between #1 Marlynne Deede and #9 Bella Mir did nothing to quell suspicions that the two best wrestlers in the country at the weight class reside in Iowa City.
Deede’s status as the returning national champ speaks for itself, while Mir (18-0 with 18 bonus point wins entering their match) only sits lower in the rankings because a late start to her season meant she missed most of the other top-tier NCAA competition on Iowa’s schedule.
I’m not sure how any viewer could’ve left the first official match between these two disappointed.
Trailing 1-0 early in the second period, Deede started an incredible sequence by countering a shot from Mir with a four-point throw to her back. Undeterred, Mir managed to roll through the position for a one-point reversal, then score an immediate two-point exposure of her own.
With Deede still ahead on criteria (4-4), a lengthy break for blood time (Mir) would ensue thereafter, and the final few minutes were filled with tense exchanges between the two wrestlers before Deede was able to counter a last-ditch effort from her teammate with yet another four-point throw.
The final score read 8-4, but the subtext behind the match read more like 1A/1B in the national pecking order at 155 pounds.
191 – Good health takes precedent over 2nd-place finish.
I think I said earlier that the single biggest priority for Iowa on Friday was to get all of its athletes qualified for NCWCC’s.
That’s definitely still true, but a close second in overall importance was to get a gauge of 191-pounder Jaycee Foeller’s health as the postseason stretch began.
Just 20 days prior to regional competition the Iowa junior had been forced to injury default out of her finals match at the Grand View Open after suffering what appeared to be a left leg injury. Not knowing its severity/lingering effects entering Friday I was curious to see how the junior would look and move in her return to the mat.
From what I could tell, she appeared to be moving much like her usual self despite sporting a hefty knee brace. Foeller picked up a tech. fall and a pin on her way to the finals – a match she’d lose 2-1 to 2023 NCWWC fourth-place finisher Sara Lake (Lindenwood).
I’m sure Foeller won’t be pleased with the result of her final outing, especially given her 2-0 record versus Lake entering the day, but in the grand scheme of things the most important goal for Iowa and its team title aspirations in two weeks was that Foeller A) qualified and B) was a reasonable facsimile of her physical norm in doing so.
Check and check.
170 – To everyone else, good luck.
170 pounds would be another double-qualifier for the Hawkeyes.
I’ll start with Haley Ward, who continued her impressive true freshman season with a third-place finish on Friday. Ward’s lone defeat of the day came in the semifinals against two-seed Tristan Kelly (McKendree) – a bigger, older opponent who has already proven herself capable against senior level competition.
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It’s important I mention that note about Kelly because it helps contextualize what I’m about to write next.
In a matter of speaking, Kylie Welker seemingly could’ve torn her limb from limb in their finals match (a 10-0 TF in barely a minute) had she felt inclined to do so.
Kelly is good, very good. But Welker is in a completely different stratosphere.
She has been pretty much all season long. It’s simply rare that an opponent comes along who could theoretically push her just a bit.
I thought we might see such an instance in Friday’s final. I was wrong.
If Welker keeps rolling as we hit NCWWC’s I can’t envision anyone at the weight slowing her down, much less stopping the freshman ‘freight train’ altogether.
116 – Some serious firepower (not that we didn’t already know it.)
Entering Friday’s regional, it felt like a fait accompli that the top two placers at 116 pounds would be Hawkeyes Brianna Gonzalez and Felicity Taylor.
That’s exactly what happened as both tore through their sides of the bracket with little resistance – setting up a compelling final that we’d yet to see take place between the freshman and senior.
It was the youngster Gonzalez who would ultimately prevail, winning a 9-3 decision – the score of which belies the competitiveness of the action on the mat.
This outcome does nothing to change my opinion of Taylor’s title chances in March. Of course she can do it. She’s done it before (2021), and she has wins over most of the top competitors at both 116 and 123 pounds.
If anything, all Friday did was reinforce my belief that Gonzalez is totally capable of doing the same – this, despite the fact that she appears significantly undersized for the weight class.
Of all the wrestlers on the Iowa roster I think Gonzalez might be the least fun to have to go up against for six whole minutes, which is saying a lot because pretty much nobody wearing a Hawkeye singlet is going to be much of a picnic to stand in the circle with.
If these two met again in March on Saturday night (3/9) with a title on the line it should surprise exactly no one.
136 – Luft continues to be much more than enough.
Another postseason storyline, the decision at 136 pounds became clear (if it wasn’t already) when Emily Frost was selected as Iowa’s entrant down at 130.
That left fellow freshman Lilly Luft – who has gotten better and better since bumping up to take over for injured teammates Nanea Estrella and Ether Han – as the flagbearer for the Hawkeyes at the regional and beyond.
The 10th-ranked Luft made her way into the finals with 11-0 and 5-0 wins, the latter of which was an absolute brawl against formidable foe Estella Gutches (McKendree).
If you need to know anything about this Hawkeye it’s that she’s just never going to back down.
That set up a surprise first-place match against Viktorya Torres, who’d previously spent most of this season up at 143 pounds for McKendree – where she’d earned a #6 ranking by year’s end – before dropping down to 136 for the regional.
Once again, Luft was in the fight all match long, leading 2-1 with less than 50 seconds remaining before Torres was able to catch her off-balance in an inside trip that would eventually result in a fall.
When I look at the presumed contenders of this weight class there’s not a single one of them whom I don’t believe Iowa’s ‘third-string’ 136-pounder can be right there with in a six-minute match.
Not only that, but Iowa is probably going to need Luft to make a deep run at NCWWC’s if it wants to bring home the team title.
I can’t wait to see how it plays out in a few weeks.
109 – Just keep winning.
Ava Bayless continues to be about as steady as they come for the 2023-24 Hawkeyes – the term ‘steady’ being a complete understatement regarding the impressive nature of her performance.
Bayless, now 27-1 following a regional crown at 109 pounds, has just stacked win after impressive win all season long, her lone defeat coming 2-1 to NAIA #1 Mia Palumbo in the finals of the Missouri Valley Open.
She figures to slot in as the #2 seed at NCWWC’s behind #1 Kendra Ryan of North Central, whom she has traded wins with over the past 13 months at various competitions.
The redshirt freshman already has wins this season over numbers three-through-five in the latest 109-pound rankings, and on Friday added yet another impressive victory to her resume besting 2020 national champ Pauline Granados (McKendree) by a score of 4-2 in the regional final.
Much like seemingly all of her teammates, Bayless can now set her sights squarely on an individual national title. 109 figures to be an extremely competitive bracket at the top, but the Hawkeye is as good a bet as just about anyone to stand atop the podium.
101 – Where excellence becomes routine.
I almost feel guilty leaving this weight class until the end of my recap due to the sheer quality of the athletes involved.
That said, in an act of pure laziness I’m going to simply refer back to what I tweeted on Friday evening:
Iowa has the two best 101-pounders in the country. I know it. Coach Chun knows it. Hell, everyone in the women’s college wrestling space knows it.
This time, the latest clash of the tiny titans went in favor of #1 Emilie Gonzalez – drawing her within 4-2 in the all-time series with her teammate, second-ranked Sterling Dias.
I sincerely hope that the consistency of their excellence does not go lost upon Iowa fans, which perhaps I’ve already contributed to with their placement in this article. They’ve been awesome from the moment they stepped on campus, and it remains an absolute treat to watch them wrestle every time the whistle blows.
If something other than Part-Seven between the two is the NCWWC title match in Cedar Rapids I will be stunned.
They’re just that good.
Short time
As I (finally) look back on the entirety of this recap I see that I’ve more or less failed to meet my stated goal of brevity and conciseness…
What can I say? I’m a wrestling degenerate who simply can’t help myself.
And you know what? Maybe that’s OK.
Everything about Friday’s regional action was a complete gift for me to be able to cover.
At the end of the day wrestling is wrestling, but to see these new faces in new, pressure-packed environments still manage to rise to the level of the moment (and beyond it) gives me goosebumps every time.
Please do continue to follow along here as we count down to the national tournament. The first official season of Iowa women’s wrestling may be nearly at an end, but the best moments on the biggest stage are still yet to come.
