Green Devils finish two-day stint 2-4 at Battle of Waterloo
By Kristi Nixon
WATERLOO — A lot of really good wrestling, and good teams, faced by Osage will only prove to help the Green Devils at the end of the season.
Coach Brent Jennings’ team started out with a pair of convincing wins on Friday, Dec. 17 against Clear Lake, 71-6, and Charles City, 57-18; before losing to Class 3A No. 1 and nationally-ranked Waverly-Shell Rock 54-17.
“They are ranked 11th in the country right now,” Jennings said. “So, they are a solid team and we knew that. Their horses, best kids matched up with our best kids. That was across the board, even at heavy, 195.
“Our ranked kids wrestled their ranked kids, but anyway it is good for us to run into them, good to get tested to find out where they are at. Sometimes it is hard to do when you don’t wrestle the best competition, hard to find where your weaknesses are and what you have to fix.”
Both at 145 and 160 pounds, Osage and W-SR had the top-ranked and third-ranked wrestlers in their respective weight classes
Class 3A top-ranked Aiden Riggins, tops at 160 in 3A, defeated Nick Fox by 14-4 major decision after also winning against top-ranked 1A’s Maximus Magayna of Waterloo Columbus. It was the only loss all weekend — and season — for Fox. Chase Thomas, third in 2A, met with Bas Diaz, third in 3A for a close loss.
Top-ranked 3A 195-pounder McCrae Hagarty also pinned a ranked Cole Jeffries.
The lone wins against the Go-Hawks were Tucker Stangel at 126, Barrett Muller (220) and Garrett Tusler (106).
Barrett Muller also earned a minor upset against third-ranked Tino Tamayo of Charles City. He was able to take Tamayo down twice late after the score was tied on a pair of escapes to start the second and third periods. Frustrated, Tamayo shoved Barrett Muller after the match was over. The 220-pounder for the Green Devils finished the weekend undefeated.
“We wrestled well overall against Charles City,” Jennings said. “We wrestled well against Clear Lake, both are down a bit this year. We’ll have a good test (Saturday), good teams then. We’ll find out if we are ready for that test to come through.”
Against the Go-Hawks heavyweight Mac Muller had top-ranked Jake Walker on his back, but lost position and ended up being pinned by Walker in 1 minute, 31 seconds.
“He was pretty close to having him pinned,” Jennings said.
“I’m not sure he wasn’t. It was a nice headlock, he had him, just didn’t finish. Got off his back, we can’t go to our back. We’ve got to keep wrestling. We had him in trouble that’s for sure, made it exciting.”
The Green Devils went 0-3 on Saturday against quality teams Independence (43-30), Linn-Mar (49-24) and Ankeny High School (43-22).
The Osage girls also went 2-1 in the early session on Friday (wins against Charles City and Independence and a 30-22 loss to Waverly-Shell Rock) and then finished third overall in losing a 30-all tiebreak against Crestwood and ending with a 43-30 victory against North Scott.
“We were in a pretty good bracket,” girls coach Ryan Fank said. “Us, Waverly, North Scott…I think this is their first year with a girls’ team so I was curious to see what they have.
“Independence was missing quite a few of their girls. Overall, it was good. Just little things to work on.”
The Green Devil girls won four matches by fall and the remainder by forfeit against the Mustangs.
Gable Hemann (106), Jalynn Goodale (113) and Leah Grimm (170) won all of the matches with Hemann and Goodale 5-0 and Grimm 4-0, including one forfeit.
“A bunch of our girls rebounded well from early losses,” Fank said. “We were focusing on the things we did in the early losses, coming back and doing it right. Put us in the position we needed to be in the championship pool.
“We see the same teams over, but it must mean we’re doing something right. We’ll scrap and see how it ends.”
