Green Devils take home third-place trophy

By Kristi Nixon

CORALVILLE — The icing on the cake for the Osage girls wrestling team earning a third-place team trophy at state is learning before the finals that the 2022-3 season will be sanctioned by the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union.

The Green Devils brought 16 girls to the Xtream Arena in Coralville, all of whom won at least one match, and scored 135 points to nab third behind four-time state champion Waverly-Shell Rock (219) and Colfax-Mingo (159).

“Really good weekend,” coach Ryan Fank said. “I mean, obviously it’s an accumulation of everything. All of our girls and all of that got us wins. It adds up everything with team wins. It works out. It’s not just one person who does it all. It’s everyone.”

With four girls earning medals, including two state runner-up finishes for Gable Hemann (100) and Jalynn Goodale (110), fourth for freshman Aubrey Chapman at 145, and sixth for Leah Grimm at 170.

Although all four lost in their particular final, the Green Devils had already accumulated enough to hold off the closest challenger, Bettendorf, with 133 points.

Goodale overcame a semifinal opponent who bested her last year, Southwest Valley’s Adyson Lundquist, winning by fall in 4 minutes, 56 seconds.

She then lost by fall in 3:12 to top-ranked and top-seeded Reanah Utterback of Sigourney-Keota in the final.

“I fell short, but there was a lot of excitement going into this tournament,” Goodale said. “A lot of nerves, just at seeing who I was going to get and how everything was going to lay out. In my semifinals, I had Adyson Lundquist, who I have been beaten by before in the previous year, so we’ve gone back and forth a few times, but every time we’ve wrestled, it’s been in the bigger times we’ve wrestled, she’s always beaten me, whereas the less important times, you could say, I’ve won. It depends on the day.”

The full story appears in the Jan. 26 print edition of the Enterprise Journal.