Saturday was a rough day for the Ankeny Centennial wrestling team.
With two open weights and some other wrestlers out of the lineup due to injuries, the Jaguars struggled to a 10th-place finish at the Osage Duals. They lost all five of their dual meets, dropping to 10-8 overall on the season.
“We wrestled some really good teams, and we wrestled flat,” said Centennial coach Jay Groth. “We still need to overcome the fact that when we lose, we get pinned and that really kills us. We’ve got to do a better job of recognizing when we’re in a bad position and get out.”
Centennial opened the competition in Pool A with a 40-27 loss to Hinton. The Jaguars then fell to Council Bluffs Lewis Central (38-32), Hampton-Dumont-CAL (52-24) and Osage (40-33).
Osage won the pool and went on to drop a 54-22 decision to Kasson-Mantorville (Minn.) in the championship match, while Centennial battled Decorah to a 39-39 tie in the ninth-place match before the Vikings were awarded the victory on criteria. Decorah outscored the Jaguars, 18-16, in the first points recorded in all the matches.
“I knew it was going to come down to criteria, but I didn’t know which one it would be,” Groth said. “It came down to the first points scored in each match, and I don’t even know what step that is on the criteria chart.”
Centennial’s Cale Vandermark at 120 pounds and Ryan Smith at 175 each went a perfect 5-0 in the tournament. Vandermark raised his record to 28-1, while Smith improved to 24-6.
The second-ranked Vandermark had three falls in a combined 67 seconds and won another match by forfeit. He also posted a 13-4 major decision over No. 4 Weston Porter of Lewis Central.
“We wrestled better the last two duals,” Groth said. “I kind of chewed the team out after the first couple of duals, but then Cale took over and chewed them out some more or gave them a pep talk. I’m not sure what he did, but they wrestled better the last two rounds.
“Cale’s definitely a quiet kid. He leads by example and everybody knows about his work ethic, but he was getting frustrated and he told me that he wanted to talk to the guys. It was what he wanted to do, and it was good to see that out of him,” he added.
Smith also had a trio of pins. His other wins came by narrow decisions–1-0 over Lewis Central’s Chance Chappell and 3-1 over Osage’s Gavin Muller.
“Ryan beat a couple of ranked kids, and so did Jacob Hand (at 165),” Groth said.
The Jaguars will return to CIML Conference action on Thursday, hosting a dual meet against Johnston.