It didn’t take long for Ankeny wrestler Ben Walsh to get into midseason form.
After making his season debut two nights earlier, the fifth-ranked Walsh cruised to the 126-pound title in the Frank Baltzley Invitational on Saturday at Johnston. He posted a 10-3 decision over Lou Elsten of Lawrence (Kan.) in the title match.
“Sometimes when you have a kid that just grinds all the time, for them to have to take two or three weeks off, that can maybe be a good thing,” said Ankeny coach Jack Wignall. “I don’t know if Ben has ever had much of a break. He really had to shut it down for three weeks, and I think it made him hungry. But it also gave him a chance to rest his body, and I think we’re seeing that with Ben right now.”
Walsh led Ankeny to a sixth-place finish in the 14-team field. The Hawks scored 150.5 points.
Eighth-ranked Ankeny Centennial, meanwhile, took 13th with 57.5 points.
“We’re still not where we need to be with our personnel,” said Centennial coach Jay Groth. “We had a few missteps that didn’t help any. We’re not good on paper right now, but we’re close to being better than we have been, so that’s good.”
No. 3 Indianola captured the team title with 249 points. No. 4 Bettendorf was the runner-up with 194.5.
Walsh (4-0) dominated all three of his matches. He won by a 17-2 technical fall over Johnston’s Michael Dyett in the quarterfinals, then pinned Ethan Mcmanus of Cedar Rapids Prairie in 1 minute 37 seconds to punch his ticket to the finals.
Placing second for the Hawks were Eddie Salgado at 113 and Jacob Haase at 144. They both advanced to the finals before losing to ranked opponents from Indianola.
Salgado dropped a 15-3 major decision to No. 10 Cain Crosson. He is now 5-4 on the season.
Haase recorded three consecutive falls before losing by an 8-0 major decision to No. 4 Stoney Wood. His record is now 6-4.
“We had two (returning) placewinners and a two-time (state) qualifier out of the lineup with just little, nagging injuries,” Wignall said. “And we had our heavyweight out as well, but overall we had some kids step up and wrestle really well. We ended up sixth, and that didn’t include Jacob’s points because he was our extra guy at 144. That would have put us up above Johnston, I think.”
Ankeny’s Gavyn Gatewood earned a third-place finish at 157. He evened his mark at 6-6 with a 15-8 decision over Indianola’s Jacob Riedmann in the third-place match.
The Hawks got fifth-place finishes from Lucas Haase at 106, Noah Kauffman at 144, Ryleigh Egeberg at 190 and Ryne Dobson at 215. Haase, Kauffman and Dobson each won by a pin in their fifth-place matches.
“We had the most pins in the tournament, and that didn’t include Jacob’s pins either,” Wignall said. “I’m just real happy with our kids.”
Centennial had four top-six finishers. Cale Vandermark placed third at 132, Brenden Harless took fourth at 106, Dean Landis was fifth at 157, and Ethan Sodergren finished sixth at 150.
Vandermark, who is ranked No. 1 at 126, was upset in the semifinals by Caleb Arroyo of Urbandale. Arroyo, who is ranked seventh at 126, posted a 4-1 decision.
“Cale wrestled one day of live wrestling on Wednesday and then wrestled (Ankeny’s Aiden) Winkie on Thursday, and really he’s only had two full days of practice,” Groth said. “Definitely his timing is off, and his conditioning is off.”
The loss prevented Vandermark from getting another shot at Bettendorf’s Jake Knight, who handed him all three of his losses last season–including one in the Class 3A championship match at 120. Knight, who is ranked No. 1 at 132, then recorded an 18-3 technical fall over Arroyo in the finals.
Vandermark rebounded with a fall over Aiden Kirk of Cedar Rapids Prairie in 1:38 in a consolation semifinal. He then raised his record to 4-1 with a 10-3 decision over No. 6 Ike Bierman of Johnston in the third-place match.
“Maybe now his mentality is not that he’s going to be an undefeated state champ,” Groth said. “Now it’s just, ‘Hey, I have to go out and wrestle and good things will happen.’ The Cale that we saw on Saturday is not the Cale that we’ll see after Christmas break.”
After losing in the quarterfinals, Harless (3-3) bounced back with a pair of wins in the consolation bracket. He then dropped a 13-6 decision to Kiernan Dunlay of Cedar Rapids Prairie in the third-place match.
“Harless wrestled well, and he’s going to keep getting better,” Groth said. “Ethan Hand wrestled well (while placing eighth at 120), and Landis did, too. We had some bright spots.”
Landis reached the semifinals before losing to No. 2 Parker Casey of Johnston, the eventual champion. The No. 3 Sodergren also advanced to the semifinals before dropping a 20-13 decision to No. 12 Isaiah Madison of Johnston.
There was only one head-to-head matchup between the two Ankeny schools. The Hawks got a 21-5 technical fall from Perez (Eli) Perez over Centennial’s Will Sloan in the seventh-place match at 138.
The Jaguars will travel to Urbandale on Tuesday to face the J-Hawks before hosting another conference dual meet against Dowling on Thursday, when it will be Alumni Night at the Centennial gym.
“Hopefully, Cale will get another shot at Arroyo on Tuesday,” Groth said. “He’s looking forward to that.”
The Hawks, meanwhile, will return to CIML action on Thursday when they head back to Johnston for a dual against the Dragons, who finished nine points ahead of Ankeny on Saturday.
“It should be a really good dual,” Wignall said.
The emergence of Jacob Haase in the middle of the Hawks’ lineup will force Wignall to make some tough decisions going forward.
“It’s a good problem to have, but we need to figure some things out because we can’t leave points on the table like we did on Saturday,” Wignall said. “We’ll make the best of it. It makes us a pretty good dual team when we have everybody healthy because we can bounce people around to where we need them. This is where wrestling becomes a team sport.”