The Ankeny wrestling team won nine of the 14 matches and defeated visiting Urbandale, 42-20, in its regular-season finale on Thursday.
The 12th-ranked Hawks finished 4-4 in the CIML Conference and improved to 13-6 overall. They defeated No. 20 Urbandale after knocking off another league foe, No. 22 Waukee, two nights earlier.
“I’m not a big fan of Tuesday/Thursday meets, but this actually turned out pretty well for us heading into the weekend,” said Ankeny coach Jack Wignall. “We’ll take it easy (Friday) and then hit it hard the next three days before regionals. It was a good week.”
Ankeny got pins from Lucas Haase at 106 pounds, top-ranked Ben Walsh at 120 and No. 10 Kash Johnson at 175. Eli Perez at 126 and Noah Kauffman at 144 each won by a technical fall, while Aiden Winkie at 138 and Ryleigh Egeberg at 190 each recorded a major decision.
The Hawks got a 5-2 decision from Eddie Salgado at 113. He is ranked 11th at 106, but moved up a weight.
The two teams split a pair of matches between ranked opponents. Ankeny’s Calvin Rathjen, who is ranked No. 2 at 165, posted a 10-4 decision over No. 12 Jackson Brown.
At 215, No. 10 Ryne Dobson dropped a 10-3 decision to Urbandale’s Ethan Miller, who is ranked sixth.
“It was a good win,” Wignall said. “Not that we don’t all the time, but we wrestled hard and we wrestled well. You always lose some matches you don’t want to, but we were also competitive in some tough matches, too.”
The Hawks will now face No. 21 Ankeny Centennial (6-13) in a Class 3A regional dual on Tuesday at Dallas Center-Grimes at 6 p.m. The winner will then meet No. 4 Dallas Center-Grimes for a trip to the state duals on Feb. 7 at Coralville.
“It was a little bit of a surprise,” Wignall said of the crosstown matchup. “We thought we’d probably end up with Waukee Northwest, but that’s all right. We always approach the regional duals like we’re going to win them. We always throw everybody out there, and that’s what we’re going to do Tuesday.”
Ankeny won the first meeting against the Jaguars, 40-28, on Dec. 11 at Centennial.
“It all comes down to matchups,” Wignall said. “You’ve got to win the matches that you’re supposed to and then win the swing matches, too.”
Here are the match-by-match results from Thursday’s meet:
Ankeny 42, Urbandale 20
106: L. Haase pinned Buhrow, :29; 113: Salgado beat Vue, 5-2; 120: Walsh pinned Bartkiw, 1:12; 126: Perez won by technical fall over K. Gray, 22-4; 132: Arroyo (U) pinned Alhussaini, 1:55; 138: Winkie beat Gutierrez Velez, 9-0; 144: Kauffman won by technical fall over Hatcher, 20-4; 150: Dunn (U) beat J. Haase, 13-3; 157: Gaye (U) beat Gatewood, 24-11; 165: Rathjen beat Brown, 10-4; 175: Johnson pinned Forinash, 3:40; 190: Egeberg beat D. Gray, 16-4; 215: Miller (U) beat Dobson, 10-3; 285: Pardon (U) beat Hearne, 7-2.