Osky grapplers fare well at state tourney

By JIM GRIES

OSKALOOSA — Youth and experience were served at last week’s state wrestling tournament at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines by the Oskaloosa wrestling team.

A pair of seniors — Brett Sams and Trent Brown — and freshman Daniel Williams represented the Indians at the tournament with the two seniors earning spots on the podium.

Sams, making his fourth appearance at the tournament, finished fifth at 145 pounds while Brown was third at 135. Williams, who along with Brown were making their first appearance at the tournament, did not place at 119.

Sams also placed in the 2009 state tournament, finishing fourth at 140, had a 4-2 record at Des Moines to end the season with a 33-5 record with 20 pins. He was not feeling the greatest at the tournament as he was battling a nasty cold all week.

To make matters worse, he had a very tough match with Burlington’s Trevor Duke in the quarterfinals as it went to four overtimes before Duke came out on top 5-4.

Sams wasn’t bothered too much by his cold early in the tournament, but later on, it did begin to take a toll on his performance.

“It (the cold) didn’t bother me too much in the first couple of matches,” he said. “When I was off the mat, it bothered me, but during the matches, the adrenaline took over and I didn’t really notice it as much as I did as I was off the mat.

“I’ve never went a 15-minute match in my life and I didn’t know what to expect. I was winded, but I don’t think it was the cold. I think it was more on the line of never been in that situation before. I didn’t know how to handle the four overtimes and I don’t think my body accepted it as well as it should have.”

Sams said that quadruple-overtime match with Duke was really exhausting, yet it was a learning experience at the same time for him.

Sams bounced back with three more wins by a fall, including a 1:44 sticking of Des Moines East’s Sean DeGoey in the fifth-place match last Saturday.

He said placing at the state tournament was one of his goals, but his main priority this season was to win a state title. “Falling a bit short is bittersweet. I’ve wrestled my whole life and coming up short the last two years isn’t really what I wanted to. But I’m happy I placed.”

Sams described his season as “all right.” He knew his losses during the season weren’t going to bother him because he knew it wasn’t going to matter at the end. He thought he had a pretty good season and career at Oskaloosa.

He finished his Indian career with 133 wins and 25 losses.

Williams has a chance at repeating Sams’ feat of four state tournament appearances, thanks to his district title this past season.

His stay was not long as he dropped both of his matches on Wednesday to end the year with a fine 29-9 record and 19 pins.

He said stepping onto the mat in Des Moines was “fun, but it was pretty nerve-wracking.”

“It was the state and there was a big crowd there,” Williams said. “I knew everybody was going to be a tough match.

“I didn’t think I wrestled very good. I was nervous and gave all my energy on my nerves.”

Brown had to wait until his senior season to qualify for his first state tournament and wound up placing in the top three. He had a 36-5 record with 15 pins this season.

He began the state tournament with an opening-round loss to Des Moines North/Hoover’s Brian Warren then went through the rest of the tournament unscathed by going 5-0 with one fall. He finished his Oskaloosa career with an 8-7 decision over Maquoketa’s Tim O’Connell in the third-place match.

The Indians wrestling team was quite young with nine freshmen occupying spots in the starting lineup. While it wasn’t expected to accomplish much this season — predicted to finish last in both the Little Hawkeye Conference and the district — the team finished third in the conference and fourth in its district.

Sams and Williams think the team will be pretty good next season.

“I thought the team did pretty good with not having a full team,” Williams said. “If we had a full team, we’d done a lot better. With the people we had this year, we did pretty well.

“We’ll have a lot of young kids next year, but I think we’ll do pretty good because we should have a full roster.”

Text Only