Iowa won all three of its final bouts, boosting it to win its 25th Ken Kraft Midland Championship.
By Courtney Baumann
EVANSTON, Ill. – Iowa wrestling closed out 2015 on a high note.
Three Hawkeyes nabbed first-place finishes at the Midlands Championships on Dec. 30. The Hawkeyes finished first.
Six other Iowa wrestlers finished in the top eight – Patrick Rhoads at seventh, Cory Clark took sixth with a medical forfeit, Michael Kemerer, who competed unattached, snagged fifth, and Sammy Brooks took fourth. Alex Meyer and Sam Stoll both finished third.
No. 2 Thomas Gilman got the ball rolling for the Hawkeyes in the fourth session, beating No. 7 Ronnie Bresser in a 5-1 decision. The 125-pounder was the first of the night to be crowned a champion.
Although happy to be champion, the junior was not satisfied with the way he wrestled in his last two matches.
“It’s a feather in the cap,” Gilman said. “It’s not really about winning the Midlands, it’s how you win it. How I won it wasn’t that pretty.”
The last two matches were his first this season in which he did not score bonus points. Gilman pointed at his heart and said, “It hurts a little bit.”
Brandon Sorensen added another title in an overtime victory against Northwestern’s Jason Tsirtsis in the 149-pound bout.
The rivalry between the two was evident. Sorensen and Tsirtsis had wrestled each other three times prior to Dec. 30. Sorensen won the first one, but Tsirtsis took the next two, including the third-place match at last season’s NCAA Championships.
Sorensen hopes the loss will stick in the mind of the Wildcat until they face each other again in just over a week.
“It puts the fear into him. I’m into his head,” Sorensen said. “I knew I was capable of beating him… I’m moving on still undefeated, so let’s keep it that way.”
Meyer did not even need to wrestle to win third place — Nebraska’s Micah Barnes forfeited the match for medical reasons.
After losing his semifinal match to former Penn State great David Taylor, who later went on to win the championship match, Sammy Brooks beat North Carolina State’s Peter Renda in the consolation bracket to move on for a chance at third place.
He did not convert the opportunity into the result he wanted, though; Brooks lost a 9-5 decision to Hayden Zillmer of North Dakota State.
Sam Stoll picked the Hawkeyes up with an 11-1 major decision over Oklahoma’s Ross Larson in his third-place match.
Senior Nathan Burak, the last Hawkeye to compete, beat Derek White of Nebraska to become the third Iowa wrestler to win a championship match. It was his second in a row.
“It feels pretty good,” Burak said. “It’s exciting to get two in a row, and it makes me want to keep winning.”
He joked that the title is something neither of his brothers, who both wrestled at Penn, have.
While the positives outweighed the negatives, one resounding lesson that nearly all the Iowa wrestlers learned over the two-day tournament was the importance of scoring quickly and getting it done in the first period, rather than trying to eke out a win in the third.
Head coach Tom Brands said that was a result of the wrestlers not being predictable.
“Sometimes I think we focus on guys holding us tight instead of getting on offense and creating openings,” Brands said. “If you’re scoring early, you’re probably not predictable … you can’t let [other teams] bog you down.”
Now it is on to 2016.
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Team Results (Top 10):
- Iowa – 152.0
- Nebraska – 135.0
- Rutgers – 110.0
- North Carolina State – 95.5
- Rider – 67.0
- Iowa State – 64.0
- Old Dominion – 63.5
- Princeton – 63.0
- South Dakota State – 57.0
- Purdue – 54.5
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