On Aug. 31, Iowa’s first football game of the season, offensive tackle Alaric Jackson went down with an injury. Wirfs moved from right tackle to the left side of the offensive line, something that he didn’t do much of in practice.

It worked out for the Hawkeyes, however, and they downed Miami (Ohio) 38-14 while the makeshift offensive line helped the running game to 213 yards and left Nate Stanley unprotected for a sack only once.

“[Wirfs] did a good job sliding in and then Levi [Paulsen] slid out to the tackle position and didn’t seem to be affected, either,” head coach Kirk Ferentz said. “That’s one benefit of having guys that have played. But not every player is capable of doing that, too. I’ll qualify it by saying that.”

Paired with Wirfs on the offensive line this year is center Tyler Linderbaum, who also stood on the same WaMaC conference podium as Wirfs and Costello after finishing third.

“It’s kind of a cool thing, just seeing three guys that you know coming into the Big Ten, living out their dreams of playing sports and all that,” Linderbaum said.

Linderbaum pinned Wirfs in his last meet before state, and that was the moment Wirfs’ mindset and the way he wrestled changed. After talking to Truitt and the other coaches, he started pushing the envelope in his matches and being more aggressive for a full seven minutes.

Wirfs beat his first two opponents in the state tournament in wide margins for heavyweight standards, but the night before the finals match, he came down with the flu.

“I woke up, and I took a lot of ibuprofen,” Wirfs said. “I was drinking like a bottle of honey because I had a sore throat. Then, I went out there and I think my adrenaline kicked in there before the match.”

Wirfs wrestled the opponent he lost to in his final match during his senior year, giving him a chance to show how far he had come.

“Even though it was a close match on the scoreboard, Tristan was in control pretty much the whole match and ended up getting a takedown with about a minute left, so I think 3-2 was the final score,” Truitt said. “It was an awesome ending, a storybook ending, and in my career, that’s definitely one of the highs.”

That wasn’t the last time Wirfs made a mark on Mount Vernon athletics. As a four-year letterwinner on the track team, he was the fourth Iowa male prep to win both the shot put and discus titles in back-to-back years and the first to win three-straight discus titles since the 1950s. His career-best throw of 66-3 1/4 in the shot put ranked sixth-best nationally and second-best all-time in the state of Iowa.

Being an all-around athlete has propelled Wirfs into his success on the football field thus far, helping him to a starting role in the final eight games of his freshman year and every game since.

“From track, it’s just explosiveness; you’ve got to be quick and explosive through the ranks,” Wirfs said. “And wrestling, people ask that a lot. I think the biggest thing is body control. It’s just being able to tell where you’re able to flip your hips and stuff like that, that kind of translates to football, so if you get in a weird position on a block to be able to stay on your feet.”