Iowa women's wrestling clinches first team national title, defeats North Central

CEDAR RAPIDS − The final day of the National Collegiate Women's Wrestling Championships was a math equation for Iowa.

Everyone following the women’s program wanted to know where Iowa, North Central and the pesky King squad stood in the team race.

Could Iowa claw back from an early deficit?

Is North Central too far ahead?

Wait, King can still win this too?

Behind the scenes was an internally focused Iowa team on Saturday morning. The reason? Quite simply, the Hawkeyes hadn’t lost a tournament or dual with a full squad to this point. For them, absolutely no reason to panic.

“We’ve been working so hard for this all season,” Felcity Taylor said. “(We had) to wrestle every second, every minute and it would take care of itself.”

Down 14.5 points with North Central having a lot of points still available for them to score, Iowa needed to have a great third session.

The Hawkeyes then went forward and went 9-1. North Central, meanwhile, went 3-8.

The Hawkeyes flipped their fortune. Going into the finals, North Central still held a nine-point team lead, but with seven potential national champions, the math was suddenly in Iowa’s favor if the Hawkeyes picked up individual titles.

At 191 pounds, Jaycee Foeller looked poised to trim the deficit right off the bat. However, a four-point action flipped the match on its head and Foeller dropped by fall.

The math, just like that, was looking slimmer for Iowa. Down nine still with the Cardinals having 221.5 points up for grabs. Fans in Iowa’s team camp, center in the stands for each of the four sessions, pulled out their phones and rapidly checked team scores.

“We gotta win out, don’t we?” one Hawkeye fan said.

However improbable it might have once looked, Iowa erased that deficit in quick order. Starting with Emilie Gonzalez, who defeated her Hawkeye teammate Sterling Dias to become the first-ever national champion for the Hawkeyes. That gave Iowa four team points.

Then it was Ava Bayless adding four team points with a tight 2-1 victory for a national title at 109 pounds. Taylor capitalized from her recent switch from 123 to 116 and won her third national title for four more crucial team points.

After a pin from Reese Larramendy for six team points and another four from Marlynne Deede (to make it five national titles), the Hawkeyes had one bout left.

This match was between Iowa's Kylie Welker (a junior world champion) and North Central's Yelena Makoyed (a three-time NCWWC champion). This was the marquee match of the day, regardless of where the team score stood.

One Iowa fan yelled to the officials and media row on the floor:

"Is this what determines it?" Referring to the team championship.

At that moment, Iowa led North Central by half a point. Winner gets to hang a banner in its home arena.

Welker paced out onto the mat, unknowing of the consequences, she said afterward.

Up in the seating area, the team was unaware of it too. That was until Taylor raced to the top of the stands and told Dias the scenario while Welker led 4-0. As a result, the team stood and and ran down the stairs to the floor in preparation.

Welker, in a storybook moment, capped off the night with an 11-0 technical fall to secure a sixth individual title for Iowa and a NCWWC team title in Year 1 of the Hawkeye women's program. Welker was the first to commit to Iowa after the school started the program. At the time, it was just coach Clarissa Chun. Nobody else. No coaching staff, no teammates. Just Welker and Chun, and they saw it through to a team championship on Saturday.

As Welker raced off the mat with a smile on her face, the team had just reached its way to the floor. Teammates greeted Welker and briefed her on the history she just made.

"I was like, 'What?'" Welker said. "It took a few moments to click, but it was awesome."

The party then rocked on. Hugs, tears, shrieks of joy were pronounced to the wrestling world after a stellar battle that went down to the final match. Iowa, in its inaugural season, had dethroned the reigning national champions and crowned seven individual winners.

The Hawkeyes are already looking forward to the battle with the Cardinals again and are feeling confident in what's to come.

"We're just getting started," said Chun, who won NWCA National Coach of the Year following the win. "Our women just grew closer each moment and opportunity out on the mat. They know what it means to fight for Iowa."

Ultimately, while the math equations at times pointed toward different results for the Hawkeyes, what math couldn't account for was the grit they showed down the stretch to pull out wins when the title was on the line.

Individual results for the Iowa Hawkeyes at NCWWCs

Individual champions earned a spot at the U.S. Olympic Trials on April 19-20. Welker, Deede and Rose Cassioppi had already qualified previously. Emilie Gonzalez, Bayless, Taylor and Larramendy all punched their tickets with titles at Alliant Energy PowerHouse in Cedar Rapids.

The team plans to have a couple athletes, such as Nyla Valencia, head to the Last Chance Qualifier in early April to try to add to the total.

• 101 - Sterling Dias - Second place
• 101 - Emilie Gonzalez - National Champion
• 109 - Ava Bayless - National Champion
• 116 - Brianna Gonzalez - Second place
• 116 - Felicity Taylor - National Champion
• 123 - Ava Rose - Eliminated in bloodround
• 130 - Emily Frost - Eliminated in bloodround
• 136 - Lilly Luft - Fifth place
• 143 - Reese Larramendy - National Champion
• 143 - Ella Schmit - Seventh place
• 155 - Marlynne Deede - National Champion
• 155 - Bella Mir - Fifth place
• 170 - Haley Ward* - eliminated in consolations
• 170 - Kylie Welker - National Champion
• 191 - Jaycee Foeller - Second Place

Final team scores from NCWWCs

• 1st - Iowa (204 points)
• 2nd - North Central (198 points)
• 3rd - King (163 points)
• 4th - McKendree (106 points)
• 5th - Colorado Mesa (68.5 points)

Match-by-match and full team results can be found on trackwrestling.com

Eli McKown covers high school sports and wrestling for the Des Moines Register. Contact him at Emckown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @EMcKown23.