Fargo 2022!!

The biggest tournament ever! That was the buzz around Fargo, ND this year as nearly 7,000 athletes from all over America descended on the Bison State for a shot at the coveted Stop Sign. For us, it was also our most attended and fruitful year to date. We were fortunate enough to get 18 individuals qualified and of those 18, 13 of them competed in 2 divisions. We also sent the most girls we ever have out to Fargo, ND to represent Team Iowa and 3 of them helped lead Iowa to a Cadet Girls National title (The first girls’ team from Iowa ever, AND only the 3rd state to ever win one). Our cadet ladies were led by Jillian “monster” Worthen who secured her first All-American Honors at 106lbs. Jillian dropped her opening match and battled all the way back to secure a 7th place finish. On the Junior side, retuning All-American Lilly Luft dropped a very controversial round of 16 match before picking up a couple wins on the back side. She lost a heartbreaker in the blood round to end her summer campaign.

“Lilly wrestled really hard and gave herself a chance to be back on the podium. Ultimately, we made a couple mental errors in matches that ended up hurting us in very tight situations. After a small break to let her body heal up, I am very confident she will be back with a vengeance very soon.”

- Cruse

On the boy’s side of things, we rolled into freestyle looking to have some better results than we did. We lost a couple really close quarter finals/ blood round matches in the cadet and junior division. Jayden Rinken was our lone Freestyle All-American at Junior 100. Jayden finished 3rd in Freestyle having lost his only match to eventual champ. Definitely leaving the Men’s Freestyle division looking for better results in the coming years.

“I have a lot of good things to say about Jayden Rinken. That dude grew up as a man so much this summer. We had a talk in May about dropping down to 100 for Fargo and He was very responsive to it. I wasn’t sure if He could stay on it for the whole summer, but I think were both happy he did. He did a very difficult thing very, very well.”

- Cruse

Greco was a completely different story for the club. We had 11 kids wrestle in the Greco portion of the tournament. Of those 11 kids, 5 of them reached All-American status and 2 more reached the blood round. To start in the cadet division Blake Fox and Kyler Knaack had very strong showings but eventually came up just short of the podium. It was Tucker “Big Tuck” Stangle who went full send the whole tournament before ending up 6th as a second-year cadet. Tucker wrestled the whole tournament wide open and put together a number of strong matches to receive his first AA status as a high schooler.

“Tucker was on fire. He debated on going up to 145 but ultimately his decision to allow things to be a little difficult paid off for him. Big Tuck turned every match he could into a shootout and the more wrestling that happens the better his chances are. Great weekend for Tucker. Very happy for him.”

- Cruse

On the Junior Greco side, we put 4 kids on the podium, (Jayden Rinken, Garret Rinken, Nicholas Fox, and Jared Thiry) and another made it to the blood round (Jaiden Moore). Jaiden Moore finished out his high school career with a very strong showing at Fargo going 7-2 and making top 12 his senior year. Super excited for his continued progress at Coe College these next coming years. Our 4 All-Americans on the Junior side were pretty dominant in the matches they won. Garret Rinken’s blood round match was by far the most exciting match we had all tournament. From down 8-2, to a 5-point throw through the judge’s table, to a late 4 pointer to grab the lead, it had it all. Just tremendous composure mixed with assertiveness on his part to secure his first All-American status at Fargo.

Jared Thiry had one of the more memorable Fargo experiences. His first match of the day was a 35-minute disaster that he ended up losing. After that match he put his work boots on and rattle off 6 straight wins to secure his place in the top 8. This was also Jared’s first All-American honors and definitely earned the hard way.

Nicholas Fox and Jayden Rinken round out our Jr All-Americans respectively. Nicholas finished his tournament in 6th place and Jayden in 7th. Both boys put on great performances throughout the tournament and are definitely very skilled Greco athletes. I am definitely looking forward to seeing more of them down the road in some big Greco matches.

Results

• Cadet Women

  • Jillian Worthen 7th

• Junior Freestyle

  • Jayden Rinken 3rd

• Cadet Greco

  • Tucker Stangle 6th

• Junior Greco

  • Jayden Rinken 7th

  • Garret Rinken 7th

  • Nicholas Fox 6th

  • Jared Thiry 7th

All said and done we did have our best tournament to date, but I know from my point of view and our athletes, a lot of us are expecting a little more. I am excited to take these 7 plus Lilly Luft from last year and continue to build around our 8 returning Fargo All-Americans.