With 12 of the 13 wrestlers they entered finishing as medalists, Nodaway Valley/O-M felt good about their performance at Friday, Dec. 16′s Pride of Iowa Conference Tournament hosted by Southeast Warren.

The Wolverines had three champs — 113-pound freshman Keyin Steeve, 195-pound freshman Ashton Honnold and 285-pound sophomore Trenton Warner — but co-head coach Brad Honnold liked how the entire team battled through the event and performed at a high level.

The team finished second, scoring 166.5 to champion Martensdale-St. Marys’ 187.

The team had two of its champions finish atop round robin classes, meaning wrestlers in those classes didn’t get advancement points in the event like others. That being said, the Blue Devils still put seven in the finals and the Wolverines only had three. A good effort came up just short.

“Hats off to Martensdale, they’ve got some real horses in the middle of their lineup,” coach Honnold said. “We both ended up with three or four champs, but them having seven in the finals, that was just tough to overcome. Overall, we took 13 kids and 12 of them placed. I never like to come out of a tournament or dual with a loss or not achieving our goal, but they were just a better team Friday night.”

Steeve pinned his way through a round robin bracket. He pinned Southeast Warren/Melcher-Dallas freshman Justin Enfield in the opener in 1:41, then followed it up by pinning Martensdale-St. Marys sophomore Devin Webb in the second round in 1:57. His third match, against Central Decatur’s Kacyn Watson, was his toughest. He got the fall in 3:12.

“Winning is definitely a motivator. I caught [Watson] in a bad position and got the pin,” said Steeve, who is 17-3 on the season. “Coming in as a freshman, I maybe expected to have a 50-50 record with how my weight class looks. Our team, they definitely pick me up after a loss. It helps me bounce back and get a win.”

Honnold also swept a round robin bracket. He first beat a familiar foe in Southwest Valley’s Colin Jacobs by 5-3 decision. He followed it up with a 2-1 win in the third round against Lenox’s Jake Cox.

“I’ve definitely exceeded my expectations. When I was coming into the start of the year I expected to maybe just have a .500 record, but obviously I’ve done a lot better than that this year so far. High school wrestling’s obviously a lot different, having to keep your weight at a certain place and there are a lot of factors to it. The whole thing’s just a lot different,” Honnold said. “I’ve had to wrestle Colin twice before, and it’s probably going to get tougher every time I wrestle him because you both learn off of each other’s styles. Going into the match I knew it was going to be a decent match. I think I’m more of an offensive wrestler than him. He doesn’t take many shots.”

At heavyweight, Warner pinned Lenox’s Jace Smith in the second round in 1:43 before he won his finals match by fall over MStM’s Aidan Laird in 1:02.

Just missing out on a trip to the state tournament a year ago is a motivating factor for Warner, he said.

“Last year I would’ve rather gone farther, and gone to state. I don’t want [to fall short] again this year,” Warner said. “I would like to win out my tournaments. Hopefully I can stay below five losses. I may have maybe two or three tough losses the rest of the year.”

126-pounder Zackery Gebbie (17-4), 138-pounder Matt Nelson (9-4) and 145-pounder Carmine Shaw (16-4) were all third. Eli Harris at 120 (9-5), Bradley Gebbie at 132 (15-7) and Aidan Kuster at 152 (10-10) were each fourth place. Brandon Raasch at 182 (11-8) and Charles Rudolf (8-8) at 220 each turned in fifth place finishes. Kaden Herr, who is relative new to the team (2-4), was sixth.

“As many know, I’m a pretty high-energy, high strung coach. I think that our kids are all that same way, to be honest. If you would’ve told me we would’ve been 9-2 in duals, have a fifth, second and first place finish in tournaments, I would’ve looked at you as a little crazy,” Honnold said. “There were a lot of unknowns coming into this season. We lost some really great wrestlers to graduation and had some great wrestlers coming in. We have five freshmen and you don’t know what they’re going to do in the varsity lineup. Every single kid on this team pushes each other in the practice room everyday.”

Wolverines 3-0 in Afton

The Wolverines dispatched Mount Ayr 66-12, the host Eagles 60-22 and Wayne 57-10. East Union defeated Mount Ayr 39-12 while Wayne beat Mount Ayr 42-18.

Nodaway Valley/O-M came into last week with a win at the Lenox tournament and was 5-0 thus far in dual competition, however they suffered setbacks to Underwood and Missouri Valley Tuesday. To get back on track felt good for the Wolverines’ co-head coach Kolby Baier.

“All around it was a pretty good night. Those are smaller teams. We won the matches we needed to tonight. We got a couple of wins that will help with seeding for [Friday night’s conference tournament at Southeast Warren],” Baier explained. “All three duals, we got out to an early lead. We started at the higher weights. Kaden Herr won his first match and got a pin. Brandon Raasch got an early win in a dual to get us going. Ashton Honnold got us going too. That got the ball rolling and things just kind of kept going from there.”

Herr (170), Ayden Goetz (195), Harris (120) and Bradley Gebbie (132) were all winners by fall against Mount Ayr for NV/O-M. Raider lightweight Brock Shaha (113) beat Steeve by fall in 1:28 and Mount Ayr’s Tegan Hill pinned Kasen Hansen at 145.

The Wolverines benefited from matches won by Raasch (182), Honnold (220), Shaw (145) and Colt Slocum (152) against East Union.

Kuster won an 8-4 decision over Wayne’s Parker Buss at 160 to start off NV/O-M’s dual with the Falcons. Raasch, Honnold, Harris and Shaw all won with pins against the Falcons.