Former Panther leads clinic

In the same room that he prepared to earn three state medals and amass 171 career victories for the Creston Panthers, Jackson Kinsella led the next generation of young standouts Sunday evening.

Kinsella, who completed his redshirt freshman year at University of Nebraska-Kearney, was the featured clinician for Sunday’s session of the Southwest Iowa Summer Wrestling Series hosted by Creston. About 50 wrestlers of high school and middle school age practiced skills work led by Kinsella, before a session of live wrestling.

Panther coach Cody Downing said it’s beneficial to the young wrestlers from across southwest Iowa to work on drills presented by someone who is competing at the next level.

“Whoever is the host school has the clinician, and it’s really up to them as to what they want to show,” Downing said. “Jackson messaged me some things he was thinking of talking about, and I said it sounded great. We like to show the kids some things and then do some live competition at the end.”

The idea spawned from the demise of the wrestling program at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. The UNO wrestling program formerly hosted a series of similar clinics and live wrestling opportunities on selected dates through the month of June.

“Back when I was an assistant we used to have kids go to their camps at UNO on Wednesdays in June,” Downing said. “They don’t have a wrestling program anymore, so some of us (southwest Iowa) coaches got together and said let’s do something like that. We meet on Sundays in June and finish with a tournament on July 2 at Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln.”

Other hosts for the program this year were Iowa Western Community College, Riverside High School of Oakland and Red Oak High School. Downing said the program is free and open to wrestlers from any southwest Iowa school. Participating schools try to rotate hosting duties. Each workout begins at 6 p.m. and is designed to end around 7:30 p.m.

Kinsella said he brought some basic concepts to the program based on his experience trying to use his offensive attacks against collegiate competition.

“I’m showing some hand fighting things today,” Kinsella said prior to the event. “When I went to college I thought, I have all of these attacks, but how do you get to them? That’s the hardest part. That and mat wrestling were the biggest adjustments from high school. I was really good on my feet in high school and could take everybody down. But now you’re somewhere where takedowns are few and far between. You have to hand fight for awhile. Your defense has to become better.”

Wrestling unattached as a redshirting freshman, Kinsella compiled a 12-10 record competing at both 184 pounds and 197 pounds. He was third at state at 195 pounds as a high school senior. He decided after the first semester to commit to wrestling at 197 and end the struggle to make 184.

“In the first semester I was focusing more on cutting weight than getting better,” Kinsella said. “In the second half of the year I didn’t get as many wins as I wanted to, but my wrestling took a big jump up. You’re still growing sometimes in college.”

Nebraska-Kearney won the NCAA Division II national championship by a 47-point margin this year after finishing runner-up in 2021. The title ended a four-year championship run by St. Cloud State. Matt Malcom of Glenwood was a national champion at 165 pounds for the Lopers.

The varsity 197-pounder was senior Hayden Prince, a super regional champion and national qualifier. He will return for his sixth year next season, based on the extra COVID-related season granted by the NCAA from 2020 shutdown.

“I had a lot of good learning experiences last year and now I’ll just focus on doing the best I can and try to be ready for any wrestleoff opportunities,” Kinsella said. “Whether you’re on varsity or not, you still wrestle the same open (tournaments) and if you are putting up good results they will give you a chance to wrestle off. Everybody is good at this level. You have to show up every time ready to go. Records don’t matter.”

Kinsella is majoring in industrial distribution and is working this summer at Kearney Winnelson’s plumbing branch of Winsupply.