CORALVILLE, Iowa – With the championship round still to go, Raccoon River Northwest has wrapped up the Class 2A team title at the girls state wrestling tournament and made some history in the process.
RRNW has piled up 133 ½ points and will have four wrestlers going for individual titles in tonight’s championship matches at Coralville’s Xtream Arena. One of those finalists, Katie Biscoglia at 110 pounds, will try to become the first four-time state champion since the IGHSAU began running the sport in 2023.
Also the 2A champion last year, RRNW becomes the first to win two team titles. Southeast Polk is second with 103 points and Algona has 100, but neither could score enough tonight to take over the top spot even if all four RRNW finalists lost their matches.
Ankeny is fourth with 94 points, followed by Iowa City Liberty with 82 ½ and Waverly-Shell Rock with 80 ½.
RRNW qualified 11 wrestlers for the state meet and eight will end up on the podium. During the afternoon consolation matches Friday, RRNW had two wrestlers finish fourth and two others finish sixth.
Southeast Polk has two finalists, including former state champion Skylar Slade at 155, and Algona will have four going for titles after an impressive display of wrestling in the first three rounds. Of the 12 matches those four wrestlers have won, nine have come by pins. The Bulldogs also had a wrestler finish eighth, meaning five of the six who qualified for state reached the podium.
Waverly-Shell has three wrestlers in the finals and Ankeny advanced two. Liberty does not have a finalist, but the Lightning scored big in the consolation bracket with two wrestlers finishing third, two taking fifth, another finishing seventh and one finishing eighth.
Biscoglia is one of five returning champions from last year who made the finals and two will square off at 170. Defending champion Autumn Elsbury, a senior at South Tama, will go against Waverly-Shell Rock sophomore Amalia Djoumessi, who moved up after winning at 155 a year ago. Djoumessi pinned her first three state tournament opponents while Elsbury has two pins and a major decision.
Also seeking to repeat are Siera Becker of Indianola at 105 and Avaeh Smith of Lewis Central at 130. Slade won a state title as a freshman in 2023, then finished third and second before making her run back to the finals this year. She’ll take a 41-0 record into that match and is 179-2 for her career.
The Class 1A championship matches also are tonight. The session starts at 6:30 p.m.
