Have you Heard?

Osage claims another TIC wrestling title

By Kristi Nixon

BELMOND — Osage sophomore Nolan Heard knew his match hung in the balance on whether the Green Devils wrestling team would repeat as Top of Iowa Conference dual champions on Thursday, Jan. 6.

Heard got out to a big lead and had to hang on for an 18-6 major decision despite some tense moments in which he was on his back against Dylan Blanchard at Belmond-Klemme High School in this conference quadrangular in which coach Brent Jennings’ team won 40-34.

“Win or go home,” Heard said of knowing the stakes in his match. “I’ve got to win, I wrestled that kid a year or two ago and it was a close match. He came out on top I think, actually. So, I knew it was going to be a good, close match so I was like I just have to wrestle smart. And then, he was trying to lock up cradle. I was just like, ‘I’ve got to fight this off.’”

Jennings said that Heard was already at a slight disadvantage because he bumped up a weight class but at the same time he gave the Green Devils their best chance to pull off the dual.

“Two sophomores, but I bumped Nolan up from ‘38 to ‘45, you never know,” Jennings said. “We were in trouble a few times in that match and came out of it, so it could have been…you could see we were a little lighter than the other guy, so we’re not a big 38-pounder to begin with and then going up to ‘45. He gave us our best chance to win there and it was the right move to do and he ended up coming out on top with some big takedowns in that match.”

The full story appears in the Jan. 12 print edition of the Enterprise Journal.