From unranked to fourth, Michels turns heads
By Kristi Nixon
CORALVILLE — Even with some neck issues, St. Ansgar freshman 100-pounder Mariah Michels showed she was much better than an unranked wrestler would indicate.
Michels (16-7) bounced back from a semifinal loss to second-ranked Gable Hemann of Osage and reached the consolation final in which she finished fourth in the girls state wrestling meet after a 10-3 decision loss to Council Bluffs Lewis Central’s Maya Humlicek.
“It’s pretty awesome,” Michels said. “I definitely didn’t expect to be on the podium. So, that’s cool.”
Since she’d experienced losses to eventual state champion, Jillian Worthen of LaPorte City Union, and Hemann, Michels said she didn’t know who else could be as tough or tougher than those two.
Turns out, not many.
“I knew in past meets I’ve wrestled some pretty tough girls like Gable and Jillian,” Michels said. “And I knew they would be here and they would be tough, but I didn’t know who else was going to be tough, so I didn’t know where I was.”
However, her coach, Craig Christensen had a better idea of just how Michels could compete.
“Coming into it, we knew she wasn’t ranked, but her only losses at the weight were to Jillian and Gable and we’ve beaten everybody else,” Christensen said. “Rankings are just rankings. That’s how we look at it. We let everyone know we were in a match and we ended up a point away from being in the finals. Going into the third period, we were down only three points in the last match. We proved we could wrestle anybody in the state today.”
The full story appears in the Jan. 26 print edition of the Enterprise Journal
