Mount Vernon had two place winners at the state tournament.
“I thought we wrestled pretty well,” said coach Vance Light. “Jackson Jaspers got beat first round, and came all the way back to get fourth. He beat the kid who beat him in the first round, so he was a few steps higher on the podium than he was last year.”
Jackson Jaspers (138) wrestled to a fourth-place finish at the state tournament. Jaspers had a loss in the first round against Roland-Story’s Logan Powers. Jaspers wrestled back through the consolation rounds and semi-finals, taking four wins and winding up in the third-place match against Ty Koedam of Sergeant Bluff-Lutton. Jaspers lost in that match by a sudden victory to finish in fourth place.
Clark Younggreen (220) ended up in a sixth-place finish at the state tournament. Younggreen won by fall over Sawyer Falck of West Delaware, but lost against Webster City’s Jaxon Cherry in the quarterfinals. Younggreen won the next two matches before falling to Davenport Assumption’s Aiden Morgan in the consolation semifinals. That sent him to the fifth-place match against Central Decatur’s Tegan Carson. Younggreen lost against Carson to take sixth place.
“Clark ended up getting sixth,” Light said. “He kind of got sick a little bit the second day. But he wrestled through it, and ended up getting placed sixth, which is pretty good.”
Henry Ryan (152) lost against Sergeant Bluff-Lutton’s Zander Ernst by fall in the first round. He took a win over Albia’s Eli Zanoni by fall, but lost by decision against West Delaware’s Logan Peyton in the next consolation round.
Light noted Ryan wrestled very good in a really good weight bracket.
Mount Vernon is only losing one wrestler from the team next year, that of manager and girls’ wrestling team member Maddie Plotz.
“We’ll see how much they grow and see where everybody’s at next year,” Light said.