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Kevin Dresser going home to small-town Iowa to face Boilermakers
College wrestling: ISU head coach, Purdue head coach Tony Ersland were both two-time state champions at Humboldt High School
Rob Gray
Dec. 18, 2021 3:58 pm
By Rob Gray, correspondent
AMES — The smell of hot popcorn wafted through the air.
The cheers rose and fell with the fortunes of Humboldt High School’s wrestlers, and nestled upstairs in the balcony sat 6-year-old Kevin Dresser.
His wide eyes were glued to the action. His mind whirred with visions of glory that would come to fruition on that very same floor, in that venerable gym.
Today, Dresser returns — this time as No. 13 Iowa State’s head wrestling coach in a long-planned and COVID-19-delayed dual meet with 15th-ranked Purdue slated to start at 5 p.m.
“I remember sitting next to the band and thinking how cool it would be someday to run out there as a high school wrestler and wrestle in that environment,” said Dresser, who won two state championships as a Humboldt Wildcat before becoming a national champion at Iowa. “So it was just a great place to grow up and it was just really well followed.”
Still is.
Tickets to the unique dual meet between the Cyclones (2-1) and Boilermakers (6-0) sold out in an hour.
Dresser said downtown tailgates will begin at noon as he and Purdue head coach Tony Ersland — also a two-time state champ at Humboldt — prepare to lead their respective top-15 teams.
“The thing about Humboldt, growing up in Humboldt, is it’s a very, very sports-minded town — and doesn’t matter what sport,” Dresser said. “I just remember growing up that they followed, everything. It wasn’t just football, basketball, wrestling, it was golf, it was tennis, it was whatever was going on at that particular time.”
Today, that will be wrestling — and as long as most of the grapplers come in to the meet healthy, it will be high-level action across multiple weight classes.
At 125, ISU’s Kysen Terukina (6-0, ranked No. 22 by InterMat) will take on Devin Schroder (10-1, No. 7).
At 184, the Cyclones’ Marcus Coleman (5-1, No. 13) will grapple with Max Lyon (8-4, No. 20).
At 197, ISU’s Yonger Bastida (6-1, No. 18) faces Thomas Penola (13-1, No. 10).
And at 157, the Cyclones’ defending national champion David Carr (7-0, No. 1) could line up against Kendall Coleman (7-2, No. 11).
“I think it’s gonna be super special,” Carr said. “I’m really excited. It’s supposed to be pretty packed and I know that Humboldt is our No. 1 season ticket holder (geographically), so we always go there for fundraising and things like that, and I always have great interaction with the Humboldt people, so it’s gonna be a pretty special event.”
Especially for Dresser and Ersland, who graduated from Humboldt 11 years apart.
“How often does small-town northwest Iowa get two top-15 programs in the nation?” Dresser said. “I don’t think anybody else has got two Division-I head wrestling coaches that wrestled in the same high school of a town of less than 5,000 people, so it’ll be buzzing.”
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