Destiny Kolheim wins 155-pound title at Girls State Wrestling Championships

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

CORALVILLE — Just the sign of the times if you want to call it that, but a substantial portion of the population has become increasingly stupefied and occupied for hours on end by videos played on their smartphones.

Destiny Kolheim is not that gal … or at least she wasn’t during the downtime before her Class 1A 155-pound championship match against Earlham senior and No. 1-seed Haley Glade at Friday night’s final session of the Girls State Wrestling Championships in front of a sold-out crowd at Xtream Arena.

“I never wrestled her before,” the Charles City senior said about Glade. “My coaches were able to find videos of her wrestling, but I didn’t want to see them. I thought they would only mess me up in the head.

“But I wrestled the girl she beat in the semis (East Buchanan’s Miley Walz), and (Glade) only beat her by 1 point. When I defeated her, it was by much more than that. So I was confident going into the match.”

And it showed. Kolheim scored a takedown (now worth 3 points) to open the scoring less than a minute into the first period, and continued to score with another TD in the following period and a 3-point near-fall during short time of the third period to cap a dominant shutout major decision (13-0) for the state title while finishing her senior season with a 27-5 record.

It didn’t take long before No. 7-seed Kolheim busted up the bracket. During Thursday’s quarterfinal round against Decorah junior and No. 2-seed Lauren Luzum — someone who pinned Kolheim in the regionals the weekend before, forcing Kolheim to win a subsequent wrestleback elimination bout for the state berth — Kolheim avenged the loss and advanced with a 6-1 decision.

Then against No. 3-seed Benton County junior Lizzy Wolf in the semis, Kolheim advanced to the finals with a 9-1 major decision.

Kolheim’s first high school-sanctioned wrestling title is the second title in the past three seasons for the Comets with the former being Lilly Luft’s third state title while wrestling for Charles City before continuing her career at the University of Iowa.

Incidentally, Kolheim and Luft were formally honored by the city due to their actions away from the wrestling mat. They were part of the staff of lifeguards at the Lion’s Field Pool who saved a young swimmer from a possible drowning several summers ago, thus further validating the theory that when things go gravely wrong with no licensed first-responders in the immediate vicinity, the presence of any quicksilver acting and alert current or former military personnel and/or highly trained and disciplined athletes will likely increase the chance of survival for those in desperate need.

Charles City senior Leah Stewart, the other half of the Comets’ state-qualifying duo this season, almost pulled off an upset of her own in the Class 1A 190-pound final against Mount Vernon senior standout Libby Dix, the 190-pound champion from last season who Stewart — not a fan of the two-class format implemented this season in girls wrestling — was at least glad she had the potential opportunity to dethrone at state as the realignment kept them in the same class.

The wrestlers battled to a literal standstill in the first period as Stewart seemed on the verge of attaining the leverage needed to bring Dix to the mat for a TD, but Dix managed to stay on her feet. When Stewart was granted the option for the second period, she chose the neutral position but again neither wrestler was able to score a TD.

Dix took the down position to start the third period and was able to get to her feet and turn to face Stewart for the 1-point escape. That proved to be the margin of victory as Dix was able to keep Stewart to get the match-winning TD while remaining active enough to avoid any stalling warning or penalty to thwart her in her quest for a back-to-back title.

Dix finished her final prep season undefeated (45-0).

Stewart, who picked up her 100th career victory several weeks ago, finished her season at 40-2 with both losses coming from Dix.

“The last time she faced her was at the Don Gable Donnybrook (Dec. 7),” Charles City head coach Rob Pittman said of Stewart’s previous meeting against Dix, who pinned Stewart with 2 seconds left in the second period. “So you can see how much she has closed the gap since then.

“That was by far (Dix’s) toughest match of the season, and this is from a girl who started wrestling just three years ago.”

Stewart placed fifth at 190-pounds at last year’s state tournament.

Like Kolheim, Stewart has one more high school athletic season (track and field) before graduation. She is Charles City’s all-time record holder among females in the discus and shot put. Stewart says she’s still not sure what path she is going to take in regards to continuing her athletic career in college, but she will likely wrestle one more AAU season this summer.

* One of Kolheim and Stewart’s teammates and fellow state-qualifiers from last year was Edie Collins, whose family has moved out of the area and now Collins is a sophomore at Raccoon River-Northwest.

While finishing the tournament with a seventh-place medalist showing in the Class 2A 135-pound bracket and capping her season record at 46-11, Collins helped the Bandits win the Class 2A team title.