IESA State Wrestling Tournament - Statebound Postseason Awards (Class A & AA)
Note: These are Statebound awards, not official IESA honors. They're our way of recognizing the performances that stood out to us while covering this event.
The brackets are closed. The medals are distributed. And now it's time to hand out some hardware of our own.
Every year the state tournament produces moments that deserve more than just a placement on a bracket sheet. Dominant runs, improbable comebacks, and performances that should be recognized. This year was no different.
We're handing out four awards for each division: Most Outstanding Wrestler, Most Dominant Wrestler, Against All Odds, and Wrestleback Warrior. For the full weight-by-weight breakdown, check out our IESA State Tournament Recap.
Let's get into it.
Class A Awards
Most Outstanding Wrestler: Jake Webb, Rochester (119lb)
If you've been following our coverage, you know the backstory. Webb came into state ranked #7. He lost twice at sectionals, once to #1 Brady Lowe and again in the 3rd place match to Colin Neil. He entered the state bracket as a 4-seed. A 4-seed ranked #7 is unusual. It usually means something went wrong. In Jake's case, it meant he had a bad weekend at the wrong time.
Then he showed up at state and decided that wasn't going to be his story.
Round 1, he beat #2 Kyler Kindelsperger by a 7-4 decision. Quarterfinals, he pinned #5 Jude Egshig. Semifinals, he got his rematch with #1 Brady Lowe, the same kid who beat him at sectionals, and won a 5-2 decision. And in the finals, he pinned #4 Kenny Gersch in 59 seconds.
Read that again. He beat the #2, #5, #1, and #4 ranked wrestlers, in that order, on his way to the title. Every single opponent ranked higher than him. He's the only champion in either division whose path required four matches against four ranked wrestlers, and all four were ranked above him. He avenged his sectional loss to Lowe in the semis, then walked into the finals and ended it in under a minute.
Most Dominant Wrestler: Jaxson Barton, Rock Island Jordan Catholic (105lb)
Barton came in as the #1 ranked wrestler and left no room for debate. His tournament went like this: Fall 2:22, Tech Fall 15-0, Tech Fall 17-0, Fall 0:45.
That's four matches, four bonus-point wins, and a combined score of 44-0. Nobody scored on him. Total mat time for four wins: 7 minutes and 43 seconds. He was never at risk in any match. Barton was the #1 seed, wrestled like the #1 seed, and nobody at state gave him a reason to think otherwise.
Against All Odds: Kristopher Maple, Murphysboro MS (275lb)
Coming into state ranked #8, Maple was the longest shot of any eventual champion in either division. We had him projected as a 5th or 6th place finisher at best.
To understand this award, you have to understand how chaotic 275lb was. This bracket got turned upside down early. #2 Charlie Schradeya fell to #4 Nathan Durano in the quarterfinals. #1 Bentley Von Ruden lost a tiebreaker to HM Colton Mueller in the semifinals. #3 Kaleb Green also fell to Mueller in the quarters. Mueller was the upset kingmaker of this bracket, knocking off two of the top three seeds on his way to the finals. He deserves a ton of credit for that run.
Maple, meanwhile, was quietly taking care of business on the other side. Round 1: Fall at 1:36 over HM Kris Smith, leading 9-0 at the time. Quarterfinals: Fall at 0:57 over #7 Hunter Tull, up 9-2. Semifinals: Fall at 0:20 over #4 Nathan Durano, up 3-0. Twenty seconds. Then the finals against Mueller, where Maple was leading 7-3 before winning by injury default at 1:47.
Four matches. Four bonus-point wins. A #8-to-#1 climb that's the biggest ranking jump to a championship we saw in either division this year. The winner of that finals match was going to be our Against All Odds winner regardless, because both stories were that improbable. Mueller took out #1 and #3 to get there. Maple pinned his way through the other side in a combined 4:40 of mat time. Both paths were incredible. Maple gets the award because he's the one holding the trophy.
Wrestleback Warrior: Zyler Pozos, Forrest Prairie Central (155lb)
Before the state series began, we had Pozos and Eric Giaquinto firmly in our top two at 155lb. They seemed head and shoulders above the rest of the class. Unfortunately, the bracket had them meeting in the semifinals instead of the finals. No matter how well both wrestled, only one was moving on.
Pozos was winning that match 6-1 going into the 3rd period. He started the 3rd on bottom, and that's where Giaquinto found his opening. Pin at 2:56. Comeback victory for Giaquinto. Devastating for Pozos. He was up five points with one period left in a semifinal, and now his title hopes were over.
What happened next is why he's getting this award.
He pinned #4 Bo Mattox in the consolation semifinal, then pinned #5 Bryce Lamb at 2:50 in the 3rd place match. Two dominant falls against two ranked opponents. A lot of wrestlers would have been mentally done after losing a semifinal they were leading 6-1. Pozos came back and made sure everyone in the building knew that loss didn't define him.
Class AA Awards
Most Outstanding Wrestler: CJ Abrantes, Lake Zurich South (135lb)
Abrantes came in as the defending AA 135lb state champion and the #1 ranked wrestler. Everyone in the bracket knew who he was and had likely game-planned for him. The pressure of defending a title is something most kids this age have never experienced.
He made it look routine.
His tournament: Tech Fall 19-3. Tech Fall 17-2. Tech Fall 17-1. And then, in the finals against #2 Andrew Lyons, a wrestler who had been dominant all tournament, he pinned him in 49 seconds.
Three consecutive tech falls, each one a statement, followed by a sub-minute championship pin. Back-to-back state titles. If you watched him wrestle this weekend, you saw a kid who's operating on a different level than everyone else in his bracket. Last year as a 7th grader, Abrantes won the title with gritty, close matches. This year, he came back and won it by dominating everyone in front of him. That's a lot of growth in one year.
Most Dominant Wrestler: Marshall Gray, Lake Zurich North (167lb)
Marshall Gray tech-falled every single opponent he faced in the state series. Not just at state. Regionals, sectionals, and state. Every match, a tech fall. This kid is certainly capable of pins, but he likes to score.
At the state tournament, his four matches went like this: Tech Fall 15-0. Tech Fall 24-6. Tech Fall 18-3. Tech Fall 15-0.
That's a combined score of 72-9 at state alone. If you include regionals and sectionals, his state series total was 176-20. Nobody in either A or AA came remotely close to those numbers. The second-highest point total at the state tournament belonged to CJ Abrantes at 56-6. Third was Luke McClaine at 47-3. Gray outscored them both by a wide margin.
He was the only champion in either division to win four tech falls on the way to the title. A few wrestlers had four falls, but nobody else had four tech falls. He opened and closed his state tournament with 15-0 shutouts, and he came in ranked #2, not #1. None of that mattered. Nobody came within shouting distance of finishing a match with him.
Against All Odds: Parker Weller, DeKalb Huntley (112lb)
Weller came in ranked #3 at a weight class loaded with talent. The bracket draw handed him the hardest possible path to a title: he'd have to go through #2 DeShaun Wilder in the semifinals and #1 Benjamin Fobert in the finals. Both guys ranked ahead of him. No way around them. And Fobert had just beaten Weller 10-2 by major decision at sectionals the week before.
He handled Wilder with a 20-5 tech fall in the semifinals. Then he turned around for the finals against Fobert, the same kid who majored him a week earlier, and pinned him in 3:17.
He had to beat both guys ranked above him, and he did. Tech-falled #2, then pinned the #1 who had just beaten him convincingly seven days prior. That's a championship performance.
Wrestleback Warrior: Chase Cabrera, Bloomington JHS (215lb)
If you read our Day 1 recap, you know what happened. Cabrera came in ranked #2 at 215lb. He was one of the favorites. And then Finn Kitchen pinned him in 47 seconds in Round 1.
Forty-seven seconds. The #2 ranked wrestler, done on the championship side before the first period was over. That's the kind of loss that can end your tournament. Not just on the bracket, but mentally. You spend an entire season building toward state, and it's over before you break a sweat.
Cabrera chose a different ending.
He dropped into the consolation bracket and started pinning people. And he didn't stop. Fall after fall after fall, including a 22-second pin in the consolation semifinals that might have been the most emphatic "I'm not done yet" moment of the entire tournament. He wrestled all the way back through the consolation bracket and won the 3rd place match with a pin over Frankie Martinez at 3:32.
From getting pinned in Round 1 to pinning his way to a 3rd place medal. He's the only wrestler in A or AA to win five matches and record five falls at the state tournament. He's also the only wrestler in either division to lose his first match and still place 3rd. The #2 ranked wrestler took the longest, hardest road possible to the podium, and he made it look dominant by the end.
That's a Wrap
Every state tournament has its moments. This year gave us Jake Webb's upset tour, Marshall Gray's four-tech-fall masterpiece, Chase Cabrera's long road back from a 47-second Round 1 loss, and a whole lot of moments in between.
Congratulations to every wrestler who qualified for state this year. Whether you're coming home with a title or coming home hungry for next year, you earned your spot on that mat. And to the eight award winners above: you gave us something to remember.
For the full weight-by-weight results, read our IESA State Tournament Recap.