In 2019 there were 87. In 2020 there were 350. And in 2021 there were 457 wrestlers who competed in the Iowa Girls State Wrestling tournament.

Five years ago, there were less than 100 girls competing in high school wrestling in the entire state, but this year 698 girls competed throughout the season, which culminated at the state tournament on Friday, Jan. 22 and Saturday, Jan. 23 at the new Xtream Arena in Coralville.

  Highland brought three girls to the tournament: Mackenzi McFarland (106), Angelina Roling (106) and Maddie Peiffer (138).

Mid-Prairie brought nine girls: Abigail Grout (106), Emil Harmston (113), Ellie Brenneman (126), Bronwyn Brenneman (126), Caitlyn Busch (138), Marissa Cline (138), Madison Kelly (145), Mia Garvey (145) and Sarah Meader (152).

As a team, Mid-Prairie finished in 12th place out of over 100 teams and put two wrestlers on the podium: Bronwyn Brenneman took fourth and Meader took fifth.

Head coach Justin Garvey said the quality and competitiveness of the tournament was even higher this year than it was last year, that the wrestling even in the early rounds was the same quality of the wrestling in the final rounds in previous years.

“This tournament has evolved into its own thing now,” Garvey said. “Two years ago, we went to Waverly Shell-Rock with one girl and a volunteer assistant coach. Last year we went to Waverly Shell-Rock again with five girls, but I left on the second day to go to a varsity tournament. This year, though, we brought nine girls and had no other tournament to go to. This was our full focus for the weekend.”

Legendary wrestler and coach Dan Gable made an appearance before the finals, telling the crowd that he believes girls wrestling saved the sport of obsolescence; girls wrestling is one of the fastest growing sports in the country.

Highland’s Peiffer scored all of Highland’s 5 team points, winning two of her four matches. She defeated Anabelle Hernandez of Vinton-Shellsburg in a 5-3 decision in the first round and won by fall in 6:43 over Maci Goodell of Vinton-Shellsburg in the second consolation round.

Five of Mid-Prairie’s wrestlers combined for their 71.5 team points with at least one win coming from Bronwyn Brenneman, Busch, Cline, Kelly, Garvey and Meader.

Meader received a bye in her first match, then won by fall over Julianna Muxin of North Fayette Valley and Keisha Walker of Epworth, Western Dubuque in the second and third rounds of the championship bracket. She was the only Golden Hawks wrestler to enter day two of the tournament undefeated.

Meader lost by 10-2 major decision to Bella Porcelli of Southeast Polk in the quarterfinals, but won her next two matches by fall to put her in the fifth-place match, which she won by a close 5-4 decision over Haidyn Snyder of Waverly-Shell Rock.

Meader’s goal for her senior year was to place higher than she did at last year’s tournament, where she placed sixth.

Meader scored a takedown in the final seconds of the first period to give her a 2-0 lead, but Snyder quickly responded in the second period of even the score. A pair of escapes from Meader put her up again, but another Snyder takedown brought the score to 4-4 going into the third period.

Meader choose to go down to start the period and ended up winning the bought with a hard-fought escape to give her a 1-point lead.

In the final seconds of the fifth-place match, with a 5-4 lead, Meader took another shot — she thought she was losing and wasn’t about to let time run out without a fight.

“I had no idea what the score was,” Meader said. “But I knew I had to go out there and wrestle my hardest. I knew I had to finish the match strong and not give up.”

Head coach Garvey said Meader’s final match of her high school career was exemplary.

“She did everything she had to do in that match. She scored takedowns, she got escapes,” said Garvey. “In the third period we told her to go down and she looked at us like we were crazy because she was tired. The girls worked extremely hard in that six-minute match, but she took bottom, did what we told her to do, and put herself in a position to win.”