Rams’ Koehler captures state title
Mason Koehler rarely shows emotion on the wrestling mat.
Koehler is a machine while wrestling. Largely unemotional and always singularly focused on his purpose: winning.
But all that stoicism was out the window in the waning seconds of the Class 2A, 215-pound finals on the floor of Wells Fargo Arena at the Iowa State Wrestling Tournament Saturday night.
Koehler was all emotion. The junior dropped to his knees, threw his hands in the air and hollered right along with the 15,000 in attendance in the arena.
Koehler is a state champion.
“It felt unreal, it was like floating,” he said. “I had worked my whole life to get to this point and it felt amazing. It felt almost too good to be true.”
Twenty-four hours after his arm was raised, Koehler still had trouble putting the feeling into words.
“It felt unreal, it was like floating,” he said. “I had worked my whole life to get to this point and it felt amazing. It felt almost too good to be true.”
In the finals, Koehler went the distance with Solon’s Lucas Feuerbach with a 7-0 win, but it never felt in doubt. Koehler was familiar with Feuerbach. He beat him in last year’s state tournament on his way to a fifth-place finish.
“The match went kind of exactly the way we thought it would,” Koehler said. “We scouted and we had a good game plan going into it and it worked out almost perfectly. The scouting the coaches do, it shows it works in my match.”
Glenwood head coach Tucker Weber agreed – a good plan and a focused Koehler left little to doubt he would be the Rams’ first state champion since Caleb Sanders won a heavyweight crown in 2018.
“His focus all year was to win a state title,” Weber said. “He’s a guy who’s been on the medal stand twice already so that was his goal when the season started, and he worked in the practice room like that. The wins and losses he took this year were very beneficial for him. He got back in the room and figured some things out.”
Koehler’s lone loss to an in-state wrestler came to Fort Dodge’s Dreshaun Ross. Ross, a junior, won his third state Saturday and is regarded as one of the top recruits in the country. He has committed to wrestle at Oklahoma State.
was one of four Rams to wrestle at state but the only one to come home with a medal.
As a team, Glenwood finished with 36 team points to place 29th. Burlington Notre Dame was the Class 2A team champion with 129 points.
The Rams’ Reese Fauble (157 pounds), went 3-2 in Des Moines but finished just short of the medal stand.
“He turned a really good state tournament,” Weber said. “Under the old format, 3-2 gets you a medal. But with 24 qualifiers now, he needed to win one more. He got better every match this year. He dealt with some adversity with an injury, and he came back and got confident every match. He wrestled really well in what was probably the toughest weight class. If he’s in another quadrant, I feel like he wins a medal.”
Fauble won by fall over Sergeant Bluff-Luton’s Logan Dunn in the first round before dropping to the consolation bracket with a second-round loss to West Delaware’s Liam Weber by technical fall.
The lone senior on the Rams’ roster bounced back to score a major decisions over Center Point-Urbana’s Aiden Ortega and Williamsburg’s Brady Grier (Williamsburg). His state tournament run came to an end with a major decision loss to Garner-Hayfield/Ventura’s Lucas Kral.
Brody Black and Jacob Aust went 0-2 in Des Moines.
Black (113) dropped his opener to Vinton-Shellsburg’s Eli Ollinger by fall and was then eliminated in the consolation round by North Butler-Clarksville’s Carl Shew by fall. Black closes his sophomore campaign with a 31-19 record.
Aust (175) lost by a 4-0 decision to Algona’s Tayten Rummel in the opener and then dropped an 11-0 major decision to Grinnell’s Josh Ringler. The junior finishes his season with a record of 24-16.
All but Fauble returns for a Rams’ squad that was young and relatively green this season. This experience, seeing Koehler win a state title and seeing the work that goes into reaching state, can only help heading into next season.
“Having three state qualifiers coming back, it sets the tone for the next kids in line and the kids who go third at districts and the younger kids coming up,” Weber said. “They see a kid win a state and they want to do that. Having a state champion in the room is huge.”
Koehler will certainly be ready. He isn’t one to sit on his laurels. He will celebrate this title and then, he said, forget about it next season as he sets out to win another state title.
“I want to focus on winning that second state title but I’m going to try and notice (the 2025 title),” Koehler said. “I want to ignore it and focus on winning it like it’s my first again. I plan dominate in the practice room and work my butt off with this team for next year.”