CEDAR RAPIDS
The unbeaten streak finally ended on a Saturday afternoon in Cedar Rapids.
Adley Sweeting, a 15-year-old freshman at Highland High School who began her first high school year as the starting catcher for the Huskies’ state tournament softball team, had won her first 22 wrestling matches this season.
Her rise came so rapidly that she was the only freshman in the Iowa 1A rankings in her weight class at 120 pounds.
Saturday, Dec. 20, she defeated a top-ranked wrestler, then also lost in the Prairie Girls Wrestling Invite that included more than 20 Iowa high schools, big and small.
Off to one side in Prairie’s large main gym, Sweeting talked to her dad, and coach, Tony Sweeting, a Highland High School alum who won an individual state championship in wrestling in 1998. She listened to every word, dad and daughter.
“There’s always going to be somebody out there that’s going to beat you, there’s always somebody better,” Tony said. “I keep telling her this: a loss isn’t always a bad thing. Especially now, get it in her head that she can be beat and just realize this and there’s things we need to work on and need to keep working. Hopefully, it sinks in.”
Oh, it will.
Among the spectators in the crowd at Prairie was Carrie Wieland, Highland’s head softball coach. She knows all about Adley, who won the varsity starting catcher job last May as a 14-year-old eighth grader, started 27 games and helped the Huskies to a 17-win season, regional championship and an appearance in the state tournament.
And now she’s trying to make another one.
“The state tournament is something that is probably one of my biggest goals right now,” Adley said.
Just like dad.
Tony Sweeting was a wrestling stud. He placed third in the state tournament in 1996 and 1997, then won a championship at 119 pounds in 1998.
It is no coincidence that he is now an assistant coach for the Huskies alongside head coach Erin Bramble, a 24-year-old nursing student at Kirkwood Community College who was never a wrestler. Every day is learning day. Every day is teaching day.
“I’ve learned a lot from Nick Cole and Dylan Stewart, the boys coaches,” she said. “The majority of the two years, I was with junior high practicing with varsity, learning.
“I owe a lot, pretty much everything I know, to Nick and Dylan and Tony. They’re awesome.”
Highland, like much of the state, is in the midst of a girls wrestling boom. Numbers are up statewide. In just one year’s time, the Huskies varsity program grew from two girls last year to seven this year.
“When you look at the numbers, they’ve grown astronomically all over,” Bramble said.
And right in the middle of that growth is Adley Sweeting, the daughter of a state champ who wasn’t so fond of the sport the first time she tried it at age 9.
Tony Sweeting, who has a wrestling room at home, still remembers that day and the shout coming out from his daughter.
“He’s trying to kill me!”
Adley didn’t wrestle for another year after that.
Tony, who has coached youth on the club level, needed a kid to fill out a weight class for a competition in Wisconsin the next year, and Adley agreed to do it.
“From there on out,” Tony said, “she just kept wrestling.”
And she was good. Starting in fifth grade and competing with club teams out of Burlington and other places in southeast Iowa, she won multiple AAU youth titles in Iowa.
Adley is determined. And, yes, even a bit surprised at her freshman success.
“I’m kind of surprised,” she said softly. “I did a few tournaments before this season and it wasn’t very good. Went 0 and 2.”
And then she didn’t lose.
“She’s just like a bear,” Tony Sweeting said. “She does what she’s told, and don’t ask me questions. She puts in a lot of time and she’s very driven, motivated, where if she has a goal she wants to obtain, don’t get in her way.”
“It’s amazing to watch her step on the mat because then you watch her in her true element become who she is,” Bramble said. “It’s very exciting and fun to watch.”
Sweeting’s road toward the IGHSAU State Wrestling Tournament on Feb. 5 and 6 at Xtream Arena in Coralville will include the Highland Girls Wrestling Invitational on Jan. 9 and the Southeast Iowa Super Conference Girls Tournament on Jan. 26 in Wapello.
There, you’ll see daughter and a proud dad.
And you’ll see a determined freshman chasing a dream that her dad once realized more than 25 years ago.
“This wasn’t our goal to win the Cedar Rapids Prairie Tournament,” Tony Sweeting said. “Our goal is at the end of the season.”
Saturday, Adley climbed onto the awards podium at Prairie for her final four finish.
A bigger stage in Coralville awaits.
News columnist Paul Bowker can be reached at bowkerpaul1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul
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