SOLON

Layken Lee was in the wrestling moment of her life.

As Lee forcefully pressed her shoulder back into Benton Community’s Jordan Voelkel, her coach, Brock Moore, displayed the proper move from his coaching chair as fans packed into the main gym at Solon High School cheered her on.

The moment lasted an eternity.

Lee’s teeth guards flashed into the lights above as she desperately tried  to find that one extra piece of energy as she pressed harder and harder into Voelkel’s shoulder.

The cheers got louder.

Moore kept showing the move, mouthing the words across the mat, ready to leap from his chair at any second.

More cheers.

The match referee was laying prone on the mat now, ready to signal the pin.

“I’m trying to tell her to turn one way and to push this way and lift the head that way,” Moore said later.

Still, no signal.

The cheers get louder.

“She’s looking at me kind of funny a couple of times,” Moore said.

In that moment, a million things can fly through your head. For Lee, it was those times at Mid-Prairie Middle School last year, when Moore was both her coach and the family’s neighbor. It was the years that Layken’s brother was wrestling in a kids program at English Valleys, and Moore was the coach.

It may have been all those painful practice sessions this season in the wrestling room at Mid-Prairie High School where Layken was the 15-year-old freshman getting pounded day after day after day.

“She’s getting beat up on,” Moore said. “She still comes back. Bloody noses, bloody lips. She’s just constantly coming back at it.”

And on this night in Solon, the beat-up continued. Lee won her first match against a Louisa-Muscatine wrestler who had lost 31 times this season. Then, Lee lost her second match, and it was off to the consolation round in the second gym at Solon. The losers’ gym. Removed from sight. She won her next three matches, all by falls, then defeated the girl from Lisbon, Alina Mallie, who sent her to the consolation round.

One thought kept going into her mind.

“I was really scared, considering I’m a first-year wrestler in high school, and I had to wrestle back to even get second (place) or go to state,” Lee said. “I had to wrestle my whole way back, like four matches.

“It was really scary.”

And here she was, back in the main gym, the second-place match at 140 pounds, and the whole place is cheering her on. Waiting, waiting for the pin.

“I stuck it for awhile,” Lee said. “Waited for him (the referee) to call it.”

All of her Golden Hawk teammates were at the edge of the mat, encompassed by this moment, Ashlee Farrier and Gabby Gingerich and the rest of them. They’re screaming.

“To see Lake do it right behind me,” said Farrier, who had clinched her own spot to state with a pin.

Moore keeps motioning.

“C’mon, girl, just get this fall figured out!”

Then, it happened.

Another hard push slammed the last of Voelkel’s shoulder into the mat.

The referee slammed the mat with his hand to signal the match was over.

Lee immediately broke into tears.

Her teammates swarmed her with hugs.

And Lee leaped into the arms of Moore for a celebratory hug. Coach and athlete. Neighbor and neighbor.

“This family grew up next to me,” Moore said, his eyes watering.

Suddenly, the freshman is going to state. She’ll be right there on one of the mats at Xtreme Arena in Coralville competing in a tournament that not so long ago didn’t exist for Iowa girls. It does now.

“The best pin of the whole year,” Lee said.

Indeed, it was.

 News columnist Paul Bowker can be reached at bowkerpaul1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul