Douglas Miles

Your Prep Sports

CORALVILLE – Evelyn Eggleston really didn’t like wrestling at first.

As a middle school student, the sport felt odd as nothing came natural.

It would have been easy for Eggleston to shrug her shoulders and find another extracurricular activity, but she stayed on the mat.

“A lot of it was my dad telling me to stick with it,” said Eggleston, who capped her senior year at Iowa City Liberty by finishing third in the 140-pound bracket at the Class 2A girls wrestling state championships Friday at Xtream Arena. “My whole life, I just wanted to be a part of something. Do really well at something. ‘This is a growing sport. I am only going to get better. You can’t get worse, so I am going to stick with it and see where it takes me.’”

Eggleston was not alone in her early wrestling pursuits.

Her younger sister Kate – an elementary school student at the time – was also encouraged to give wrestling a try from their father, Gary Eggleston.

The two learned and competed at the club level – mostly against other girls – and their skills rapidly improved.

Now, they are Liberty teammates separated by three years.

“It’s great,” Evelyn said. “We are always there for each other. Now especially that we are on the same team for just a year, it is special to have her in my corner as opposed to her being in the stands. … It’s just super special having to grow in the sport together.”

Evelyn (36-5) entered the tournament seeded eighth, but earned third at 140 by winning all three of her Friday consolation matches.

Not be outdone, Kate – seeded sixth at 115 – also won all three of her consolation matches to join her big sister with a third-place medal.

The freshman defeated a junior and two seniors – including the bracket’s top seed in Cedar Falls’ Lauren Whitt – to finish her first varsity wrestling season at 46-5.

“I maybe didn’t have the confidence going into this tournament,” Kate said. “But then once I started catching that momentum, my confidence just shot through the roof.”

The Eggleston sisters were two of a whopping six medalists for Liberty, which had just one prior to this season.

Five of the six wrestlers won their last match, including sophomore Eva Karam (110 pounds) and junior Peyten Van Dyke (155), who both placed fifth.

Callum Wu finished seventh at 145, while fellow senior Taylor Cavanh (105) was eighth.

With 82.5 points, Iowa City Liberty finished fifth in the 2A team standings.

“It’s just a really good example of, ‘If you put work in, good team, you do things right, you get to a level where you put six on the medal stand,” Liberty High coach Derek Coorough said. “It feels good.”

While Liberty High does graduate five seniors, the ability to return three state medalists to next year’s team bodes well for the future of the Lightning girls wrestling program.

“Very excited,” Coorough said. “Junior high is rolling. We just started seventh, eighth grade and that feeder program into us is going to be excited to see these girls and see these results and know that they can do it, too.”

City High also had a third-place medalist as senior Shaona Emmanuel (37-5) rebounded from a loss in the 155-pound semifinal to top-seeded and undefeated Skylar Slade of Southeast Polk to win a pair of consolation matches.

It was the second third-place finish at 155 in two years for Emmanuel.

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