Simley’s six-year state title run came to a screeching halt last year, when the Spartans finished fourth in Class 2A.
They nearly lost their quarterfinal bout in that tournament. The field had caught the dynastic Spartans, and passed them by.
The question for Simley last offseason: How do you catch up to a moving object? The best programs weren’t going to slow down, so making up ground would require something special. Something … different.
“We knew we had to increase our work level,” Spartans co-coach Will Short said.
Increase? Life in the Simley wrestling room has never been described as “easy,” even if Short did joke the older version of himself may be getting “softer.” That wouldn’t be the case this season.
Simley wrestlers all said this year was different.
“We were dialed every day. Every day was a day with no breaks,” senior Vicente Elustondo said. “Most teams probably play a couple games a week here or there. We’re here every day in the wrestling room, grinding, getting ready for this.”
For the grand stage. For the section final against Kasson-Mantorville. For Thursday’s state championship bout with New Ulm. For every massive moment the Spartans knew was to come.
They met each of them, the Spartans again reign supreme after returning to the peak of Class 2A with a seventh state title in eight seasons.
The re-ascent was not easy.
“We did a lot more work,” Short said.
As in two-a-days – all season. In the mornings, the wrestlers would either run or lift. Afternoons featured high-intensity practices with ample drilling. Recent college graduates Reid Nelson and Quayin Short – fresh off the completion of Division-I careers – returned to Inver Grove Heights to push the next wave of Spartans in the room.
“It wasn’t easy,” Simley junior Jake Kos said. “Coaches were hard on us. There were multiple days where you didn’t want to come in, but you put that work in.”
Because it had to be done. Kos noted last year’s result “lit a fire” under the team. The Spartans no longer feature a superstar-filled lineup. Development is organic and steady. It’s earned. And, if you want to be the best, it’s required.
At the season’s outset, Short wasn’t sure he had a state title team. A blowout loss to St. Michael-Albertville and subpar performances in Eau Claire, Wis. and at the Christmas tournament only reinforced those concerns.
At that point, Short didn’t think Simley would even advance to St. Paul, with the exception of a few individual qualifiers.
But it was around winter break that the extra work started to truly pay dividends. The Spartans performed well at the Rumble on the Red in North Dakota. The heavier weights – a weak point early in the season – improved noticeably.
Elustondo, Brenden Watts, Gregorio Duron Contreras and others all took leaps. Simley was no longer hemorrhaging bonus points at the ends of duals.
Elustondo pulled out a victory at 215 pounds in the team title match against New Ulm. Then Duron Contreras delivered a defensive pin to put the cherry on top of the championship – a fitting end to the affair.
“We had a lot of kids, I just can’t say enough about how much they improved,” Short said. “I’ve had years where we had wrestlers who cleaned up their technique and got in good shape and had a good tournament at the end. But this group went from, in a lot of weight classes, very mediocre to high level. And that has been huge. That’s why you’re state champions.”
The pathway to this point was simple – work, work, work. Short isn’t sure Simley would have edged the likes of Kasson-Mantorville without turning up the dial.
Perhaps that’s the blueprint to the next string of Simley titles? Short wouldn’t go that far, noting not every group will allow itself to be pushed in the way this team embraced it.
“You’ve got to have a group of kids who are willing to do this amount of work,” he said. “This is a special group. I’m so proud of them.”
The work was hard, Short noted, “but it was fun.”
“What a great journey,” he said. “We talked about the journey before the (title) match, and how we were successful already with the bonds we had made within that journey of becoming the team that we became is what made this team really special.”
Elustondo described the immediate aftermath of Thursday’s title match as “kind of like a high.” There he was, celebrating with the newfound brothers with whom he’d shared hours and hours of blood, sweat and tears in the pursuit of that very moment.
“It’s just so much happiness to be here with these people,” he said.
It’s possible Simley had taken such success for granted over the previous half decade. That wouldn’t be the case this time around. The Spartans knew they’d earned this.
“Losing last year, taking fourth place, now winning this year, it makes it feel so much better,” Simley wrestler Aidan Mincey said. “I’m more appreciative of everything we have.”
“We worked harder than any team here,” Kos said. “It’s the work that paid off.”
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