Matt Levins The Hawk Eye / Ryan Walrath Photo credit
DES MOINES — CJ Davis was destined to do great things from a very young age.
Davis used to tell his preschool teacher at Sunnyside Elementary School, Wendy Mossman, about the pins in his stocking cap from getting pins in his kids wrestling tournaments. She had an inkling he would go on to accomplish great things on the wrestling mat.
The Notre Dame-West Burlington/Danville high school senior fulfilled his destiny Saturday night at Wells Fargo Arena.
With time winding down in his Class 2A 126-pound state championship match against Carter Schmauss of Crestwood, Davis pulled out a move he learned earlier this week from teammate and best friend Kaiden Dietzenbach — a left-handed headlock.
The stunning move vaulted Davis from a two-point deficit to a 12-7 win and a state championship.
“I’ve never felt anything like this before. Everything I have always worked for I’m trying to show them right now,” Davis said. “Me and my partner Kaiden have been talking all tournament, working on our headlocks, scenarios like that. Losing, you have to go big. We’ve worked that all weekend. That’s what I had to do.”
Davis, a four-time state qualifier who placed seventh as a freshman and fourth last season as a junior, would not be denied this time around.
When the Nikes arrived in Des Moines on Tuesday for the four-day tournament, he and Dietzenbach hung their gold singlets up in a closet, motivation for them to get to the finals together.
“We hung our gold finals singlets up when we got up here on Tuesday and this was the goal,” Davis said.
“I put our singlets in the closet for a reason. We were going to bust them out and put on one last show in these singlets,” Dietzenbach said. “I think we did that.”
Schmauss (44-5) scored the first takedown with 15 seconds left in the first period for a 3-0 lead.
“He was really quick and long on his re-attacks, so I wasn’t able to get in deep on his legs,” Davis said. “It just wasn’t in the game plan.”
Davis scored an escape in the second period, but Schmauss got another takedown for a 6-1 lead.
Davis got another escape, then got a clutch takedown at the edge of the mat with three seconds left in the second period to close within 6-5.
Schmauss got an escape midway through the third period for a 7-5 lead, setting up the late dramatics.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Davis pulled some magic out of that old stocking cap.
“I talked to Johnny (Siegel) right before my match and I told him I had that in my back pocket. It was ready whenever I needed it,” Davis said of the left-handed headlock. “I just saw there was short time. I was pushing him out of bounds and he didn’t want to go out for a restart. He kept pushing back in. I just had to do it.”
“There’s a huge difference between them this year and years in the past,” ND-WB/Danville coach Bill Plein said of Davis and Dietzenbach. “In past year’s they would have been in the waning seconds of the matches and thought, ‘I’m going to lose this.’ They didn’t today. They fought through it today.”
At long last Davis put the biggest pin of all in his cap — a state championship.
“That’s the best way to go out, just like that, Davis said.