Iowa wrestling entered the 2021 season as a prohibitive favorite to repeat as Big Ten champions and to win their first national championship since 2010. Through the first month of the season, they'd done little to dispel that belief, winning all five dual meets on their schedule in fairly lopsided fashion. The one thing that could slow down the Iowa juggernaut this season? The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which took away last year's NCAA Wrestling Championships and has been wreaking havoc with lineups since the season began (including Iowa's) and has now put an even bigger impact on Iowa's season. Effective immediately, Iowa has paused all "team related in-person activities."
Iowa has paused. pic.twitter.com/JUKEOFBBUL
— Cody Goodwin (@codygoodwin) February 9, 2021
In the short term, this means that Iowa's scheduled dual meet with Penn State this Friday night has been postponed. Beyond that? Any future scheduling impacts are TBD.
This news comes in the wake of increasing COVID-19 problems within the Iowa program. Alex Marinelli was held out of the dual against Illinois two weeks ago due to the Big Ten's COVID protocols. Tom Brands tested positive for COVID-19 last week and went into quarantine at home. And this past weekend Kaleb Young was a late scratch for Iowa's duals with Purdue and Ohio State after being placed in the Big Ten's COVID protocols. So the trend between the Iowa program and COVID was not exactly encouraging.
If there's any silver lining to this news, it's that a scenario like this is happening early enough in the season that the coaches and wrestlers can take all necessary precautions and get any necessary treatment (if required) and recover in time for the Big Ten and NCAA Tournaments next month. Big Tens are about a month off, while the NCAA Tournament is around six weeks from now. The nightmare scenario is a wrestler testing positive a week or two in advance of the Big Ten Tournament and having to miss that event -- or worse, right before the Big Ten Tournament, which would likely rule them out of participation in both the Big Ten and NCAA Tournaments under the Big Ten's COVID protocols. If the worst thing that happens here (assuming anyone afflicted is able to recover fully, of course) is that a few dual meets get postponed (or canceled), that would be far from the worst outcome.
Still, this is a very unfortunate development and a very unpleasant disruption to Iowa's season. That said, this is also far from the first COVID-related disruption to the 2021 wrestling season (Iowa's scheduled dual meet with Michigan a few weeks ago was postponed due to COVID issues at Michigan) and it likely won't be the last. All we can do is hope that Iowa is able to weather it as well as possible -- and, again, we wish good health and speedy recoveries to anyone in the Iowa program who might be afflicted with COVID -- and that things resume to some semblance of normality in time for the tournaments next month. Fingers crossed on that front.
