Prep wrestling: Battle of Waterloo turns 10 Friday

If any of them know her history, Cassy Jakoubek, in her first season as the Denver High School girls’ wrestling head coach, is not aware of it.

“I don’t think so,” Jakoubek said in advance of the 10th Battle of Waterloo dual tournament at Young Arena where six girls’ teams will participate in their own tournament. “I had one of my girls come up and said she tried to look me up online and said, ‘I couldn’t find you anywhere.’

“Obviously, I’ve gotten married and none of them know my maiden name, so the name change has thrown them a bit.”

For the record, Jakoubek is the former Cassy Herkelman, who in 2011 as a Cedar Falls Tiger was the first female wrestler to qualify for the Iowa high school state wrestling championships.

Eight years later, after a college career at McKendree University, Jakoubek is a Waterloo police officer and the first-year coach at Denver. With nearly 500 female high school participants in the sport this year, it makes Jakoubek smile to see how far girls’ wrestling has come in the past decade.

“When I was wrestling, obviously, I wrestled against the boys and did not have this option,” said Jakoubek, who wrestled for Cedar Falls at the Battle of Waterloo four different seasons. “I’m excited as far as the growth in the sport in the state of Iowa.”

At Denver, where the team is in year two, the Cyclones are still figuring it out. Jakoubek says she has nine girls out and a couple more are on the fence and haven’t decided yet. The team hosted a quad with Osage, Charles City and Crestwood in late November and participated in the Aplington-Parkersburg tournament last weekend.

“They are excited for Friday,” Jakoubek said. “It is their first big tournament and they are nervous and have been asking a million questions.

“We’ve been growing. While it seems like we’ve been going a long time, it has only been a few short weeks. I’ve been taking a lot of notes and I think we are going to see more and more growth over the next few months, and next season will be completely different.”

Joining the Denver girls at the Battle of Waterloo are teams from Waverly-Shell Rock, Crestwood, Independence, Charles City and Osage. The girls’ portion of the tournament will be mixed in throughout the day on Friday with each team getting five duals.

As far as the boys, last year’s tournament finished in crazy fashion as Waverly-Shell Rock, West Delaware and Don Bosco all went 2-1 in the championship pool, but the Go-Hawks were the only team not to be penalized a team point and were determined the champions on the No. 1 tiebreaker.

“Crazy, crazy,” W-SR head coach Eric Whitcome said after the tournament.

This season’s tournament should be no less crazy as the top four seeds include a pair of defending State Duals champions – Don Bosco in 1A and West Delaware in 2A. Waverly-Shell Rock was runner up in 3A before proceeding to win the 3A traditional title.

Depending on which ranking service is used — IAwrestle or the Predicament — there will be 13 ranked teams in the tournament, including the top four in Class 2A — West Delaware, Union Community, Osage and Independence.

Tonight, from 5-7 p.m. at the National Wrestling Hall of Fame Dan Gable Museum, the Battle of Waterloo committee will induct Chuck Patten, Larry Sallis, Dave Cunningham, Dan Mashek, Jamal Fox, Jerry Springer and Rex Smith into its hall of fame.