One year ago, Tony Palmer was basking in the glow of winning two state high school wrestling championships, setting a bunch of school and state records on the football field, and planning his college future.
Winning a national wrestling championship wasn’t on his to-do list when he enrolled at Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs. His focus was on the gridiron, not the wrestling mat.
And yet here we are, talking about Palmer running the table and winning the 197-pound national title at the National Junior College Athletic Association national championships, held over the weekend at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs.
Two pins, two decisions and a medical default highlighted the South Sioux City native’s weekend, including a win over last year’s national champion and a celebratory back flip after his first-period pin over Trevyn Gaves of Western Wyoming in Saturday night’s 197-pound championship match.
Not bad for a young man who hadn’t been on a mat since winning his second state high school title for the Cardinals last February at the Nebraska State Wrestling Championships in Omaha.
Palmer saw action for the IWCC Rievers football team that won the NJCAA national title last December with a 28-10 win over Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College. He played in eight games and recorded 11 tackles to help the team win its fourth national title.
After the season, IWCC wrestling coach Brayden Curry talked with Palmer and asked if he’d be interested in joining the wrestling team.
“I’d known Tony beforehand,” Curry said. “My younger brother and he are good friends and I knew him when he was growing up, and I told him that if he had an inkling to wrestle, the room would be open.”
Palmer admitted that he missed battling on the mats.
“I didn’t get a lot of playing time this year in football,” he said. “I was in a rotation at linebacker, and after the season I thought about it and decided I’d missed wrestling.”
It took a couple of weeks to get back into wrestling condition, but getting his hand raised was still the end result as he went undefeated after joining the team in late January, with two of his wins coming over defending national junior college champion Andrew Marquez of Indian Hills Community College.
“As a freshman in college, it’s tough to win, but Tony wrestled very well,” Curry said. “His first match, he wrestled at heavyweight while getting on his weight descent plan down to 197, and he won his first two matches there and then went undefeated the rest of the way.”
Palmer competed against wrestlers at the NAIA and NCAA levels as well and competed well no matter who the opponent was.
Once he got to nationals, Palmer took care of business. He won his first match on a first-period pin and moved to the quarterfinals after a medical default.
His toughest battle came in the quarterfinals, where he had to come from behind to post an 8-6 decision over Elijah Josey of Clackamas. That set up a third meeting with Marquez, and Palmer won 7-2 to advance to Saturday’s championship finals.
“It was a gritty match because we’d seen each other twice already, and I just showed how bad I wanted to win and how much it meant to me,” Palmer said.
Palmer injured a pectoral muscle during that semifinal match, but it didn’t seem to bother him as he pinned Gates with less than a minute to go in the first period to claim the national title, helping IWCC to a fourth-place team finish.
“He put it all out on full display in the finals,” Curry said of Palmer. “He got out of a deep shot and turned his defense into offense and got the pin.”
“Coach told me to expect a seven-minute match and my pec was bugging me a little bit, but I just stayed focus and realized I’ve been in this position before,” Palmer added. “I had his head down and caught him and my cradle was just tight and there was no way he was getting out of it.”
Palmer now turns his focus back to football, with the Rievers starting spring drills about a month from now. He’s heard from a couple of coaches about wrestling and isn’t closing the door on a return to the mats next year.
“With spring ball starting in April, I’m looking forward to that to see where I’m at,” he said. “Obviously, I’m open to the right opportunity when it comes to wrestling, but right now I’m just focusing on what’s in front of me.”
Who knows what’s next for Palmer?
