Iowa State’s 141-pounder Anthony Echemendia allowed himself to drift down memory lane.

Back to his small-town upbringing in Cuba, where everyone seemed to work for the Provincia Prison, and where lilting palms merged with deciduous trees to form an arboreal playground for him and every other youngster in the region.

“My grandpa worked at a prison,” said Echemendia, who traced his life back to those roots when he was around five years old. “My grandma was the chef at that prison. There were probably, like, 10 houses around that town (and) every person (who) lived in those houses worked at the prison. OK?”

Fair enough. 

But why was the 26-year-old Echemendia, a 2024 All-American who saw his last season derailed by injury and a life-threatening infection, thinking about the old days?

Easy answer. The Cyclones had last beaten Iowa around that time on Dec. 5, 2004 — until Echemendia and his teammates ended the painful ensuing 20-match Cy-Hawk skid with a 20-14 victory on Sunday at Hilton Coliseum.

“I was just a kid, you know, running around barefoot, climbing trees, and just going crazy,” said the sixth-ranked Echemendia, who won by major decision over the Hawkeyes’ Nasir Bailey before a revved-up crowd of nearly 13,000 on Sunday. “I was a gymnast back then. I wasn’t even wrestling during that time, and I would not even think that I was gonna be in the United States wrestling for Iowa State University. That’s why I say, when you guys do these interviews, I’m always saying, ‘Hey, this feels like a dream.’”

Don’t pinch him, though. Iowa State head coach Kevin Dresser said that Echemendia should have won by technical fall, but he failed to properly release Bailey multiple times before trying to record another takedown.

“He dominated and we coached him up (Monday) in practice and said, ‘You should have had a tech,’” said Dresser, whose Cyclones stand fourth in FloWrestling’s team tournament rankings — narrowly behind Iowa, which fell from #2 to #3. “If he would have waited about another second after those intentional releases and watched the referee out of the corner of his eye, he would have had a tech. But I thought he did fantastic. His pace — him and (top-ranked heavyweight Yonger Bastida’s) pace was just so intentional. And that’s what the fans love to see. I tell them all the time, ‘You’re entertainers, and you guys entertained.’”

So did four-time All-American, Missouri transfer, and second-ranked 197-pounder Rocky Elam, who beat #4 Massimo Endene, 8-2, to cap the long-awaited triumph in a recently lopsided rivalry.

“This is one of the reasons I came here, for this Cy-Hawk dual, so I was excited to go last,” said Elam, who has placed in the top six at the NCAAs four times. “I feel like this was kind of a selfless win for all of us. This is kind of for Hilton Magic, for the Cyclones, for the team, and it’s like a community win in a sense.”

Moving On

Iowa State won’t be defined by any dual meet win, let alone one that took place on the last day of November. March is all that matters, of course, but ending that long drought in the Cy-Hawk dual certainly boosted the team’s momentum heading into the Cliff Keen Invitational in Las Vegas, which begins Friday — with one caveat attached.

“Obviously, the guys who got their hands raised on Sunday, probably this would be a springboard for them,” Dresser said on Tuesday. “The guys that lose — I can remember being a competitor, and losing for me was like a wake-up call. It gave me more focus. And that’s how I’m gonna try to coach these guys that didn’t get what they wanted on Sunday. OK, let’s figure out why you maybe didn’t win — and we had individual workouts (Tuesday) morning, and we worked on a lot of those areas. This is a chance for us, we get kind of hit in the face with a shovel, and now you’ve gotta go back to the drawing board why you didn’t get your hand raised I na really good environment. You probably got beat by a top five or (top) ten guy, but you still got exposed. So it’s always a new challenge.”

Vegas Bound

Dresser said that Jacob Frost didn’t wrestle at 149 for his team in the Cy-Hawk dual because he was battling an illness. He also said that Aiden Riggins will get the call at 165 as starter Connor Euton is recovering from an ankle injury sustained on Sunday.

“Riggins proved last year, he’s a round of 16 guy, he ain’t no slouch,” Dresser said.

Frost, an All-American at 141 last season, beat two-time Big 12 champion Paniro Johnson twice in recent wrestle-offs.

“I’m a purist and and the great thing about the sport of wrestling is the coach doesn’t pick the team,” Dresser said. “Every now and then we get backed into a corner and maybe one guy just competes really good and can’t win the wrestle-off thing. Sometimes you have to make a tough call. But I can tell you 98 percent of the time, I’m gonna stand behind the wrestle-off, all right? There’s gonna be two percent of the time where we might all put our heads together and decide there’s a better option, but the purist in me says, you win two out of three wrestle-offs, especially when you lose the first one, you’re the guy right now."