Decorah’s Naomi Simon leads Team Iowa at Junior women’s freestyle national championships

Decorah's wrestling program has a notable history: state runners-up in 1999 and six top-four team finishes all-time. Fifteen wrestlers have combined to win 19 individual state titles. Three have won multiple, led by Lee Fullhart’s three-peat from 1992-94.

The Vikings' wrestling present looks pretty good too, because Naomi Simon is now two years into her own special wrestling career.

Her latest entry came at this week’s Junior women’s freestyle national championships in Fargo, North Dakota. Simon reached the semifinals and ultimately finished sixth at 164 pounds. She was one of three Iowa girls to earn Junior All-American honors, along with Ottumwa’s Jasmine Luedtke (seventh at 106) and Bettendorf’s Ella Schmit (seventh at 132).

The Under-16 and Junior national championships is USA Wrestling’s biggest national high school competition every year, and the Junior women’s portion was the fourth of six multi-day tournaments being held inside North Dakota State’s FargoDome this week.

Iowa has dominated the competition thus far, winning team titles in both Junior men’s freestyle and 16U women’s freestyle while crowning eight more All-Americans in 16U men’s freestyle. The Junior women may not have matched that furious pace, but they continued adding to the state’s budding girls’ and women’s wrestling movement.

Iowa's 11 total All-Americans this week — the 16U team finished with eight and won the team championship for the first time ever — is the most Iowa’s ever had combined at the 16U and Junior women’s freestyle national championships. And the Junior team's three is the most since 2014, when another three Iowa women reached the podium.

► MORE: With 8 All-Americans, Iowa wins 16U women's freestyle national team title

Luedtke, a two-time state qualifier against the boys and a two-time state medalist against the girls, went 7-2 overall this week en route to seventh. She won five consecutive consolation matches to reach the podium after a second-round loss.

Schmit, a three-time girls state champ who also qualified against the boys, went 6-2 this week to finish seventh. She is now a two-time Junior All-American, the eighth Iowa woman to earn Junior All-American status multiple times. She was also one of three future Hawkeye women’s wrestlers to become a Junior All-American this week.

Sterling Dias took home gold at 100 pounds, posting a 6-0 record to become Nevada’s first-ever Junior women’s freestyle national champ. She outscored her opponents 51-8 to win, capped by a 9-4 finals win over Ohio’s Makennah Craft. Dias is now a five-time national champ, in addition to her two Cadet world medals.

Sam Calkins, just three days after her 18th birthday, went 5-1 and finished second at 200 pounds, part of California’s team championship performance (Iowa finished 21st with 17 points; California scored 165). Calkins won her first five matches by a combined 43-3, then dropped a hard-fought 3-2 final to Ohio’s Savannah Isaac.

Simon hopes to join the Iowa women’s wrestling program herself someday, and as she enters her junior year at Decorah this fall, she appears well on her way to perhaps opening that door.

In addition to her sixth-place finish in the Junior tournament, Simon also took fourth at the 16U level this week. She is just the third Iowa woman to become a 16U and Junior All-American in the same week, joining Cassy Herkelman (both 2011 and 2012) and Rachel Watters (2013). Both won national titles before stellar college careers.

► RELATED: Incoming Fort Dodge freshman Dreshaun Ross wins 16U national title

Simon’s weeklong performance was also the cap to a stellar sophomore year.

In January, she won her second girls state title, keeping her on pace for four, and ran her career record to 61-2, according to Trackwrestling. In May, she took sixth at the U17 world team trials. In June, she went 7-1 with four pins at the Junior national duals.

This week’s double All-American showing was just a reinforcement that she's not only one of Iowa's best, but one of the nation's best, too — and a reminder that Decorah’s wrestling program may have a decorated past, but with two years left in her high school career, Naomi Simon is authoring her own special chapter.

Cody Goodwin covers wrestling and high school sports for the Des Moines Register. Follow him on Twitter at @codygoodwin.