Ryan Schmalen takes over as Charles City’s new boys wrestling head coach

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

CHARLES CITY — Ryan Schmalen Wants You!

Or at least as many of you as he can get.

Schmalen has taken over for Dave Williams as the head coach for the Charles City Comets boys wrestling team.

“I’m excited,” said Schmalen, who is the physical education teacher at Charles City Middle School. “We’re going to have a young team, but I see a lot of potential.”

Schmalen has served as an assistant coach for the Comets’ wrestling program for the past several school years, working with Williams as well as Robert Pittman, who is the head coach for the girls team. Schmalen has continued to work with the girls team, which has started practicing last week. Williams will continue to assist and act as advisor where needed during Schmalen’s first head varsity coaching gig.

Schmalen formerly served as an assistant wrestling coach for Denver and Garner-Hayfield-Ventura high schools.

As a high school wrestler himself, Schmalen was a standout three-time state medalist for Clear Lake while compiling a career record of 115-21 capped with a 42-2 record his senior year and a third-place state finish (120). Schmalen previously placed fifth at 120 his junior year, and fourth at 106 his sophomore year.

Schmalen continued his career at Upper Iowa University, where he also compiled a career winning record including a 16-11 record at 141 pounds his senior season.

As the Comets’ new HC, Schmalen has taken on the mother of all recruiting campaigns in a quest to return Charles City to its former glories in the sport. It comes with the desk and phone.

“We lost a lot of seniors from last year and, yeah, our numbers are down,” said Schmalen, as the Comets are bereft of all three of their state-qualifers from last season — Talan Weber (150), Jordan Young (126) and Carter Cajthaml (132) — due to the graduations of Weber and Young, and the transfer by current sophomore Cajthaml. “It’s becoming more of a challenge to get kids to come out for wrestling. And we’re not the only school faced with this.”

Though Schmalen won’t know for sure what he has to work with until the first official boys practice next week, he anticipates the return of junior Jackson Warnke (220/HWT.), who surged during the postseason last year before being stopped short of state; and sophomores Connor Jenkins (138/144) and Carson Linde (182), who both have varsity experience.

“We have a good freshman class coming up,” said Schmalen, who as a teacher working in a facility that has the middle school and high school attached, is in contact with a lot of the students he’s coaching … or hopes to be coaching soon.

Schmalen says he’s also going to work closely with Charles City football coach Bryan Bjorklund in trying to recruit players for both sports. Afterall, more wrestlers often lead to more wrestlers on the football team, a sport that needs as many wrestlers it can print on its roster.

“It’s going to take a lot of work but I’m happy for the opportunity,” Schmalen said.

When Williams decided to step down, it ended his second tenure as the Comets’ head coach.

The first tenure lasted 19 seasons (1995-2014) where Williams coached 49 Northeast Iowa Conference champions, 87 state qualifiers and 40 state place-winners including four state individual champions — 3-time champion Drew Kelly (97-99) and Tanner Schmidt (2008).

Williams was named Class 3A Coach of the Year 1999 after leading the Comets to third-place finishes in the State Traditional Meet and State Dual Meet.

Williams also coached the Comets to fourth-place finishes in the State Dual Meet in 1996 and 2013.

Williams returned in 2019 to fill a coaching vacancy. At the time it was on a semi-interim basis as Williams initially agreed to coach at least a single season and decide where to go from there.

Williams ended up coaching the Comets for five more seasons.