Cody Thorn The recent St. Thomas Aquinas graduate secured a pair of All-American honors at the USMC Junior & 16U National Championships in Fargo, North Dakota.
This marked the second time Simma was a double All-American, a feat he accomplished in 2019. Had the COVID-19 pandemic not wiped out last year’s event, he might’ve had more stop signs to add to his collection.
The only other Kansans to earn double All-American honors this year were Garden City’s Sebastian Lopez (285) and Newton’s Nick Treaster (113).
“I wanted to double up again,” said the Northern Iowa signee who leaves suburban Kansas City for Cedar Falls, Iowa on Aug. 13. “You always want to do better, but it is a long week and it is a grind. Being able to take top eight in both styles, it is a nice way to out. Of course, you want to win it all but I did better than I did in (20)’19 in freestyle so that was a plus. The Greco part was a bummer. I didn’t go out and wrestle my matches and I lost. I didn’t go out and execute, but I’m still an All-American again.”
Simma placed sixth at 182 in both Greco and freestyle. He was a runner-up in Greco in the last iteration of the event.
“Being All-American one time, let alone four like I did, is super hard,” he said. “I think it was a good way to cap off my high school career and time to move onto the next level.”
Simma and St. Thomas Aquinas teammate Dylan Elmore were both All-Americans at Fargo.
“With Dylan and Jared, I think in the weight classes they were in, you could wrestle four months in a row and have four different champions in those weight classes,” St. Thomas Aquinas coach Eric Akin said.
Simma capped his senior season off with a Class 5A title at 182 this year by beating Goddard’s Logan Davidson, 6-4. Simma went a perfect 37-0 as a senior.
The year prior, Simma won a title by beating another Goddard wrestler in the finals – nipping Cayleb Atkins, 4-2, in the 160 finals. Simma went 50-1 his junior season.
Simma was a runner-up as a freshman and sophomore for the Saints.
In the weeks leading up to Fargo, Simma spent two weeks training in the wrestling room at UNI – giving him a chance to work with the teammates that stuck around in the summer.
He picked the Panthers over North Dakota State and Arkansas-Little Rock. He also had some interest from Ohio State, Nebraska and Arizona State but were not able to workout visits to those campuses.
He expects to wrestle around 174 for Northern Iowa.
Simma competed in a multitude of tournaments since the end of high school season in preparation for Fargo.
“Not are not too many people in the whole country that got more than Jared did since March 1,” Akin said. “He went to everything possible, both styles in everything, and he wrestled a lot.”
Simma went to Virginia, Oklahoma, Indiana and Iowa just to name a few places.
At the USA Wrestling High School National Recruiting Showcase in March, Simma went 5-0 and beat Oregon’s Brook Byers, a Class 6A champ in his state, in the finals.
Simma added third-place finishes at the Central Regional Championship in Fort Wayne, Indiana in May. He won both Greco and Freestyle titles at the Southern Plains Regionals in Mulvane, Kansas.
In his future home, in Cedar Falls, Simma won the USA Wrestling Folkstyle Nationals title at 182 pounds in dominating fashion.
A 5-0 run in the tournament was capped by a 16-4 win over Michael Griffith of Ubasa Wrestling Academy in the first-place match. Simma outscored foes 62-12 in his matches.
“All of the coaches (Northern Iowa) were out there so that is probably one of my best tournaments, I’d say,” Simma said. “I felt like I wrestled really well out there.”
