Meet Decorah's Naomi Simon, seeking to become Iowa's first four-time girls state champion

January 18 marked senior night for the Decorah's girls wrestling program.

Just like any other day, senior 170-pounder Naomi Simon rolls through her pre-match routine and readies for competition.

One woman running a booth outside the gymnasium approached Simon, feeling the need to tell her something.

"Naomi, you know that you're Decorah's Caitlin Clark, right?" she said.

That's something Simon will never get used to, being the center of attention, almost providing what she calls an out-of-body experience.

"It's a really weird feeling," Simon said.

Comments like that to Simon make a ton of sense when you consider the history she is making in girls wrestling. Through her four years of high school, she's only lost one match, which she wrestled up a weight class for during her freshman season, according to her father. That match was against Waverly-Shell Rock's Madison Diaz and since she previously wrestled and won at her natural weight class in the same event. As a result, Simon is officially an undefeated wrestler.

In her sophomore year and so far in her senior year, she pinned every opponent she faced.

She's making waves nationally too. She's a 2023 Junior National Champion at Fargo, the 2022 and 2023 Preseason Nationals Champion and reached All-American status at notable events like the world team trials and other fierce competitions.

What would be her most notable accomplishment in her high school career, however, is just five matches away. If she blazes through the competition as she traditionally has, Simon will become the first four-time Iowa high school state champion on the girls side, joining 32 boys to hold that honor.

Behind all of that pressure of being Decorah's Caitlin Clark is a person who is your average high schooler. She's an owner of five dogs and a cat. Simon particularly enjoys her Spanish class at the moment and has been a long-time band member who plays the euphonium. She's a particularly good student, involved in National Honor Society and holding a 3.9 grade point average.

Even though she has an extensive wrestling career, she's tried different sports too. In addition to a short stint in cross country earlier in high school, Simon tried out swimming in her senior year, simply because she enjoyed her time with the head coach and fellow swimmers. Plus, it took her conditioning that extra step.

Above all, that's what Simon wants people to know about who she is.

"I really want people to know that I am actually a funny person," Simon said. "I kind of look scary, I got my cauliflower ear going, but I like to have fun. I like to go to my friend's house and hang out. I like to eat pancakes in the morning... Just because I achieve a lot of stuff on the mat and I'm a very motivated person, doesn't mean that I'm mean or scary or anything. I think that's a misconception that people have a lot of times."

Just about 99% of the time, that's who Simon is. A poking-fun at teammates, pancake-loving high school kid with just as much success off the mat as she has on it.

The reason she has gotten to be as good as on the mat, however, is because of her ability to flip the switch. As she readies for a match, the routine is always the same. Her phone is tucked away, never to be turned on from the time she enters the gym until she's done competing. Moments before she wraps the anklet around her foot, she repeats to herself one phrase.

"You are strong enough. You can do this. Let's go."

Now, the switch has flicked on.

"That's that transition from fun teammate to, 'I'm gonna go rip some heads off,'" Simon said.

Hundreds of girls have been victims of Simon and that mental switch. Even her national team coach, Jeff McGinness, has. He's been Simon's coach for about three years and is Simpson's women's wrestling coach as well. McGinness was a four-time unbeaten state champion at Iowa City High and a two-time NCAA champion at Iowa.

Last summer at a camp, Simon was about a half-pound over where she needed to be before weigh-in. So, she asked her teammates to spar before weigh-ins to make sure she made weight. Nobody volunteered until McGinness said he'd go with her.

Initially, Simon was terrified. However, as soon as she started to wrestle, that all went away. Working on top and bottom positions, Simon turned around and reached back for McGinness' ankle to execute a bow and arrow, where you pull your opponents' ankle over their head.

Right then, McGinness' ACL completely tore.

"The second that whistle blows, it's almost like a different persona," McGinness said. "Even before that, you can see her before matches and sort of a different person, almost like an axe murderer mentality. To be able to have that switch where 'I'm a super nice person off the mat, but on the mat, I really want to kill you,' so to speak, she definitely has both of those."

That persona is something Simon, McGinness and her father Matt Simon, who is an assistant coach for the team, laugh about. Matt Simon says it's little surprise to him to see that side of her. She is never mean or looking to humiliate her opponent, but she shows the drive to be successful in anything she does.

"Naomi has turned being successful into a lifestyle," Matt Simon said. "It's a hard thing to do, especially as a high schooler with distractions, other competing interests and other people's competing interests. She's done a great job of being focused, dedicated and selfish in the best possible way. It's not like it's not like she's mean, but she's she's out to win."

That's been the secret sauce to how she has gotten to where she is.

Naomi Simon began wrestling in seventh grade, at first on the boys team with a couple of other girls. She joined after watching her little sister participate in the Iowa AAU Kids State Tournament, where she witnessed Iowa's Felicity Taylor compete before she became a force for the Hawkeyes. Right then and there, she realized she could do that too.

She spent her seventh and eighth-grade years learning the sport before the COVID-19 pandemic slowed things to a halt before her freshman year. That summer, the Decorah wrestling team spent the time outside flipping tires, throwing slam balls and running hills to adhere to COVID-19 protocols.

She went on to have a stellar freshman debut, only losing one match according to her father, to Madison Diaz of Waverly-Shell Rock when she wrestled up a weight class. In that first season, she posted 20 wins and zero-official losses on her way to a state championship at 145 pounds. Naomi Simon said she had zero expectations entering that tournament, even as the No. 2 seed, since she felt like she wasn't where she needed to be technically.

"Looking back on it, I don't think I was actually a very good wrestler my freshman year," Naomi Simon said. "I thought I was just in incredible shape."

She continued to roll during her sophomore season despite having knee surgery in the offseason and not getting back on the mat until September, just before the season began. She went 29-0, pinning all of her opponents on the way to her second state title, this one at 170 pounds.

It was the summer between her sophomore and junior years that Simon says things particularly started to click for her. She lost at the World Team Trials and simply didn't like that feeling. So in the high school season, she went on to go 37-0 with 32 wins by fall on her way to her third state title, this time at the first-ever sanctioned Iowa girls wrestling state tournament.

This season has been much of the same, to the point where Naomi Simon is admittedly bored by her matches. Oftentimes, she finds opponents are largely uninterested in tangling with her and she's able to roll through with ease. That perception is backed up by the fact she has pinned her way to a 43-0 record entering the girls state tournament, which begins Thursday in Coralville.

That has her looking forward to the next step, which is joining the Iowa women's wrestling program. She plans on studying human physiology with the hopes of researching how environmental and dietary factors impact the performance of female athletes. While she's there, she'll join one of the most loaded-weight classes in the country with Kylie Welker and Rose Cassioppi.

She likely isn't going to wrestle right away but she's is still excited for that challenge.

"I have to wrestle the boys to get like the super high levels of competition in the practice room that I need," Naomi Simon said. "Just to be around other young women who are equally as driven as I am, who have similar goals, to be exposed to their differences in wrestling techniques, their backgrounds and their awesomeness, it's just something I'm really excited to be a part of."

It's also something the coaching staff at Iowa is thrilled to have. They had to fight off McGinness and Simpson for her to commit to Iowa. Naomi Simon said that decision was incredibly difficult for her to make, but the atmosphere of wrestling at Carver-Hawkeye Arena was too cool to pass up after witnessing it on a visit.

Chun was thrilled to have this win in recruiting for the 2024 class.

"You always want someone who loves wrestling and is passionate about wrestling, but also has other hobbies too," Chun said. "She's great in the classroom, great with her family. She's definitely going to make our program better."

Before that though, the final chapter of her high school career must be written. While much of the season on the mat has been easy, it hasn't been off the mat for Naomi Simon.

Her long-time mentor, Lee Fullhart, was the head coach of the Decorah girls wrestling program up until the 2021-22 season. The former three-time Iowa state champion and one-time NCAA champion had gone down to coach the middle school program for the last couple of seasons but was still a huge mentor for her through that time as her club coach.

As her father put it, Naomi Simon is not the wrestler she is today without Lee Fullhart.

Fullhart has been impressed of Simon and her poise throughout this time as a wrestler. There were many days where boys didn't want to wrestle Simon because she was a girl, so Fullhart would wrestle with her instead. Those are the moments that makes the success that much sweeter for Simon and made Fullhart that much more proud.

"She understands that the work you put into the accomplishment is what provides value to it," Fullhart said. "It's not the accolade, It's not the attention, it's not what somebody else tells you the value is. It's the work you put into it that creates value."

Fullhart's contract with the school was terminated by the School Board in January after complaints of intimidation and escalating situations were made by co-workers, according to the Decorah News. In the school board meeting that saw Fullhart's contract be terminated, Fullhart claimed the report made by the school's superintendent was fraudulent, according to the Decorah News.

That choice by the school board put Naomi Simon in a position without her mentor and forced her to be more of a leader within the program, something she didn't initially know how to approach.

"I didn't quite know how to handle that," Naomi Simon said. "That's been really hard, but I just got to remember that we are stronger than everybody thinks we are. We're gonna succeed no matter what."

Her mentality through the situation makes sense. Like her father said, driving for success and being a "ferocious competitor" is what she has always done. That won't change now that she's on the verge of potentially becoming the first four-time girls state champion.

That opportunity is something Naomi Simon is relishing ahead of the IGHSAU state tournament. Not for the glory and having her name etched in a history book, but to set the standard for what girls wrestling is going to be about in Iowa moving forward.

"I'm so grateful that I've had this opportunity," Naomi Simon said. "Five years ago, I wouldn't have had this opportunity. I'm basically one of the first people to have this actual opportunity. I want to represent not only myself and my school, but the girls who never had this opportunity and the girls who will have this opportunity in the future."

Eli McKown covers high school sports and wrestling for the Des Moines Register. Contact him at Emckown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @EMcKown23.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Decorah's Naomi Simon on her way to being first four-time champion