Peterson elected to IHSAA Wrestling Hall of Fame
DES MOINES, Iowa -- Former Simpson College wrestling head coach Ron Peterson will be inducted into the Iowa High School Athletic Association Wrestling Hall of Fame this Saturday before the state championship matches inside Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines.
Peterson guided the Storm for 13 seasons from 1995-2008 while compiling a record of 196-106-2 to become the winningest coach in program history. During his tenure, a wrestler qualified for nationals on 41 occasions with 12 earning 19 All-American honors. Cory Christensen (1998) and Nick Ackerman (2001) won national championships, while Ackerman brought home the Dan Hodge Trophy after his performance.
During Peterson's reign, he guided Simpson to four top-10 placings at the national championships, including fifth in 1998 and 2004, sixth in 2005 and ninth in 2006. The 2004-05 squad collected 28 dual victories to set the school record for most wins in a season. Peterson's teams accumulated 11 double-digit win campaigns.
At the conference level, six wrestlers won championships with Jeremy Whalen and Christensen achieving the honor twice and two wrestlers were tabbed conference MVPs under Peterson. In the classroom, seven wrestlers received Scholar All-American honors 13 times from the National Wrestling Coaches Association.
Before coming to Simpson, Peterson spent 15 years at the prep level with Clarksville and Cedar Rapids Prairie High Schools. During that span, Peterson went 177-25-3 with three state titles at Clarksville and two at Cedar Rapids Prairie. Peterson won the Class 1A dual team championship in 1989 and 1990 before raising the trophy once again in 1991 in the traditional tournament. He left for Cedar Rapids Prairie in 1992 and quickly won the Class 3A dual meet championship in 1994 and Class 3A traditional state title in 1995.
Peterson was honored by the IHSAA by being named the Class 1A (1988) and Class 3A (1994) Coach of the Year and he also earned the National Wrestling Hall of Fame's Lifetime Service to Wrestling award in 2010. He returned to the high school ranks for a few seasons after Simpson before retiring in 2014 to finish with a career record of 214-50-3 at the varsity level.
A graduate of Webster City, Iowa Central and Buena Vista University, Peterson was a state and national tournament qualifier under Keith Abens, Dennie Freiderichs and Al Baxter. All three of those coaches have been inducted into the IHSAA Wrestling Hall of Fame.
To view the complete 2021 IHSAA Wrestling Hall of Fame class, click HERE.
