TRITON PUBLIC SCHOOLS

PINE ISLAND — Like many former wrestlers turned fathers, David Kunz was hesitant when his daughter Adriana as a kindergartner said she wanted to hit the wrestling mat.

After all, at that time, girls wrestling still was very much in its early days.

"Girls wrestling wasn't quite as big a thing," Kunz said. "It was starting to grow, but it wasn't quite the big thing. When I grew up wrestling, you didn't see a lot of girls."

But like many of the original pioneers of this sport, Adriana was headstrong and persistent.

She saw her brother out there on the wrestling mat, bringing home hardware. She wanted that. To that point, her gymnastics and dance careers weren't filling that void.

"I used to get jealous when he would bring home awards for wrestling," she admitted with a bit of a laugh.

Her persistence paid off, eventually wearing down her mother and father. It wasn't long until she was out there, surprising her parents with the joy every parent hopes to see out of their child. For David — a two-time state qualifier at Triton and now the youth head coach — he remembers it like it was yesterday.

"We had a couple talks, and then we had our youth tournament when she was in kindergarten," he recalled. "So we brought her into practice that week, put her through the tournament. She got fourth place, but she had a smile on her face the whole time. I was like all right, if you're going to be all smiles, let's go for it. Then after that, we just hit the ground running. She liked it. Now we're wrestling Friday, Saturday, Sundays, everywhere."

It wasn't long until there was a mat in the basement of the Kunz household and soon the family found itself traveling as far as Tulsa, Okla., and Fargo with frequent trips to Iowa in between as it quickly became apparent to them their feisty youngster was a natural on the mat.

She was winning youth tournaments — even the boys' ones — left and right. As just a seventh-grader, she entered the varsity squad as one of the more decorated grapplers in the area. That included 12U titles at the USA Wrestling Northern Plains Regional and a MNUSA Wrestling State Freestyle boys title this past year.

"I like the sport a lot, I get to get my anger out on other girls and stuff like that," she said. "It's a sport that not many people do. But obviously, us girls are growing the sport more and more."

She hasn't skipped a beat at the varsity level.

Kunz is 22-6, wrestling at 107 for the Triton boys team, where she is 7-3 in duals. She has reached the podium at every boys invitational she has been in this season, including a title at the Stewartville Darrell Jaeger Invitational. She followed that with an impressive first-place finish at the Pine Island Girls Classic last Saturday.

She's as tough as they come, with a lethal combination of quickness and strength. It especially shows when Kunz is on her feet. It's often clinical; she's about as technically sound as they come with her footwork, stance and agility. It has come from years of practicing takedowns with her father before matches as well as drilling at the Summit Wrestling Academy in Northfield.

It has her wrestling well beyond her years, impressing many along the way.

"She is just absolutely amazing," Byron sophomore and 2024 state medalist Hattie Mathre said. "I've worked with her at Summit before, and she kind of mentored my sister (Sil) when she was just starting, when I didn't know a ton. She is just a firecracker. She's amazing. On her feet, she knows so much. She's so knowledgeable.

"I watched her in Stewartville last weekend, and she was wrestling on the boys side, and she won the boys varsity bracket. That's great. You don't see that, aside from Callie Graber from Northfield. Insane as a seventh-grader."

Perhaps Kunz will follow the path of Graber, who made history last year when she became the first female to earn a medal at the boys state wrestling tournament. It came on the heels of a state title in 2023.

But Kunz is not concerned about that. The No. 3-ranked wrestler at 107 pounds by The Guillotine has her own goals in place. It starts with a podium finish at the girls state tournament this year.

"My goal is to go make it to state," Kunz said. "To do that as a seventh-grader, I think would be really cool. Go to state, hopefully take top three."

The talent is certainly there to do just that.