—Messenger photo by Britt Kudla Fort Dodge freshman Dreshaun Ross prepares to tackle Ames’ Jamison Poe last season. Ross was offered a scholarship to play football at Iowa recently.

Dreshaun Ross became a household name at the state wrestling tournament this past week as the biggest freshman ever to win a championship in Iowa’s largest class.

The Fort Dodge Dodger is no overnight sensation, though. Ross has been stacking trophies for years as a precocious and prodigious prospect on the mat.

Coaches at the next level already have the 15-year-old Ross on their radar for obvious reasons. And the recruiting sweepstakes won’t be limited to just wrestling.

Ross announced on his social media pages Monday that he has received a scholarship offer from the University of Iowa’s football program. He tagged LeVar Woods — the Hawkeyes’ special teams coordinator — in the post, saying, “Blessed to have received my first offer to play football at the University of Iowa.”

Months before the 6-foot-3 Ross captured the 195-pound title to finish a 44-2 rookie wrestling season with the Dodgers, he was a starting linebacker for head coach Nik Moser’s Fort Dodge grid squad. Ross was just the fifth freshman in FDSH program history to regularly see the field.

Ross made 46 total tackles as an outside linebacker and rush end in 2022. He had a particularly impressive mid-season stretch against Marshalltown and Webster City, when he racked up 19 tackles in the two games combined.

Ross earned Class 4A, District 1 honorable mention honors.

A few weeks after football ended, Ross turned his attention to what has traditionally been his primary sport. Ross only lost twice all season: to Wisconsin prep superstar Cole Mirsola, a junior and the nation’s fifth-ranked 195-pounder according to FloWrestling, and Waverly-Shell Rock’s McCrae Hagarty, who is 12th nationally and a senior Iowa State University recruit.

Ross is currently 16th nationally at 195. He is the only freshman in the Top-20 at that weight.

The Iowa offer to a ninth-grader is extremely rare, but not unprecedented — even for the area. Southeast Valley’s Aaron Graves landed on the program’s radar as a freshman in the summer and fall of 2018, then committed just after the school year ended in June of 2019.

Graves was in the regular rotation as a true freshman for the Hawks this past season.

The NCAA allows football programs to extend scholarship offers to high school freshmen. Wrestling coaches, on the other hand, are not permitted to do the same until June 15 after their sophomore year, which in Ross’s case would be the summer of 2024.

In November, Ross captured two wrestling titles at the U15 Pan-Am Championships, prevailing in both the Greco-Roman and Freestyle divisions at 85 kg (187 pounds). Ross won a Fargo Nationals crown last summer, and earned both Freestyle and Greco 15U national titles last May in Las Vegas at the USMC United States Open Wrestling Championships.

Ross is a five-time Trinity Award winner — which is a sweep of the Kickoff Classic, Tulsa Nationals, and the Reno World Championships — and just the eighth Iowan ever to take home six AAU state championships.

Ross easily handled fellow freshman Denarii Mickel of Ames in the 195-pound championship match last Saturday inside Wells Fargo Arena, 8-1. He is just the second Dodger ninth-grader in school history to win a state title, joining current Iowa Hawkeye Brody Teske, who did so at 106 pounds in 2015.