There are few athletes out there who are able to simply step up their game when it's needed the most.

Newton senior Derrick Hurt is one of them.

Despite not being ranked in Class 3A at 285 pounds all season, Hurt went above and beyond expectations at the state wrestling meet by finishing on the podium and sixth place, and strengthen his legacy of performing at the highest level on top of it.

"I'm very happy," Hurt said. "Before my last match I knew it was my last one, and I already accomplished everything I wanted to do, so I just went out there and tried my best. What happened happened, and overall I still had a really good weekend."

Hurt first established himself as a state competitor last season when he surprised the field at the Drake Relays by finishing second in the shot put. He then followed that up with another second-place shot put performance at the state meet and earned all state honors in football this fall.

"When you get to that next level, especially at state, it really brings it out of you," Hurt said. "For me to wrestle this way and make it to the podium, it's just a really good feeling."

Facing an uphill battle after losing his first match of the tournament, Hurt scored a pin over Ottumwa's Kevin Childs in the first round of the consolation bracket and outlasted Webster City's Landon Johnson 6-4 to secure his place on the podium on Friday. In the process, he also hit the 30-win mark he was hoping to hit going into the tournament.

"I wrestled him before so I knew what I had to do," Hurt said of his match with Johnson. "He's not a very offensive wrestler, so I knew if I could get a takedown early I'd have a chance to win it. I just worked my stuff after that takedown and the plan worked out how it was supposed to."

Hurt’s final win of the tournament came against Bettendorf’s Raekwon Jefferson. After Jefferson gave Hurt an opening, he took advantage and put Jefferson on his back in one minute exactly. That win insured at least a sixth-place finish and guaranteed two more matches on Saturday.

“Derrick wrestled right up there with the best of them,” Newton coach Bill Reed said. “We talked all year about not worrying about rankings and if you go out and wrestle hard, good things can happen. When he looks at the people he’ll be on the podium with, which is a pretty special group, I think he’ll be pretty happy.”