Pekin’s Dowell wins 2026 CSM Girls Wrestling Coach of the Year

One year ago, Pekin had several girls wrestlers that competed as individuals but not an official girls wrestling team. 

Fast forward to now and the Dragons have an official team that’s doubled in size. Pekin had quality to match its quantity too as the Dragons boasted several of the area’s top wrestlers, including some that just wrapped up their freshman seasons. 

Pekin’s head coach Jared Dowell is Clutch Sports Media’ 2026 Girls Wrestling Coach of the Year after leading his team to multiple strong performances during the season and three of his wrestlers to the IHSA State Finals. 

Under Dowell, the Dragons had three Mid-Illini Conference champions and five sectional qualifiers, including sectional champions Tessa Donaldson and Alyssa Artman. Pekin had five honorees on Clutch Sports Media's 2026 Girls Wrestling All-Area team, including Donaldson and Ava Mayer, who were first team selections.

Pekin finished in the top eight at the Normal Community Invite, Canton Invitational, Joe Bee Memorial and The Munch Invite and finished tied for 45th in team points out of approximately 150 schools at the IHSA State Finals, which led all teams in the Peoria and Bloomington/Normal area.

Hear from Dowell about this season and his career in our interview with him below. Some answers have been minimally edited for clarity.

What have you been able to reflect on in the days since the season has ended? 

“It was amazing, I don't think that that's an understatement at all,” Dowell said. “It was about as good of a season as you could hope for. As a coach, the girls really battled. I think we closed our season last year with five girls, and then to be able to close this season with 10 girls was awesome in itself. I think that's the ultimate goal that I had coming in was [to]  just grow the numbers and see how many girls we can actually get interested in wrestling. We finished with 10 girls wrestlers, and out of those 10, I believe seven are freshmen so being able to have a young team like that as well [is great]. We hope that those freshmen girls can continue encouraging other girls to come out and wrestle and just keep growing the numbers in the sport. I think that's the ultimate goal, is being able to help grow girls wrestling and help put Pekin on the map in terms of having a good wrestling program.”

In your mind, what made the team so special this year?

“I think the one thing that made the team special is the camaraderie that the girls have and seeing that teamwork and just the family feeling that the girls have when they wrestle,” Dowell said. “They're constantly wanting to support each other and wanting to cheer on their teammates and they're picking each other up when they're down and when they're up, they're celebrating together. A lot of people have a misconception that wrestling is an individual sport, but it truly is a team sport and watching all the girls be able to get behind each other and to become the best possible wrestlers they can become, it was awesome to be a part of something like that.”

What’s your coaching background? 

“I started my coaching career off when I was 16 years old,” Dowell said. “I was coaching just the Boys and Girls Club baseball and soccer teams here in Pekin, nothing major or anything but I was able to help out and voluntarily coach at a young age. I think you age out from Boys and Girls Club when you're like 14 so pretty much once I aged out, I was already turning to see if I could still stick around and give back to the Boys and Girls Club, because the Boys and Girls Club definitely did a lot for me growing up. I practically lived there at times, so to be able to give back to them was huge.”

“I wrestled in high school for Pekin from 2016 to 2020 and I was a state finalist my senior year, and I placed sixth my junior year. Then I went off and wrestled in college for a semester, just a semester in college [because] I was battling injuries and some personal stuff. So I left college, and that was at McKendree and then from there, I came back to move back to Pekin, and was just doing some different sales jobs and stuff, nothing related to sports at all. Then I received a message from coach [John] Jacobs, the boys head wrestling coach here and he was asking if I would be interested in coming back and being an assistant coach for Pekin’s [boys team]. So I jumped on that offer and along with that, I'm now in the school as a security guard for Pekin High School.”

What helps keep you going?

“I think the one thing that keeps me the most motivated is that I'm a very homegrown guy,” Dowell said. “I take a lot of pride in my community and in Pekin High School, so [I like] being able to represent them in a positive manner and being able to lead and coach other younger athletes into feeling that same way. Having that sense of pride, you have the Pekin ‘P’ on your chest when you wrestle and what you're representing is more than just yourself. It's yourself, your family, your community, your city, I think that's what keeps me going and keeps me motivated.”

What’s a fun memory with your team that you’ve had from this past season? 

“We were at the state tournament and that first day at the state tournament, we had a great run,” Dowell said. “I think two of our girls had two of the top four fastest pins the first day of the tournament and then after day one was over, we were in seventh place as a team out of, I think it's 156 teams. To walk in there with three girls and after day one, we're sitting in seventh place as a team was pretty cool and was a fun memory.”

What’s a piece of coaching advice you’d give?

“I would say the number one piece of advice that I would give to another to any other coaches out there would be to have fun,” Dowell said. “I think too many coaches get carried away and all the different disciplines of wrestling and it's obviously a tough sport, one of the toughest sports out there but at the end of the day, it's something that these kids are doing for fun. You have to make it fun, you don't want it to become a chore. You want to keep it a hobby and you want to maintain it and you want it to be fun. You don't want kids to burn out, because I think there's a very high percentage of kids who wrestle at a young age, burn out, and stop wrestling by the time they're in high school. Just being able to make it fun brings some positive energy to the sport.”