At 50, former Iowa NCAA wrestling champ Mark Ironside still has lots of get up and go

If you need a little inspiration to shift into a higher personal gear, find someone like Mark Ironside.

The Cedar Rapidian could have lived the rest of his life off being a two-time NCAA wrestling champion, as well as a four-time Big Ten and four-time Midlands Open champ. However, while Ironside always will be defined for his great college wrestling career from 1994 to 1998, he has never stopped pushing or competing.

Saturday night at Hawkeye Downs Speedway, Ironside raced in the Miller 100 auto race. Alas, his car started developing a push in the first half of the race, and he had to pull out of the 100-lap event at the 70th lap.

“It would not turn and I didn’t want to get in a wreck with somebody that was going for the lead or something like that,” Ironside said. “Had my car not fallen off that bad, I think I would have been in it at the end.

“But it was fun. It was the biggest race I’ve driven in by far.”

Ironside, 50, has raced at his hometown track since 2012. He hasn’t competed regularly this year because he’s putting together a racecar from scratch that he plans to race next year, but he hopes to get it on the track a couple times in the remainder of Hawkeye Downs’ 2025 schedule.

“For me, this is a hobby,” he said. “It’s something I really, really enjoy doing. It’s something I can compete at, something I can continue to learn and improve on. But at the same time, this isn’t my only thing.”

He continues to run Ironside Apparel in southwest Cedar Rapids, selling individual and team clothing, with screen printing and embroidery. For nonwork passions?

“I do a ton of hunting,” Ironside said. “My mom has a little farm in southern Iowa, so I plant all of our crops down there. We’ve got an enormous garden down there that I take care of.

“And I travel with the (Iowa) wrestling team, obviously, doing the radio broadcasting.”

The 2025-26 season will mark 25 years for Ironside as the color commentator for Hawkeye wrestling radio broadcasts. Many an Iowa fan has turned down the volume when the Hawkeyes are on television, and turned on the radio to hear Ironside’s enthusiastic, intense and spot-on observations.

As for auto racing, “I’ve always enjoyed it,” Ironside said.

“When I grew up on Victoria Drive on the southwest side of Cedar Rapids, my parents were pretty strict and they’d send me to bed at 9 o’clock. It was still light out and the windows were open because we didn’t turn the air conditioning on ever, I swear.

“I could hear the cars running over there (at Hawkeye Downs). So I’d always be intrigued by it. When I got to high school age, I started walking over there by myself and watched the races. And I just loved it.”

Ironside found a kindred spirit at Iowa in more than just wrestling at an elite level.

“Tom Brands really enjoyed NASCAR,” Ironside said. “Every Friday night that he and I were both free, we would go to Hawkeye Downs and watch. We loved it.

“I’ve always had a need for speed. It’s that and being competitive, doing something you’re not great at right out of the box, so you’ve got to learn.”

Maybe the biggest challenge top athletes experience in their lives is how to find competitive outlets once their athletic careers have ended.

“When you're so competitive for so many years of doing something really high-level,” said Ironside, “and especially when you're successful at it and you just don't have it anymore, you’ve got to find something to fill that void. For me, racing was just a natural.”

Ironside’s wrestling role models, he said, were Dan Gable, Tom and Terry Brands, and … Dale Earnhardt Sr.?

“I used to want my style of wrestling to be like the way he drove that racecar and how competitive he was,” Ironside said.

Earnhardt was called “The Intimdator.” He was a stone-faced competitor of great talent, but he relied on instinct, focus and preparation.

Imagine Earnhardt wrestling for Gable in the 1990s alongside the Brands brothers and Ironside. It isn’t hard to do.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com