Unranked certainly doesn't mean unable

During Friday's semifinal rounds of the state wrestling tournament, I heard an excited outstate radio guy make one of the greatest pronouncements in the wide, wide world of sports: "You can throw the rankings right out the window!"

Devon Bonds wholeheartedly agrees with that wonderful cliché. Bonds is a senior from St. Paul Humboldt who was unranked as this week's circus began at Xcel Energy Center. His name was absent from the top-10 list of Class 2A 130-pounders produced by The Guillotine, the publication site that is the bible of the sport in Minnesota.

"I don't think rankings mean anything," Bonds said. "It depends on how you wrestle at the end."

Indeed it does. And Bonds will wrestle for a state championship today. Like the radio guy said ... right out the window.

Trying to decipher my scrawlings from Friday's matches, 20 unranked wrestlers competed in the semifinals in the three classes. Four of them will compete for gold today, and that is a great story line.

Bonds, who finished fourth at 125 last season, lost three matches in a row at the Rumble on the Red tournament in Fargo earlier this season, and that knocked him out of the rankings.

"They thought that he fell off," Humboldt coach Darryl Johnson said. "But I looked at it as being off the radar. And that's not a bad way to go."

Cody Tibbetts agrees. The unranked sophomore from Lake Crystal-Wellcome Memorial got to the 1A championship match at 152 by beating fourth-ranked Jake Braaten of Bertha-Hewitt/Verndale 3-2 in overtime. His smile said it all.

"It's big," he said. "If someone had told me this a month ago, I would have laughed."

Tibbetts, who is mistakenly listed in the tournament program as a senior, was ranked eighth at 145 pounds earlier this season but has been off the charts since moving to 152.

"I couldn't care less about the rankings," he said. "You can be ranked No. 1, but you've still got to come out and beat everybody. I feel like there's no pressure. I can just make somebody's day bad. Nothing can really go wrong for me."

Winning is the goal, of course, but it's not everything, especially for nearly anonymous athletes who rose to the heights this season.

A year ago, Shane Novak of New York Mills was not even on the varsity. But the unranked eighth-grader got to the Class 1A semis at 103 pounds before losing an 8-1 decision to top-ranked sophomore Hayden Zillmer of Crosby-Ironton.

Novak said being among the non-rank-and-file is OK with him.

"I kind of like it because you're not expected to win," he said.

New York Mills assistant coach Doug Salo said Novak has "worked his tail off. He comes from a wrestling family and he works real hard."

That's about the highest compliment a wrestler can be paid. And it's certainly no cliché.

John Millea•jmillea@startribune.com