Iowa women’s wrestling adds Adriana Palumbo to 2025 class
On Easter weekend, the Iowa women’s wrestling program added another egg to its 2025 recruiting basket.
The Hawkeye hatchling inside? New York native Adriana Palumbo.
Saturday evening, Palumbo took to Instagram to announce her commitment to the back-to-back national champions. With it, Iowa adds a talented upper weight to the room – and does so in the wake of losing two others to the transfer portal just a few days ago.
Like several other top-tier prospects, Palumbo didn’t pick up the sport until later in her athletic career. The Pleasantville (NY) product did Jiu-Jitsu starting at the age of seven but only found wrestling after entering high school.
Since then, she’s wasted no time catching up to the elite peers within her newfound sporting passion.
Palumbo was slotted fifth nationally at 155 pounds in the latest rankings put out by USA/FloWrestling, and sits #17 overall in the 2025 Class according to Flo.
Now let’s dive into a few of her top accomplishments to date, before closing with a bit more on her fit at Iowa.
Awards/Accolades
When evaluating young wrestlers, one of the best places to begin is Fargo Nationals.
Given the depth and breadth of the annual July freestyle tournament, it provides a great gauge of where a prospect stacks up nationally amongst their peers.
Across three separate occasions (2022-24), Palumbo has shown she’s continuing to climb that ‘ladder.’
Eighth in 2022 and sixth in 2023, she achieved her best finish to date by taking fourth place in the junior division last summer – falling one bout short of the finals in a 12-11 semifinal shootout.
Pair that with a fourth-place finish at the 2024 U20 World Team Trials and Palumbo’s trajectory/national standing further crystallized.
Even before then, her 2023-24 season had already been a major success.
An individual title at the prestigious Super 32 tournament got things underway as Palumbo outscored five opponents by a combined margin of 39-1.
Palumbo – then a junior – poses with her Super 32 championship belt. (Photo Credit: Adriana Palumbo’s Instagram)
A few months later, she won her first-ever New York state title – pinning her way through the field at 165 pounds.
Highlight hand raises
As much as wrestling recruitment is about the tournaments you win, it’s also about the individuals you’re able to defeat.
And in that respect, Adriana Palumbo very much has a pair of signature wins on her résumé.
In May of 2024, the New Yorker took out a top-tier foe from the other side of the Hudson River – teching Jersey native Ella Poalillo (13-3) in the finals of the Northeast Regional Championships:
Poalillo is currently the top-ranked 155-pounder in the country, and the #24 pound-for-pound prospect regardless of age/weight class.
Fast forward to September and Palumbo arguably took things up another level – and an international one, no less.
Standing across from the future Hawkeye in the finals of the Journeymen Women’s World Classic was Lotta Englich (Germany).
Englich, a three-time U17 World medalist (2022-24), led by one point with barely two minutes left in the second period. That’s when Palumbo scored the first of eight-consecutive points to blow things open – half of them coming on a beautiful ankle pick-to-leg lace transition.
At bout’s end, the scoreboard read 12-5 in favor of the American. And the wrestling world had just been given a further glimpse into Palumbo’s expanding capabilities.
Future fit
I mentioned in the intro that this addition comes at a timely (and perhaps uncoincidental) moment for the Iowa program.
Last week, redshirt freshmen Rose Cassioppi (160) and Haley Ward (180) entered the transfer portal, leaving head coach Clarissa Chun a bit short on depth behind superstars Kennedy Blades and Kylie Welker.
With Pulumbo’s commitment that’s suddenly far less in question.
She’ll presumably slot in at 160 pounds – right behind Blades. From there, an eventual spot in the Iowa lineup will ultimately be determined by how she continues to progress at the college level.
One thing’s for sure; she’ll have no shortage of elite training partners and coaches to help her make those gains. And based on her young career to date, she’ll arrive in Iowa City with a habit of improvement already well established.
Palumbo joins signees Isabella Marie Gonzales and Samantha Sachs in Iowa’s 2025 recruiting class. She also becomes the second New Yorker on the Iowa roster, alongside junior-to-be Emily Frost.
With this addition, the Hawkeyes now have 29/30 (projected) spots filled on the 2025-26 roster.
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