ST. LOUIS - Joey Lavallee sat on his knees and rose his arms.
He then ran to the stands and jumped into the arms of his dad, Joe Lavallee, after the Missouri 157 pounder won his semifinal match against Cornell's Dylan Palacio 8-5 on Friday. Lavallee moved on to the 157-pound finals of the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championship with the win.
"He's the first one who got me into wrestling," Lavallee said of his dad. "Born and raised in a wrestling room."
Lavallee earned his first All-American honor, and he will be joined in the finals today by Lavion Mayes at 149 and J'den Cox at 197. It is the first time Missouri qualified multiple wrestlers in the NCAA finals.
"It's awesome to have several guys in the finals because day one after the national tournament last year we came together as a team," Lavallee said. "Once the team got back, and we set individual goals, team goals, and we just kept pushing each other, kept driving us towards that goal, no matter if we were having ups or downs."
The semifinal win for Lavallee came after he was down 5-4 late in the third period against Palacio. Lavallee used a takedown with 15 seconds left to get the lead, then a two-point near fall to cement his victory. He will take on Penn State's Ryan Nolf.
For Mayes, Friday's victories against Solomon Chishko of Virginia Tech and Max Thomsen of Northern Iowa gave the redshirt senior his third All-American honor.
When Mayes started wrestling, he didn't even know such a thing was possible.
"This is somewhere I never would have thought I would have been because I didn't know college wrestling existed when I first started wrestling," Mayes said. "A lot of people consider this the pinnacle of wrestling, I mean there's the Olympics but people actually watch that?"
Chishko was able to take a scoreless match into the third period, but Mayes used an escape and a late takedown to best his opponent. Mayes and Thomsen were tied at 2 before Mayes used a last-second takedown to get the win. Northern Iowa challenged but the victory was upheld.
"First thing I did was I looked over at coach Smith and I was like 'Hey, look I'm on TV," Mayes said with a laugh. "Then I asked him if it was going to be reversed being serious because I had to put my headgear back on and get back in the zone. And he's like, 'Nah, there's no way that's going to.'"
Mayes is the fifth Missouri wrestler to win three All-American honors. The others - J'den Cox, Ben Askren, Max Askren and Drake Houdashelt- all have one thing Mayes lacks: A national championship victory.
"It doesn't mean anything, really," Mayes said of the All-American wins. "It doesn't mean too much because I train with a bronze medalist Olympian every day in the room. He's kind of got the bar in the room where you have to be this good. I'm not quite there yet, I might be able to prove it this weekend but I haven't proved it yet."
Mayes will take on Zain Retherford of Penn State in the finals.
Cox won in a major decision against Ryan Wolfe of Rider in the quarterfinals, 10-1, and Jared Haught of Virginia Tech, 6-2. In doing so, Cox also won his fourth All-American, matching him with Ben Askren as the only two with four in program history.
"I'm just very happy to accomplish a great feat and join one of the greats out of the Mizzou program," Cox said.
The stage is set for Cox to win his third national championship at 197 pounds. He will take on Brett Pfarr of Minnesota.
And he gets a chance to do it in the building where one got away. An upset in the semifinals at the Scottrade Center in 2015 left Cox with a fifth-place finish and kept him from his goal of winning four national championships.
Still, winning today would give him more national titles than anyone else in the history of Missouri's athletic program.
"I think for me it just makes everything worth it," Cox said of winning national championships. "I've put in too many hours and too many minutes and too many days dedicated to this one moment in my life. But winning a national title, it makes all your struggles, your strides, every time you make weight, everything, it makes everything worth it."
Jaydin Eierman at 141 and Daniel Lewis at 165 round out the five All-Americans for Missouri, the most in program history. John Erneste at 133 was eliminated in the second round of wrestlebacks.
Eierman tied top-seeded Dean Heil of Oklahoma State with a last-second takedown, but Heil won on riding time. Eierman then beat Joey McKenna of Stanford and Matthew Kolodzik of Princeton.
Lewis lost to Penn State's Vincezo Joseph on a last-second takedown before beating Nicholas Wanzek of Minnesota then Brandon Womack of Cornell in a 10-0 major decision. Both will wrestle in the wrestleback semifinals today.
Missouri is in fourth place with 81.5 team points. Penn State in first place with 121. The consolation round begins at 10 a.m. and the finals begin at 7 p.m. today.