GREELEY — Early-season statements can be hard to come by in large-scale wrestling tournaments, but the Boulder-area and St. Vrain Valley schools don’t seem to be too fazed.
Both boys and girls showed their strength against 110 total teams from Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas as grapplers from Mead, Legacy, Erie and Boulder all made it to the finals of their respective weight classes at the Northern Colorado Christmas Classic at Butler-Hancock Athletic Center.
Some faced their toughest competition of the season, as Class 4A’s top-ranked junior Ramon Salazar out of Erie (126 pounds) fell to Jefferson’s Angelo Lozado 37 seconds into the third period. Lozado entered the tournament with 25 matches under his belt just a few weeks into the winter season.
“You’re going to see a lot of the kids at state that are here, so it’s just good competition seeing where you’re going to be placed at with all of them over all of the state,” Salazar said. “I don’t think I wrestled the way that I wanted to. The outcome wasn’t what I wanted. He was strong and he had a weird style and he was tough, but the rest of the wrestlers, I could find a way around them.”
Boulder senior Joey Airola, likewise, didn’t earn the championship he wanted, but the Nederland student-athlete used the match as a good sounding board for where he wants to be once the competition really starts to heat up later in the year. He’s got plenty of experience to lean on, as he’s competed all the way up to nationals.
He lost a gritty title match at 132s to Dodge City’s Damian Mendez in a 3-2 final.
“It was a good tournament to see where I was at. At least that kid, he’s really tough,” Airola said. “He’s won some big tournaments. I’m kind of proud but I definitely need to work on some things. That’s why I lost — just small mistakes.”
The ladies saw just as much success as the boys as Legacy junior Madison Farris and Mead senior Jenna Joseph recorded similar results. Coronado’s Marissa Rosario pinned Farris at the 2:52 mark in the 185-pound weight class, but she’s taking the setback in stride as she prepares to go into winter break with her head held high.
After all, it was her first big tournament in a year after missing out due to a sprained ankle.
“It’s absolutely incredible to just come in and see multiple women and females learning to do things,” Farris said. “Coming in from being quarantined out of state and regionals last year, it’s very, very different from this year. It’s kind of closer to freshman year where I was at with tournaments.”
Joseph got a taste of what her state title match could look like at 161 pounds. She knows Platte Valley’s Navea Garcia well after having lost to her in last year’s state championship match. Joseph got the better of her earlier this season, but Garcia won out on Saturday afternoon with a tight 4-3 finish.
Joseph scored on a late takedown to give Garcia a run for her money in the final seconds.
“I’m impressed with myself overall just because this is such a large, big, difficult tournament to place in and I ended up taking second my first year,” Joseph said. “I definitely think that I could have beat her and done better overall, but you get what you get. I definitely needed to be a little more offensive, not let her push me around as much as she did. It just kind of allows me to work on it and get better in those areas so that the next time I do end up facing her, I know what to expect.”
