FOUR FOR FOUR
Four-time state champions wrestling club expands by four, including the first two girls
CHSAA’S four-peat club underwent another historic expansion Saturday night at Ball Arena.
Four grapplers joined the most prestigious group in Colorado high school wrestling by winning their fourth straight state title, highlighted by the first-ever girls to do it in Pomona’s Persaeus Gomez and Calhan’s Ciara Monger, both of whom finished undefeated.
All four cruised to decisive wins.
Meanwhile, two others were denied entrance into the club, as Trinidad’s Eddie Bowman beat Buena Vista’s Caleb Camp at Class 2A 132 pounds and Sand Creek’s Landon Drury pummeled Thompson Valley’s Jackzen Rairdon in the Class 4A 144-pound title.
Mullen’s Dale O’blia got the four-peat party going with his victory at Class 3A 120 pounds, followed by victories by Gomez at 130, Fort Lupton’s D’mitri Garzaalarcon at Class 3A 138, and Monger at 235. That tied the previous high of additions in a single year, when four also four-peated in 2020.
Those victories increased the overall four-timer club tally to 34. After no new members last year, there’s now been at least one four-time champion in 10 out of the last 11 years. The first four-time champion was Montrose’s Bob Thompson from 1956-59, and as recently as the turn of the century, there were only eight wrestlers who accomplished the feat.
But over the last couple decades, high school coaches say the explosive growth of youth wrestling has made the “overall level of wrestling continue to come up in Colorado,” as Cherokee Trail’s Jeff Buck pointed out.
“They come in as freshman, they know how to wrestle,” Pomona coach Sam Federico said. “It’s because of the club scene and there’s so many accessible tournaments. Kids can get 100 matches a year now. When I was a kid, you’d get an elementary season or a junior high season of 20 matches, and that was it.”
Over the past decade or so, there’s certainly been some gamesmanship by some four-times who strategically chose