Pete Morgan, Gilpin County.   The Gilpin County Youth Wrestling hosted a Metro League tournament on Saturday at Gilpin County High School. Over 500 attended the event with 200 kids ages 4 to 14 competing.  Gilpin County had it’s highest number of champions at a single event to date.  Ten of our Gilpin wrestlers took 1st place, and counting them, 21 of our wrestler finished 3rd or better.

That’s just plain impressive considering 1A Gilpin County is a second-year team and was up against 5A Broomfield, The Front Range Falcons, 5A Denver North, 5A Longmont, 4A Colorado Wrestling from Thornton and 4A Ft. Lupton.

Saturday was special. It is always wonderful to witness the hard work pay off and witness a kid’s first win. We had four of those in one day: Sam Hannsen, Paul Ferrante, Davyn Meade, and Anthony Rumor all earned that so important first win which is tough to do late in the season against kids who have wrestled in far more tournaments than those four have.

It is also special to see experience add up and pay off. We had five kids win their first tournament on Saturday...  Blake Weichel, Jett Hannsen, Mason Sechler, Joey Morgan, and Kameron Brewer have all come close in the past but have never taken 1st until Saturday.

They all earned their first tournament championship and it was even more special to have had that break-through moment in front of the home crowd.

Individual statistics:

Gilpin Champions, first place

U6 36-39 - Cooley Murdock

U6 41-43 - Blake Weichel

U6 54-59 - Jett Hanssen

U8 60-65 - Mason Sechler

U10 67-72 - Joseph Morgan

U10 96-106 - Zacharia Gebhart

U10 117-121 - William Siegrist

U12 69-71 - Kamron Brewer

U12 92-102 - Kaleb Oliver

U14 143-150 - Mateo Maldonado

Second Place

U10 50-55 - Anthony Rumer

U10 86-92 - Benjamin Gebhart

U12 62-67 - Bradly Robinson

U12&U14 76-82 - Joseph Airola

Third Place

U8 60-65 - Michael DePintos-Jones

U8 66-74 - Ryan Hanssen

U10 50-55 - Roland Keller

U10 57-61 - Dusty Lebeau

U10 62-65 - Penn Keller

U12 52-58 - Keggin Murdock

U14 103-112 - Michael Wenholz

Gilpin County Youth Wrestling will be headed to Lincoln High School for an unusually large Metro League tournament on Saturday due to one of the league hosting sites canceling, consolidating more teams at fewer locations.  That will be our last Metro League date before regionals and league Championships.

The Metro League Season ends on February 6th with the JV Tournament but Gilpin County Youth Wrestling will continue on into March and April attending open tournaments throughout the state and the region.