Sarah Trujillo, Gilpin County.  This weekend, February 9th and 10th, was the High School Wrestling Regionals for 2A schools. The event was held at the Northeastern Junior College (NJC) in Sterling, Colorado. The Gilpin County wrestling team drove two and a half hours to wrestle against the schools in their region. This is the meet that the wrestlers have been working toward all season, this is the meet that determines whether or not they make it to state.

There were four wrestlers who competed in the meet, Josh Trujillo, Manny Gomez, Mike Wenholz, and Triston DiPasquale. For Trujillo and Gomez, this could very well had been the end of the journey for them and for Gomez it was. Sadly, he was out of the competition after losing his first two matches, both of which were by pin. Trujillo went 3-1 for the night, with one pin, one major decision, and one won by decision in over time. His first match was against Jaden Hansen from Yuma High School. The match was very low scoring, neither of them could manage to get a take down which means no escapes, until Trujillo chose bottom and managed to score one point for an escape. In the third period, Hansen also chose bottom and had a chance to tie up the score if a got an escape. Instead, Trujillo held him down and was able to pin him with a minute and thirteen seconds left in the match. His next match was a cakewalk and he won the match by major decision with a score of 10-0. His final match of the night was definitely the most exciting. Wrestling for third, was Trujillo and Dayne Hines from Stratton, who has wrestled Trujillo before, each match getting closer and closer in points. This match went into overtime where Trujillo was able to score two points by taking down Hines. The final score was 4-2 putting Trujillo in third place, enough for him to compete at state for his senior year.

DiPasquale and Wenholz were the two underclassmen competing at the meet and did extremely well considering how some of their opponents were juniors and seniors. DiPasquale finished off the weekend with a record of 1-2; his one win being by pin.

Wenholz had a very successful weekend with a record of 2-2; both of his wins being by pin. Neither of the two placed high enough to be able to compete at state, but there is always next year. DiPasquale still has three more years of highschool and plenty more chances to get to state. Wenholz also has plenty chances and is glad that he even made it this far since he was recovering from a broken femur from earlier in the school year. Despite the struggles and changes he had to make to accommodate his injury, Wenholz fought to place 6th in his region.

Although only one of them will be going to state this year, all of the wrestlers should be proud of their work that they did over the season. Trujillo will be wrestling at the Pepsi Center this coming weekend and DiPasquale, as well as Wenholz, still have the freshmen and sophomore tournament in a few weeks. The wrestling team would appreciate your support at their upcoming meets and are proud of how they represented their school at regionals this year.

(Originally published in the February 15, 2018, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)