Cherry Creek’s Finesilver brothers set to wrestle in three 5A finals
DENVER — Josh Finesilver didn’t even take the time to comprehend the end of his weekend at the state wrestling championships. A mere 30 feet away his twin brother Matt was nearing the end of his semifinal match. A win would put Matt in the championship round of the 113-pound bracket.
Josh was able to see Matt get a pinfall victory and give the Finesilver brothers their first semifinal victory of Friday night.
“The four boys all believe in each other, but the inspiration of the four is Josh,” their father Steve said. “He outworks the rest, and they work hard. He’s the inspiration for our family because he the kid with amazing grades, he’s an amazing wrestler and he just has a feel and is tied into the whole family.”
Josh’s disappointment in his performance this weekend was short-lived as he was able to watch all three of brothers win their semifinal matches, making the family the first in Colorado wrestling history to have three siblings vying for a state championship in the same year.
Along with Matt in the 113-pound bracket, his older twin brothers Mitch (126) and Zach (138) will also get their chance to walk away from Saturday’s finals as state champions. Not bad for a two sets of twin brothers.
“It’s awesome, but we didn’t get all four. We had eight qualify, but we didn’t get all eight in the finals,” Zach said. “It’s bittersweet because those of us who are in it have worked for it, but all eight of us couldn’t get in.”
This is far from the first year that the Finesilvers have seen success in the state tournament. Zach was in the semis last year but couldn’t quite make his way to championship round. Mitch lost in the finals his sophomore year before rebounding and winning a title in 2013.
But the crowning achievement for the family is to be able to watch three of the boys have their chance at championship gold.
“It’s been amazing, we have great coaches, a great team; this is what we’ve been training for,” Mitch said. “We just work hard and that comes from our coaches and our team and it shows with the four of us.”
Steve has found that wrestling has been a blessing for four boys and is proud that they have pursued something that they are so passionate about. But having four fierce competitors in the house can come with its fair share of problems. At any given time –- but most likely at dinner –- the competitive juices can start to flow through all of them leading to into some kind of argument or contest.
“They can jump up at dinner and either start doing pull-ups, because we have a chin-up bar in our kitchen,” Steve said. “Or they could just challenge each other right then and there and they’ll just go down to the basement to wrestle or sometimes they’ll just wrestle right there in the kitchen.”
But on the mat, it’s clear they have each other’s back. They were able to discover during the state tournament that there is added stress when trying to keep track three other matches on top of their own.
But as Josh demonstrated early in Friday night’s session, the concern for each other will always be in the forefront. Regardless of the outcome of his own match, Josh knew that Matt was nearby and to him, that was just as important as the match he had just finished.
“I’ve trained with him my whole life,” Josh said. “Basically, I care about his success just as much as I care about mine so it was a natural reaction to look over there and check on how he was doing. There was nothing I could do to change (the results of) mine but I can still check to see how his is going.”
Matt will be the first of the three to take his shot at bringing home a state a title. Saturday’s championship rounds begin at 6:30 p.m. at Pepsi Center.
