DENVER - The wins and points stacked and stacked for the Pomona boys wrestling team Saturday night.
The Panthers came into the three-day Class 5A state tournament at Ball Arena in search of taking down their own state scoring record of 278.5 points from three years earlier and with nine wrestlers in the finals, that seemed like a foregone conclusion.
It took just three matches to get the points needed, but coach Sam Federico’s team proceeded to go a stunning nine-for-nine in the championship round and racked up a whopping 303.5 points, which would have been even higher if not for a point deducted after the second-to-last match for unsportsmanlike conduct, to win its eighth-consecutive state championship.
“Nine-for-nine is pretty unbelievable and 12-for-12 including third and fifth-place matches, so it was a really cool day and a pretty fun environment,” Federico said. “This kind of thing just doesn’t happen and if you’re going to break a record, you might as well shatter it.”
Pomona finished the three-day tournament with just six losses in 59 matches between 14 qualifiers.
Lincoln Valdez (106 pounds), Logan Dellow (120), Angel Serrano (138), Derek Barrows (150), Donovan Symalla (157), Emmitt Munson (165), Kalob Ybarra (175), Emmerson Claeys (190) and Maddux Najera (215) won state titles in a display of dominance that lifted the Panthers over Holly (which had seven) for most individual championships in one state tournament.
It was two seniors who earned their first career state titles that got the unstoppable ball rolling.
Claeys — who got to wrestle first when the Colorado High School Activities Association went with a drawn format that landed on 190 — posted an 18-0 technical fall win over Loveland’s Bryce Hayman, which was followed by a 10-3 victory for Najera, who knocked off a defending state champion in the process in Northglenn’s Eli Stevens.
Dellow picked a win by decision at 120 pounds to push the Panthers past the point record and each successive Pomona wrestler who took the mat advanced the baton. Next was Serrano, who won his second-straight title with a win over Ponderosa’s Jaylen Burge, a returning finalist from last season.
Barrows kept it going with a pin of Ponderosa’s Jack Simpson (a 2025 state champion) in the second period of the 150-pound final, which brought him his third career state title to go with last season’s 144-pound crown and a 120-pound championship in 2023.
“After the first match, it just started rolling and it didn’t stop,” Barrows said. “That’s an extra standard that came tonight after that first match. You didn’t want to be the one to end the perfect streak. …300 is a lot of points for a team, so we really had to come out here and dominate the last day and we did that.”
Symalla capped his freshman season with a gritty 1-0 victory, which was followed by Munson’s 5-2 outlasting of Grandview’s Gunner Lopez, who nearly got a tying takedown in the final seconds. That brought the ability to finish the perfect night to Ybarra, a four-time state finalist who was in search of his own third state title.
Not to be denied — and wrestling at the same time as the megawatt 5A girls matchup between Pomona’s Timberly Martinez and Brighton’s Matilda Hruby — Ybarra rolled to a 14-1 major decision victory over Pine Creek’s Brogan Trollope.
“The team came and showed up today, so all I could do was end it with a banger,” he said. “I think this title means the most to me. I had a lot of family here, so it made it more special.”
While Pomona ran away with the team title, Grandview achieved history of its own with a second place finish.
Coach Ryan Budd’s team — which had come in third multiple times — racked up 176 points to finish well clear of Ponderosa (106) to give the Wolves hardware for the first time.
Four Grandview wrestlers made championship matches and one prevailed in junior JR Ortega, who became a two-time state champion with his pin of Castle View’s Jacob Ness in the 126-pound final, which came after he took 113 pounds a year ago. Ortega dealt Pomona’s Zaidyn Quinonez, who he lost to last season, a win by technical fall in the semifinals and then led from start to finish in his championship win.
“I got a chance to show how much better I’d gotten this season,” he said. “I think it showed how much work I put in.”
Lopez lost a three-point decision at 165 pounds, junior Leland Day fell to Legend senior Alexander Rose in an epic overtime heavyweight showdown that took place in front of a large crowd as it fell in the early stages of the night and junior Kyle Menuez lost in the 132-pound final to Cherokee Trail’s Cooper Mathews.
Mathews, a junior, appeared in the finals for the third time in as many seasons and won his second title as he was also the 106-pound crown in 2024.
The other non-Pomona state champions besides Ortega and Rose were Brighton junior Tony Tufano — who won a major decision over Adams City freshman Jax Quintana — at 113 pounds, plus Ponderosa senior Michael Lopez, who won a decision over Brighton’s Ethyn BravoPacker at 144 pounds.