DENVER – If there was a club only for high school wrestling state champions, Ignacio High School senior boys wrestler Lincoln deKay undoubtedly asked himself throughout his wrestling career, ‘How do I get in?’
With plenty of wins and tournament titles to his name, he certainly had the street cred. Yet no VIP-level access.
“My family, and all the people that have won State titles in wrestling, they call it ‘the club,’” a grinning deKay explained Saturday night while relaxing inside Ball Arena, one of the Mile High City’s preeminent entertainment sites. “Ever since I was little, in peewees losing every match, they’d always tell me ‘You’d better figure it out or you might not join the club!’”
Before a mostly-packed Ball Arena crowd, Ignacio’s senior figured out how to get entrance to the exclusive club welcoming only Colorado’s most elite grapplers by winning his first state championship on Saturday.
Pit in the 2026 CHSAA Class 2A State Championships’ 165-pound finale against Burlington senior Jason Saucedo, who qualified for state last year but did not place at 138, deKay, runner-up at 165 to Holly senior Tripp DuVall in ’25, wasted no time and quickly went up 3-0 after bringing the Cougar down to the mat and establishing control.
Almost pinned as the first period wound down, Saucedo managed to survive into the second but only after losing another four points for the near-fall. But deKay never relented and doubled his lead to 14-0 through four minutes.
Having already eliminated Fowler’s Jesse James in one semifinal via an 18-3 technical fall, as well as Rocky Ford’s Marcos Villegas in the quarters via a 17-0 tech, deKay needed to either score one innocuous point or merely avoid catastrophe in order to make Bobcat history.
At 8:43 p.m., one final takedown did the tech trick and polished off a thorough 17-0 triumph.
“I was planning on coming in with just another shot as soon as I got his hands past my head,” deKay said. “But he ended up taking a shot from far away, so it just turned into a front headlock where I could spin behind him. He was just being real heavy with his hands – I think he didn’t wrestle his match. If he were on his best game, he would definitely have been one of the tougher opponents I’ve wrestled all year. But he just couldn’t get momentum going.”
Saucedo finished the 2025-26 grind standing 38-8 overall while deKay, whose season was interrupted by an injured right elbow (again well-protected for state), finished 27-1 in becoming Ignacio’s 10th state champ, the first since three-time king Alex Peña in 2011 – and bringing home IHS’ 14th individual state title.
“Regardless of how bad my elbow hurt, or if I ripped it off the bone even more, I wanted to win so I was just going to wrestle with it like it was normal,” said deKay, now a three-time state placer whose father, and former IHS head coach, Chris copped crowns inside Denver’s old McNichols Arena in 1987 (Class A, 119) and ’88 (A, 126). “I’m feeling pretty relieved; I’m not going to lie. It’d be fun to wrestle again tomorrow, but I think I’m ready for a little break.”
In the end, deKay’s drive helped IHS tally 67.5 points and place a solid 10. Atop the table, Ault-based Highland racked up a winning 111 points, while runner-up Hotchkiss North Fork finished with 105.5. Saucedo and BHS ended up with 94.5, as did Rocky Ford, with Buena Vista (93) and pre-meet No. 1 Cedaredge (88) following in the standings, which counted 49 scoring and 53 represented teams overall.
