It will be Dylan Pickering’s job to represent Bayfield on Friday at the CHSAA Class 3A state wrestling championships in Pueblo.
Pickering improved to 14-2 on the season and claimed the 3A Region 1 championship at 145 pounds on Friday night in Pagosa Springs. He dominated in all three matches he wrestled, with technical fall victories in the quarterfinals and semifinals against Talan Hulet of Delta and Ryan Duzik of Moffat County, respectively, to earn his way to the championship match.
Pickering then secured a 10-4 decision win against Pagosa Springs’ Dylan Tressler in the championship match.
“Dylan had been working on different things on how to approach Tressler and what it would take to get past him. We focused on that for weeks,” BHS head coach Todd McMenimen said. “Both coach Mars’ were phenomenal working on technique stuff we knew would work. Dylan has been battling that kid for five or six years now since middle school and always struggled with him. We’ve been telling him his time would come at a point when it really counted. He not only beat him, but handled him pretty well. It was by far Tressler’s worst loss of the year. He’s had two one-point losses to returning state champs as his only other two losses on the year. Dylan manhandled him this time.”
Keaton Pickering nearly advanced to state at 106 pounds. He won via pin in his first two matches with a quarterfinal win 31 seconds into the second period against Koby Miller of Summit and a thrilling semifinal pin of Grand Valley’s Teagan Jacobs with only four seconds to go in the third period.
In the first-place match, Kael Buffington of Montezuma-Cortez was a bit too much for the young Wolverine to overcome in a hard-fought 5-4 decision loss.
Then, Pickering received a challenge from third-place match winner Jared Van Hee of Gunnison, as the two had not wrestled yet in the tournament. The true-second place match saw Van Hee win a close match to take the state qualifying spot away from Keaton Pickering.
“It’s hard because you come off a tough loss in the championship match that way and your head is in a different spot. Then, you have to step back out there against a guy coming off a win and nothing to lose. He’s gunning for you,” McMenimen said. “There were wrestle-backs in six of the seven weight classes Friday night, and four were won by third-place wrestlers.”
BHS had hoped to send a few more Wolverines to state. In a normal year, James Mars and Kobe Prior also would have qualified for finishing in the top four of their region in their respective weight classes. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and a format shift of the state tournament from three days down to only one, only the top-two wrestlers in each weight class from the four regionals qualify to fill the eight-boy brackets.
Prior placed third at 160 pounds after he earned a 9-6 decision win against Gunnison’s Kaleb Vincent in the third-place match. It was a tough 7-6 decision loss in the semifinals to Moffat County’s Pepper Rhyne (19-2) that kept Prior out of state. Rhyne went on to place second to earn his place.
“We were up 6-5 with 20 seconds left trying to ride him out, but we got a bit out of position up high on him,” McMenimen said of Prior’s third period against Rhyne. “He was able to reverse us. Instead of escaping and just getting one point to force overtime, where I think we win on a takedown, he scooped us away and got a reversal on us. It was one of those matches against a kid we also saw at regionals last year in the third-place match. It was similar to this time between two very close kids talent-wise.”
Prior bounced back with two wins, including a first-period pin of Delta’s Royce Barrios in the consolation semifinals. He also had a 38-second pin victory against Rifle’s Elijahya Davison in the quarterfinals.
Mars took fourth at 132 pounds. He earned a technical fall victory against Grand Valley’s Keenan Strauss in the quarterfinals but was pinned 32 seconds into the third period by Moffat County’s Caden Call in the semifinals.
Mars battled back to earn a pin 14 seconds into the second period of his consolation semifinal match against Rifle’s Parker Miller, but a quick first-period pin loss to Alamosa’s Trevor Maestas in the third-place match ended his season.
Deegan Barnes (152) went 2-2 during the tournament and lost in the consolation semifinals to miss out on placing.
“Barnes also would have qualified for state in a normal year because he would have gotten a chance to wrestle again against an Alamosa kid we’ve handled this year,” McMenimen said. “We didn’t wrestle bad all weekend. On a normal year, we’d be taking five kids out of the eight we brought to regionals, and that’s not too bad. In spite of a strange year, I am proud of how we showed up every weekend. Our regional had five top-10 ranked kids in every weight class. That’s half the kids in one region as opposed to the other three. There’s no doubt it was a tough year and it was the toughest region this year.”
Pagosa Springs won the regional with 217.5 points. Moffat County was second with 170.5, and Alamosa placed third with 142. Bayfield was sixth with 78.5 points, a half point in front of Montezuma-Cortez.
Now, Dylan Pickering will try to climb the state podium for BHS on Friday.
“He’s wrestling really loose this season,” McMenimen said. “He’s gotten back to why he started wrestling originally and what he enjoys and likes about the sport. He’s having fun with it, and that shows. He wrestles better when he’s relaxed and enjoying it like he did when he was a little kid and I was coaching him in peewees when he was a 4-year-old. That’s good. We will keep doing that.”
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
