It took 365 days for Ethan Appenzeller to get his rematch. Saturday was the night.
The Ignacio High School senior wrestler wanted nothing more than to get back under the bright lights of the Pepsi Center in Denver for a championship match against rival Britton Holmes from Peyton. Holmes beat Appenzeller last year in the Class 2A 138-pound state title match by one point, 6-5.
Appenzeller kept his eyes on Holmes from afar all season. When the state tournament bracket was released for 145 pounds last weekend, the two were on opposite sides – Holmes the top seed and Appenzeller the second – in a collision course for the finals. After both boys won their semifinals Friday night, they had 24 hours to think about the rematch.
Holmes (41-2) again was slightly better than Appenzller (38-5), this time by two points in a 5-3 decision victory. Holmes scored the only two takedowns of the match, while Appenzeller was held to three escape points and couldn’t complete a takedown of his opponent.
“Well, it could have went another way,” Appenzeller said after the match. “Granted, I wanted to see Britton again, see if I could get it this time. I really wanted it, so I pushed myself real hard this year. It wasn’t the outcome I wanted, but it’s the journey, you know?”
Holmes led 2-1 after the first period, but Appezneller took the bottom position to start the second period and quickly escaped to tie the match. But Holmes scored another takedown before an Appenzeller escape to take a 4-3 lead into the third period. With Holmes in the down position, Appenzeller couldn’t turn his opponent onto his back to score points. Holmes eventually escaped, and Appenzeller couldn’t find a takedown before time expired.
“I don’t believe in pressure,” Holmes said. “It’s something you make up in your head. And there was no pressure. I just went out there, wrestled like I was supposed to to come out on top.”
Holmes will wrestle at Northern Michigan University and train in Greco wrestling. He leaves in two weeks for Austria for a Greco tournament there.
“I’m done with folkstyle,” he proclaimed.
IHS head coach Jordan Larsen said Holmes had an “aggressive quality” on his feet that was tough to match.
“He had a little edge,” Larsen said.
Appenzeller worked his way into the championship match methodically. Coming out of the second-seed, he defeated Emmanuel Huerta of Wray with a pin 1:35 into the first period in Thursday’s first-round match. He then worked to a 7-3 decision win against Trystan Estrada of John Mall in the quarterfinals. Friday night, he rallied from a 1-0 deficit to start the third period and secured a takedown and nearfall to defeat Remington Canfield of Merino in a 5-1 decision to earn his rematch.
Appenzeller finished his career as a four-time state qualifier and two-time runner-up.
“I’m just real happy to be here,” he said. “Wrestling is everything I do, and everything I eat and breathe, everything I want. And it’s still exciting to be here again, wrestling for my family, my friends. They came here to cheer me on, and I really appreciate that.”
Lorenzo “Woody” Peña had a special day of his own Saturday to complete a remarkable state tournament. In the quarterfinals, Peña defeated the top-seed, Rocky Ford’s Carlos Magdaleno, in the Class 2A 160-pound bracket with a 5-1 decision. But later Friday night, Peña was caught in a furious scramble in the second period against Aidan Dabal of Norwood/Nucla. The two met in the championship of the 2A Region 1 tournament only six days earlier, and Dabal secured an 8-7 decision late in the third period. This time, Dabal was able to pancake Peña on his back, and he secured the pin with 21 seconds to wrestle in the second period.
Peña bounced back in a big way in the consolation bracket. He pinned Crowley County’s P.J. Schurr with 10 seconds remaining in the third period to reach the third-place match. He was explosive in his final match ever at the Pepsi Center, a venue that has become a mid-February home for his family with brothers who routinely made the trip, too. Peña beat Wray’s Carlos Tarin in a 14-3 major decision to secure his second consecutive third-place finish at the state meet.
“He was explosive today,” Larsen said. “I would say he knew where he wanted to be. He didn’t let the loss (Friday) eat at him. He finished strong.”
Two more state placers came from Bayfield High School. After a heartbreaking 5-4 loss in an ultimate tiebreaker Friday night in the Class 3A 285-pound semifinals to last year’s 220-pound 3A champion Ricky Ayala of Sheridan, Bayfield’s Sam Westbrook had another tough match against another returning state champ Saturday morning. He faced defending 285-pound champion Sam Deseriere of Mullen and fell short in a 5-4 decision loss. Westbrook proved he could wrestle with the best, especially after he out-wrestled Ayala a night earlier but seeing his 3-2 lead late in the third period slip away because of a very late stalling point.
Westbrook, who will play football at Colorado Mesa University, bounced back in the fifth-place match with a decisive 8-4 decision against Valley’s Emmanuel Munoz-Alcala. Westbrook finished the season 41-2 overall with his only two losses coming at the state tournament to boys with state championships.
BHS senior Macoy Michaeli made one of the toughest runs possible to the state podium. After losing to Valley’s Josh Flanagan, the top seed in the 3A 170-pound bracket, Michaeli won a pair of consolation matches to get into the consolation semifinals. But he was unable to wrestle his way into the third-place match after losing via first-period pin to Sheridan’s Faustin Lopez. Still, Michaeli got one more match in his high school career. But it didn’t go his way, as Dylan Prelle of Sterling won a 3-1 decision to take fifth. Michaeli took the sixth and final spot on the podium.
Bayfield’s Ryan Nava was undefeated the week before the state tournament, but a tough loss in the 3A Region 1 championship match signaled a change in fortune. The second-seed in the 145-pound Class 3A bracket had no problem in his first round match but was pinned in 1:05 of the first period by Lance Bryant of Steamboat Springs in the quarterfinals. Stunned, Nava fell into the consolation bracket but responded with a 5-2 decision win against Leonardo Palma of Pueblo Central. That kept Nava’s hopes of placing alive and put him into the mix Saturday.
Nava’s tournament came to an end short of the podium, though, as Ty Addington of Florence defeated Nava in an 8-5 decision in the third round of consolation.
The Class 2A team championship was won by Rocky Ford, which scored 188.5 points. Meeker was second with 160, and John Mall took third with 134 points. IHS was 16th out of 48 schools with 41 points coming from three wrestlers, as Stocker Robbins also competed but fell just shy of the podium. He was a three-time state qualifier and two-time placer.
Class 3A was won by Valley with 102.5 points. Jefferson scored 99 to take second just ahead of Alamosa with 98. It was a brutally close 3A race, and Centauri also showed well with 89 points for fourth. Bayfield took 23rd out of 52 teams with 31 points from five qualifiers.
Class 4A was won by Pueblo County in convincing fashion, as it scored 225 points. Greeley Central scored 123.5 to take second, and Cheyenne Mountain was one point better than Pueblo East to take third with 113.
Class 5A was claimed by Pomona, which scored 192.5 points. Grand Junction was a distant second at 141.5, and Brighton placed third with 124.5.
Joel Priest contributed to this report.
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
