A month ago saw the completion of the high school wrestling schedule, but any fan of the sport in Northwest Colorado knows that’s just the signal for another round as the younger athletes show their progress.

And Bulldog grapplers have not disappointed.

Elementary skills

Moffat County Youth Wrestling sent several athletes to the Rocky Mountain Nationals Colorado Elementary State Championships Friday and Saturday at Denver’s National Western Complex.

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The tournament open to grades kindergarten through fifth-grade saw MoCo wrestlers Stetson Camilletti, Elysse Gonzalez, Penelope Hawks, Quentin Hartung, Kolt Luster, Chason Lyons and Jason Schaffner battle it out on the mat.

Among the Craig wrestlers, Camilletti made it the furthest in the brackets, finishing as state runner-up in the 55-pound division.

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MCYW’s coaches included Kyle Lyons, Cody Pleasant, Trent Vernon, Johnny Ford, Kyler Scott, Billy Lawton and numerous high school volunteers for the pee-wee program.

District dominance

While younger athletes were in the Mile High City, Craig Middle School stayed closer to home and claimed the team title at the district tournament in Hayden.

As the top squad among six schools, CMS had 27 wrestlers finish with a spot on the podium, including six individual champions — Abraham Aguilar (100 pounds), Natalia Quezada (86-100), Ryleigh Hedman (101-115), Liam Mannon (145), Rileigh Durham (131-145) and Jackson Burum (165).

Head coach Coy Colgate said the size of the roster didn’t hurt the results in their season finale, with more than 50 CMS athletes attending districts, which he found especially encouraging after three years running the team.

“It was a massive team, filled up all of our weight classes,” Colgate said. “It’s been building blocks the last two years, but we’ve got a good group of coaches and kids are starting to see the passion we put into it.”

CMS’s tourney point tally was helped along by nine second-place finishers — Yonaton Quezada, Kasen Giedd, Zariah Stover, Wyatt Hancock, Collins Hafey, Addisyn Wolfarth, Braxton Bower, Raelynn Merwin and Niyla Rose Ennis — five third-place — Simon Holden, Abram Bricker, Raegan Simpson, Angel Torres and Chance Hixson — and seven in fourth — Isabelle Hayes, EllaMae Miller, Migiel Montanez-Alcantar, Khodee Martinez-Moreno, Julian Rosario and Blake Winn.

Colgate noted that it was a season of growth for everyone.

“Some kids started out with some bad attitudes about wrestling and weren’t sure they’d want to do it anymore,” Colgate said. “At the end of districts, they were asking, ‘When does it start again? Can we do an open gym?’ That was really cool to see, that the love of the sport had started to grow.”

Colgate’s coaching staff included assistants Travis Linsacum, Ryan Hampton, Ashlee Griffiths-Ripka and volunteers Charlie Martinez, Brayden Peterson, Jeremy Miller and Jason Bowey.

Griffiths-Ripka, fresh off running the Moffat County High School girls wrestling program earlier in the year, worked with the influx of female athletes for the CMS program.

“They performed very well,” Griffiths-Ripka said. “They all have made extreme improvements throughout this short season. The future for Moffat County wrestling is bright.”

For Linsacum, a long history in local wrestling took on a new significance this season as his daughter Tinsley stepped onto the mat.

“She was very new to the sport and had never wrestled a day in her life the first day of practice,” Linsacum said. “She had some serious growing pains, but she was a warrior, didn’t have an ounce of quit in her. She had a great work ethic, and that was all I wanted. Girls wrestling is absolutely exploding, and in my opinion, it’s an amazing thing for our sport.”