The Moffat County athletics department saw a new milestone Saturday afternoon as the Bulldog girls wrestling team climbed the podium as a group to claim its first — but likely not last — regional championship.

MCHS held the lead in the team tally for the majority of the two-day 4A Region 2 Tournament in Gunnison and emerged well ahead of every other school by the end of it all, boasting 177.5 points, nearly 80 ahead of runner-up Eagle Valley.

“Honestly I was trying not to look at the team score until after the fact. I was just trying to get as many girls to state as possible,” said head coach Ashlee Griffiths Ripka.

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For Griffiths Ripka, who competed for MoCo well before girls wrestling was its own established sport in Colorado, seeing her athletes dominate their way to a new echelon of success was especially heartening.

“The girls really put in the work this year and deserve to be on the top of the podium as a team,” she said.

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Senior salute

The mix of Bulldog state qualifiers includes all grade levels — four freshmen, a sophomore, two juniors and two seniors — but only half the MCHS upperclassmen were able to compete at regionals.

Even so, Halea Hirano and Victoria Deporto were part of the program’s Senior Night ceremony on Jan. 30, the team’s lone home event of the season, which saw a 66-6 win over North Fork.

Both Hirano and Deporto were unable to finish out the season due to injury, though both have been very much a part of the program.

Deporto first started wrestling her freshman year, which then involved suiting up for Soroco, and has enjoyed watching the Moffat County program flourish, even when it’s largely been from the sidelines.

“It’s good to see my girls win and work hard,” she said.

Hirano was out from the home dual with a concussion, which followed suit after a broken rib as a sophomore and a shoulder injury as a junior. Despite the physical setbacks, Hirano said she has grown quite a bit mentally in the sport.

“I’m a lot more comfortable on the mat and had more confidence this year,” she said.

State-bound

Out of the 12 girls who competed at regionals, nine will head to the state championships with two more placing in their respective weights.

The Dogs’ cumulative group score was helped along greatly by two individual titles as Sydney Preston and Kayla Deaton each went 3-0 to win the 120- and 125-pound brackets, respectively.

Preston, a freshman, took a trio of pins at the tourney, including the final bout against a Battle Mountain senior, which Griffiths Ripka noted as an indication that she is peaking at just the right point in the season.

Deaton, a junior, was the top seed in her weight class and took no time showing why with a pin in 45 seconds against her first opponent. She racked up a 25-5 technical fall in her semifinal round and

kept her final match from going long with a pin midway through the second period.

Her coach noted that being ranked No. 1 gave Deaton more of an edge than anxiety about having a target on her back.

“She is the type of girl that has a good mindset when it comes to added pressure,” she said.

Senior HayLee Staker likewise got top seeding and mirrored Deaton’s first match — also getting a pin in 45 seconds — but finished with the silver after a 17-1 tech defeat to Eagle Valley’s Julia Borejszo, a foe she was anticipating.

The 135 bracket was one of the sparser weights, Griffiths Ripka pointed out, though the smaller pool of opponents had little to do with performance and that losing due to “a few small mistakes” may provide a new motivation at the next level.

“HayLee loves to get revenge on the girls she has lost to,” she said.

Amanaki George likewise placed second, with her 140-pound championship match against Gunnison’s Roxie Uhrig, whom Griffiths Ripka described as an “extremely tough girl” who had the benefit of her home crowd behind her on her way to a 19-4 tech fall.

“There was a couple opportunities for us to get a turn but it didn’t quite happen,” the coach said. “Naki wrestled well even with the odds against her.”

At the higher weights, Emily Hockaday (190) and Kearra Cicchini (235) each were guaranteed a spot at state with only three regional opponents in each class. Both finished the weekend 1-1 for second place.

Griffiths Ripka said the duo have steadily made each other better in the Bulldog practice room throughout the season.

“It was a first not actually having to wrestle to go to state, but they both 100 percent deserve to be their,” she said. “They work their butts off in the room, and I’m excited to see how they wrestle this weekend.”

Fights to the finish

Though none of the team took the bronze, most of the Bulldog girls who found themselves in the consolation rounds emerged as state qualifiers despite the tournament structure working against some more than others.

Compared to MCHS’s first two seasons as a team, this year saw CHSAA designate size classifications of 4A and 5A for the sport. With more regional events occurring, some schools fielded less robust rosters resulting in some weight classes experiencing far more bye rounds and those athletes getting less competition while also having to stay ready to go.

“Having to wait around all day takes a toll on the body,” Griffiths Ripka said, adding that the girls who saw less action Friday were at a disadvantage.

Freshman Ryleigh Hedman went 1-2 for fourth place, with both her losses by decision — the second of which was a narrow 7-6 in the consolation finals — with a second-round pin guaranteeing her the state slot thanks to the no-contest rule — when she was later paired with the same opponent.

“Her bracket was small but the girls that were in it were really tough. It just goes to show how close she is to the top.

At 170, Niyla Ennis was 2-2 with two of her matches going into overtime — winning one and losing the other — before eventually taking fourth via no-contest.

Griffiths Ripka referred to senior Callah Caperton as the team’s “comeback queen” for a 3-2 run that included getting pinned twice in a row before getting a fall of her own in the fifth-place match and securing a return to state with a wrestle-back to retain fourth, winning by 17-9 major decision.

“She does best when her back is against the wall and she has to compete. I’m very proud of how she kept fighting until the very end,” Griffiths Ripka said of Caperton.

As beneficial as the no-contest rule was for MCHS girls — which automatically gives the win to an athlete if they are paired a second time with an opponent they already defeated in the tournament — it wasn’t without its downfalls.

The Dogs’ smallest scrapper, Abi Clay, had more matches than any of them in a robust 100-pound bracket. Despite going 4-2 across both days, a loss in the consolation semifinals prevented Clay from making it to state as she later won the fifth-place match but was denied a chance to go for fourth.

“I believe she could have beaten that West Grand girl,” Griffiths Ripka said of the rematch that might have been. “They have wrestled a couple times this year, and it’s been pretty close. She performed very well even when the pressure was on.”

She added that the “big heartbreaker” of the weekend was Miriam Jimenez placing fifth after a 2-2 weekend in the 130 class that included two pins but ultimately ended with a loss by no-contest to the Meeker opponent who had beaten her by a 10-2 MD.

“She has come a long way this season, and I was really hoping for her to be able to go to state,” Griffiths Ripka said.

At 105, Sydney Brazeal was out of the mix Friday with two losses, one of which was only 1-0. Griffiths Ripka noted that Brazeal has been powering through an injury most of the season that affected her regional matches and made it hard to get a takedown.

“She has made some great progress this year, and she was very close to making it to the second day,” she said.

The CHSAA State Championships run this Thursday through Saturday at Denver’s Ball Arena.