For 10 seniors and two coaches, Saturday was the last time they’d compete in the Meeker gym as part of the Meeker High School wrestling program. In the final regular season matches where the Cowboys hosted the 2024 Meeker Duals and for a third straight year (COVID didn’t allow for it in 2021) the Cowboys came out on top.
“We started high school in the new gym and we have never lost a dual in it,” commented senior Judd Harvey.
The 2023-2024 seniors are Reed Goedert, Coy Richardson, Tanner Goodwin, Wyatt Powers, Jake Blazon, Gage Hicks, Buzz Clatterbaugh, Hayden Shults, Harvey and Noah LeBlanc.
This is the final season for the dynamic duo of JC Watt and Carl Padilla, and they prepare to exit coaching at the end of state competition and make way for a new era.
”I know we have the best coaching staff in the state,” said Harvey, “most colleges don’t even get the level of coaching that we get in our room.”
The Meeker Duals featured 10 teams: Basalt, Coal Ridge, Delta, Grand Valley, Hayden, Meeker varsity and Meeker 2, Olathe, Rangely and Soroco.
Meeker wrestled Soroco first, winning 77-5, then beat Coal Ridge 67-12, Olathe 60-22, Delta 53-18, and took first place after beating Hayden 48-23.
Eight Cowboys ended the day undefeated: Goedert, Clay Crawford, Orion Musser, Blazon, Cade Blunt, Clatterbaugh, Harvey and LeBlanc.
“These last couple of weeks we have seen some really good wrestling out of Holton, Goedert, Blazon and Musser,” commented Watt. “It was a good home crowd and all of the kids are peaking when they need to be.”
”I would like to thank the crowd as we have received high praise from our high school staff for the cleanliness of the facility at the end of the duals,” said Watt.
Meeker 2 was also very successful. They took sixth out of 10 teams, finishing ahead of four other varsity teams and barely losing in their finals 36-34 to 3A Coal Ridge.
“The JV kids did really great and it was so awesome to see so many of them be very successful,” commented Watt.
The Cowboys now turn their attention to regionals, which will be in La Junta on the eastern side of the mountains. CHSAA moved the top 12 teams around in an attempt to create some fairness in the regionals. Traveling with Meeker to La Junta will be North Fork. Had CHSAA not moved both of these teams there would have been over 60 ranked wrestlers in region two, the historic region for Meeker, and only 22 in the region they are going to, which is region three.
Seeding criteria will be based on the following in order of priority: state champions, state placers, state qualifiers and for those that do not fall in the previous categories they will look at win percentage. They will then look at head-to-head matchups to move wrestlers up or down. Ties will be broken based on the following priority list: most wins, varsity win percentage, most falls, most tech falls, most major decisions, vote of coaches and then a coin flip.
The 2024 regional team for the Meeker Cowboys incluudes: Holton at 106 pounds, Goedert 113, Koy Weber 120, Richardson 126, Crawford 132, Dawson Richardson 138, Goodwin 144, Musser 157, Blazon 165, Blunt 175, Clatterbaugh 190, Harvey 215 and LeBlanc at HWT. (The name of the 150 bracket wrestler was not available by press time.)
Regional wrestling will begin at 4 p.m. on Friday at Otero Junior College in La Junta, Colorado.
