Colorado Wrestling 2026-27: By the Numbers

Seventh in our state-by-state preview series: Colorado, which enters the winter with the most famous team streak in the series and three separate four-title chases. Last season MatMetrics ingested 151,757 matches from 1,553 Colorado events involving 23,934 wrestlers. The interesting part is the shape of that growth: match volume jumped nearly 12 percent while the number of wrestlers held flat — Colorado's rooms aren't getting bigger so much as busier, with more events and fuller schedules per athlete. The CHSAA runs boys wrestling in four classes (5A down to 2A) and girls in two (5A and 4A, a split now in its third season), and it crowns champions twice: a dual-team state championship on February 6, then the traditional tournament at Ball Arena in Denver on February 18-20. Practices open November 16; the first matches count November 30.

Start with the record book, because Pomona rewrote it in February. The Panthers scored 303.5 points — the highest team total in Colorado state-tournament history — went nine-for-nine in their finals (no school had crowned more than seven champions in one year since 1972), and won their eighth consecutive 5A title, tying the run Ponderosa put together from 2003 to 2010. The caveat for 2026-27 is graduation: four of those nine champions are gone. What returns is still formidable — Lincoln Valdez, a two-time champion at 106 as a freshman and sophomore who is quietly on a four-title track of his own, and Donovan Symalla, who won the 157-pound bracket as a freshman — and on the girls side Pomona was the 5A runner-up and returns two champions of its own.

The marquee chases: three Coloradans start the season three-for-three. Severance's Drake VomBaur is the boys headliner — champion at 106, 113, and 120 in consecutive years, 42-3 last season, committed to Minnesota, where his brother Vance was an All-American. On the girls side there are two, and they bracket the weight sheet. Brighton's Matilda Hruby, a three-time champion at 155 ranked in the national top five, went undefeated last season and spent the summer winning U17 Pan American gold in both freestyle and beach wrestling; there is a poetic edge to her chase, because the match that won her the 2026 title ended Pomona star Timberly Martinez's own four-title bid. And Pomona's Justice Gutierrez, a three-time champion at 100 with an undefeated career record, is ranked third nationally — meaning Colorado could crown two four-timers at the same girls tournament.

The tier behind them is deep. Cherokee Trail's Cooper Mathews may own the best international résumé in the state: a two-time 5A champion and South Dakota State commit who won U17 Pan American gold in both freestyle and Greco last summer and placed ninth at the U17 World Championships in Baku — he enters his senior year chasing Colorado's career-wins record. Grandview's JR Ortega, a two-time champion, goes for a third; Thompson Valley's Ty Eversman and Palisade's Kadin Mulford (45-2) return as reigning champions. The girls side may be even stronger: Bennett junior Emma Faczak, a two-time champion at 105, is ranked No. 2 in the country — the state's highest-ranked girl — while Prairie View's Jaydin Cuevas returns off a 47-0 title season, Regis Jesuit's Remington Zimmerer defends back-to-back crowns, Strasburg's Madilyn Gitke is already a two-time champion as a sophomore (her sister Vivienne graduated with two titles of her own), and Severance's Eila Schultz, Pomona's Timmery Condit, and Falcon's Allison McDaniel — the latter two champions as freshmen — give the two girls classes a very young top end.

Beyond Pomona, February's team hardware spread out. Pueblo East repeated in 4A — its fifth title since 2019 — holding off Roosevelt by 17.5. Eaton won 3A by nearly 30 points for its fourth team title since 2020, and the best race of the weekend was 2A, where Highland edged North Fork by 5.5 points for the first team championship in program history. The girls races produced two repeat champions: Grand Junction Central ran away with 5A again, and Pueblo Central — winner of the inaugural 4A title in 2025 — defended it over Severance. For 2026-27, keep an eye on Severance as the two-gender room of the moment: fifth in 4A boys with VomBaur, runner-up in 4A girls with Schultz.

The honest caveat, and Colorado earned a pointed version of it: this is the heaviest club state in the series, and before web verification, the two highest-rated 'returners' on our board were a 12-year-old club wrestler and a middle schooler whose hundreds of youth-circuit matches had inflated their ratings past every actual high schooler in the state. The names above are the web-verified ones — state results, class years, and commitments checked against press and CHSAA coverage. Our career records still include club and offseason volume, so they will often run higher than press-reported season records; where something looks off, the report tools on every profile come straight to us. Weights listed are where each wrestler last competed — expect moves before November 30.

Search any Colorado wrestler, team, or event above to see where they stand heading into the winter, or pull up the state rankings and sort by weight class. One state a day through the fall — the series rolls on.