Angel Rios was one of two female wrestlers who placed in the Colorado state tournament for the first time. (Getty) Brendan Johnston had a chance to place at the Colorado state wrestling tournament on Saturday. Instead, he chose to forfeit because he didn’t want to wrestle a girl. Faced with the prospect of advancing in the 106-pound consolation bracket, Johnston simply declined to wrestle his third-round opponent Angel Rios. Wrestler ‘not really comfortable’ taking on a girl Why? Because he didn’t want to “treat a young lady like that on the mat.” “I’m not really comfortable with a couple of things with wrestling a girl,” Johnston told the Denver Post. “The physical contact, there’s a lot of it in wrestling. “And I guess the physical aggression, too. I don’t want to treat a young lady like that on the mat. Or off the mat. And not to disrespect the heart or the effort that she’s put in. That’s not what I want to do, either.” Rios 1 of 2 girls to place at tournament Rios went on to finish fourth in the Class 3A 106-pound weight class. Along with Jaslynn Gallegos, who finished fifth in the same weight class, Rios became the first girl to place at the Colorado state tournament. Both of them won matches against Johnston that he forfeited. Johnston also declined to wrestle Gallegos on the first day of the tournament. 4 of Johnston’s six losses came via forfeit to Rios According to the Post, Johnston won 37 of his 43 matches during his senior year at The Classical Academy. Five of those six losses came via forfeit. Four of those forfeits came against Rios. “Wrestling is something we do, it’s not who we are,” Johnston told the Post. “And there are more important things to me than my wrestling. And I’m willing to have those priorities.” Johnston knocked himself out of the 2018 state tournament in similar fashion when he declined to wrestle Cayden Condit. On Saturday, the decision not to wrestle put an end to his high school wrestling career. Rios wrapped up successful season As for Rios, she focused on the success of her wrestling season that saw her finish with a 23-3 record. Story continues “Right now it’s kind of still a blur,” Rios told Denver’s Fox 31. “I have three older brothers who are wrestlers, so I was constantly around the mat.” No disrespect Johnston insisted that he meant no disrespect to his female competitors on the mat by refusing to take them on. “I think it’s possible to forfeit while still respecting them as athletes and competitors. I really don’t want to disrespect the hard work these ladies have put in. They’ve done a lot of that too. Some people think by forfeiting I’m disrespecting them. That’s not my intention at all.” More from Yahoo Sports:<doc-sep>“I don’t think that I am looking at them as not equal,” Johnston said of Gallegos and Rios. “I am saying that they are women and that is different than being men, because I do believe that men and women are different and we are made differently. But I still believe that women are of equal value to men. I don’t think that seeing men and women as different … [opposes] the idea of equality.”<doc-sep>The Colorado high school wrestling state tournaments take place Thursday, Feb. 21 through Saturday, Feb. 23 at the Pepsi Center in Denver. Our staff will be there throughout the weekend providing live coverage. Refresh this page for the latest updates and results. In addition, real-time Tweets from reporters around the state are at the bottom of this page. Note: Day 3 live coverage will begin late Saturday afternoon. We will link to that story once it’s live. Friday schedule 3A, 2A quarterfinals: 9-11:45 a.m. (weigh-in at 7 a.m.) 5A, 4A: quarterfinals: 12:45-3:30 p.m. (weigh-in at 8 a.m.) Semifinals, all classes: 6:45 p.m. Updates (9:32 p.m.) Team scores heading into Saturday. In Class 5A, Pomona has 124.5 points while Ponderosa is second with 84.5, while Pueblo East (168) is outdistancing Pueblo County (134) and Windsor (130) in 4A. In the lower classifications, Alamosa (103.5) has the edge over Eaton (89) while Wray is dominating the 3A bracket with 126 points, far better than second-place Centauri (85). (9:10 p.m.) Four-peat history. Three wreslters advanced to the finals with a chance to earn a fourth-consecutive state title: Brendon Garica (Pueblo County), Andrew Alirez (Greeley Central) and Cohlton Schultz (Ponderosa). Never before has the state tournament crowned three four-time state champions in the same year. (8:14 p.m.) Robison’s four-peat falls short. In perhaps the biggest upset of the weekend, Regis Jesuit sophomore Antonio Segura took down three-time champion Theorius Robison of Pomona in the Class 5A 145 semifinals. Segura (35-8) needed extra time to knock off the Northern Colorado commit, pinning him 1:27 into the period to set up a finals showdown against Legacy’s Joey Joiner (35-12). (7:52 p.m.) Pomona, Ponderosa to clash for titles. The perennial Class 5A heavyweights will have wrestlers meet in two different weight classes in the title matches as the Panthers are running away with the team crown and the Mustangs seem like a sure bet for second place. Pomona freshman Daniel Cardenas (33-7) faces Ponderosa sophomore Jaron Mahler (37-8) for the 120 title Saturday after Mahler upset a defending champion, Grand Junction’s Dawson Collins, with a sudden victory in the semifinals. And at 126, Pomona junior Wyatt Yapoujian (24-4) takes on Ponderosa senior Mosha Schwartz (42-6) in a showdown everyone saw coming. (7:36 p.m.) Semifinals underway. With a strong crowd on hand, Monarch sophomore Vince Cornella was among the lightweights who made an early statement on Friday night. The 2018 champion at 106 cruised to a second-round pin of Pomona freshman Jacob Judd in the Class 5A 113 bracket to advance to Saturday’s finals, where he will take on Denver East sophomore Armando Garcia. Garcia beat Douglas County’s Max Black 3-0 to set up the title showdown. (6:29 p.m.) Unified wrestling sets stage. Outside the Pepsi Center, temperatures are dropping and snow’s starting to come down. Inside, Unified wrestling’s getting the fans warmed up, the crowd is filling in and a nervous buzz is permeating the arena with the semifinal matches for all classes set to begin in about 15 minutes. This is often the point in the bracket where the competition comes to a head — there are few, if any, blowouts and each grappler is going to scrap with everything he has for a chance to wrestle in Saturday’s finals. (5:59 p.m.) Girl power! Welcome to history, folks: For the first time in the state tourney, multiple female wrestlers are still alive in the bracket on Saturday, and they’re both in Class 3A and both repping the same weight class (106). Valley’s Angel Rios defeated Casteus Combs of Sterling, 9-0, in the second round of consolations on Friday, while Skyview’s Jaslynn Gallegos topped Alex Castaneda of Eaton, 9-5. Rios earlier this month became the first female wrestler in state history to win a regional and has drawn Brendan Johnston from The Classical Academy out of Colorado Springs in the placing round. Johnston has drawn Rios three times recently and declined to wrestle her — taking a forfeit — all three times for personal reasons. Johnston defeated Elijah Kitchens of Estes Park, 19-7. (3:23 p.m.) The consolation bracket matters. With the first round of consolation matches for all classes in the books, it’s important to keep in mind how critical the consolation side of the bracket can be when it comes to determining the team champions. Though Wray (2A), Pueblo East (4A) and Pomona (5A) are each running away from the field in their respective classes, there’s still some intrigue in the Class 3A race heading into this evening’s second round of consolation matches and semifinals. Alamosa is in the lead, but Lamar (13 qualifiers) and Eaton (10) are still in the picture if they can put up points by as many individuals as possible. (2:19 p.m.) Undefeated guys still alive. Pueblo East’s Andy Garcia extended his record to 23-0 with a pin in the Class 4A 285 quarterfinals, and his performance was preceded by other undefeated big-school wrestlers also extending their perfect seasons. Windsor’s Dominick Serrano (40-0 at 4A 132), Greeley Central’s Andrew Alirez (31-0 at 4A 152), Pueblo County’s Christopher Fasano (40-0 at 4A 160), Windsor’s Isaiah Salazar (41-0 at 4A 182), Pueblo East’s Zion Freeman (36-0 at 4A 195), Grand Junction’s Hunter Tobiasson (40-0 at 5A 220) and Ponderosa’s Cohl Schultz (44-0 at 5A 285) all advanced, too. (1:08 p.m.) Dawson Collins rolls into semifinals. The Grand Junction senior who won the 113 title last season continued his march for a repeat. After inducing a tech fall in Thursday’s preliminary round, Collins — a linchpin of the Tigers’ Class 5A title team last season — pinned Monarch sophomore Ryan Kuykendall in the third period of his 120 quarterfinal match. (12:21 p.m.) Pueblo East primed to increase lead. The Eagles put up 42 points to pace Class 4A after Day 1 as coach Pat Laughlin saw 11 of his 12 qualifiers advance. Junior heavyweight Andy Garcia headlines, as he’s aiming for a third state title and has been buoyed by extensive offseason wrestling, including a trip to Croatia.<doc-sep>After more than eight decades without a girl on the medal stand, fans at Pepsi Center got to watch Jasslyn Gallegos and Angel Rios shatter the ice. Right along with another glass ceiling. “It’s come such a long way,” said Gallegos, a senior at Skyview High School who, along with Rios, a junior at Valley High, became the first two girls ever to place at the Colorado state wrestling tournament on Saturday. “When I was younger, even in 2006, we had problems with sexism and all of that. Now it’s just not there, the whole ‘girls shouldn’t wrestle’ thing.” If there was a theme for the 84th Colorado High School Activities Association state tourney, you could sum it up in two words: Girl power. Some 13 years after the first female wrestler qualified for state (Golden’s Brooke Sauer broke the ice in 2006), local grappling history took another leap forward along Chopper Circle when Gallegos and Rios were honored for finishing fifth and fourth, respectively, in Class 3A’s 106-pound weight class. “It’s really cool to have the first girls place at state in my bracket,” said Weld Central freshman Robert Estrada, the third-place finisher at 106 in Class 3A. “Really cool.” Really tough, too. Estrada, who had to scrap to beat both girls on Saturday — Gallegos, 4-2, in the fourth round of consolations and Rios, 3-2, in the third-place match — in order to clinch his spot on the medal stand. “(Rios) is really tough,” Estrada said. “She’s one of the best in the nation among girls. Same with Jaslynn. “She never stops. She’s strong. She’s quick. She’s really good. I’m pretty happy for her to get this far. She deserves it. As does Jaslynn.” Like Gallegos, who sported a 31-6 record going into the tourney, Rios is a wrestling lifer, having taken up the sport after watching her older brothers beat the stuffing out of each other on the mat for ages. “So wrestling boys is normal to me,” said Rios, who came into the weekend with a 23-3 mark. “It’s what I’ve done for the past 15 years. “(Placing at state), it’s kind of what I wanted from 7th grade, when I first watched state. It’s pretty much what I’ve worked for over the past 15 years.” Rios and Gallegos have tussled at local and regional tourneys over the years, but fate — and the consolation pairings — stuck them on opposite ends of the 106-pound bracket. Ttheir stories eventually became connected by an unexpected link in the chain: Brendan Johnston, a senior wrestler from The Classical Academy in Colorado Springs. Johnston, who entered the tourney with a 36-4 record, declined to wrestle Gallegos during the first round Thursday, giving her a forfeit victory, and did the same when he drew Rios on Saturday morning in the third round of consolations, citing personal and religious principles in both cases. The pair of self-inflicted losses knocked him out of the bracket. And meant, chronologically at least, Rios became the first girl in Colorado history to clinch at least a podium finish at the state wrestling tourney. “You don’t want that to detract from the fact that both of these girls earned their places,” CHSAA assistant commissioner Ernie Derrera said. “They’re both phenomenal wrestlers in their own right.” “It’s his choice,” Rios said of Johnston, who forfeited out of the state tourney for similar reasons in 2018. “I have no control over it.” Once Rios got control, she took advantage — besting Pagosa Springs’ Trevor Torrez in the fourth round of consolations, 4-2, to set up a meeting with Estrada. “She’s worked all her life for this, she’s put in the hours,” said Daniel Rios, Angel’s father. “I know going into this sport that it was going to be tough for her. But we knew what she was going into.” Four brothers, four sisters. You fight for your place. Little brother, Isaiah, Angel’s practice partner, was here, too, and won the 3A title at 138 pounds late Saturday night. “I told her wrestling was for boys and she came back to me a week later and said, ‘I want to wrestle.’ ” Daniel Rios recalled. “I said, OK, then I’ll give you a week in the (wrestling) room … in the one week we gave her, she decided that this is her sport. And she’s never left the mat.” Or backed away from a challenge. CHSAA has put separate, sanctioned girls wrestling up for a vote among members that’s expected in the spring and would, if approved, take effect for the 2020-21 school year. Conversations toward a girls-only division began in 2015, Derrera said, and this year was the first for an official pilot program. More than 300 girls at 114 different schools participated in wrestling this season statewide. In other words, it really has come a long way. “When I was younger, referees wouldn’t call pins, wouldn’t give points,” Gallegos recalled. “Even if the other coaches agreed it was a point.” “They would call locking hands on her,” Jaslynn’s father Orlando interjected. “My daughter doesn’t lock hands. She’s way too smart to lock hands in a match.” “Just points and stuff,” Jaslynn added. “Some of the refs, they felt bad for the boys,” Orlando explained. “So it’s really come a long way.” “Now they kind of realize they can’t feel bad for the guys,” Jaslynn said, “because the girls work just as hard, if not harder. It’s kind of evened out since then.” If anything, wrestling has come full-circle for Gallegos and her peers. They’re feeling sorry for the boys again — only because Gallegos or Rios have just humbled the heck out of them. You could see it in the eyes of the passers-by along the concourse at Pepsi Center late Friday night as Rios huddled with her father. At one point, a woman, with a child in tow, made a point to stop, walk over and shake Angel’s hand. “You,” the woman said, beaming, “are one bad-(expletive) little girl.”<doc-sep>
Once the curveball leaves life’s fingertips, the swinging part is up to you. The way Judy Johnston tells it, she just happened to snatch the first open seat she saw near the floor of the gymnasium at Legend High School in Parker last month. What she didn’t know at the time was that the open seat just happened to be next to the one occupied by Angel Rios’ mother, Cher. Or that Angel, a junior 106-pound wrestler at Valley High in Gilcrest, just happened to draw a matchup against her son, Brendan, a senior wrestler from The Classical Academy. Or how Cher was going to react once she heard Brendan wouldn’t wrestle a woman. Not now. Not ever. “It was a fluke,” Johnston recalls from a stairwell inside the Pepsi Center during the 2019 Colorado High School Activities Association State Wrestling Tournament. “I had been told Angel is really good, she wants to go the Olympics, so we knew a little about her. And the (Valley) coach came by and said, ‘He’s going to forfeit.’ And Angel came over to her mom and said, ‘He’s going to forfeit.’ She was disappointed. Her mom was disappointed. And me not being able to turn away from a challenging conversation…” With Cher fuming, Judy introduced herself. “Well,” she said, words dancing carefully to avoid stepping on any toes, “my son happens to be the one that’s forfeiting.’” “Why is he doing that?” Cher replied. “She explained why she felt disrespected,” Johnston recalled. “I said, ‘I totally understand that.’ I said, ‘I know she’s worked hard, but he feels it’s not appropriate to interact with a woman that way, to be physical on or off the mat, at this stage in life. “So I kind of explained my side. It took a while, but she was able to kind of say, ‘Yeah, I kind of see your point.’ I wished her well and wished Angel well. And that was the end of it.” Only it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. • In 43 matchups during his senior season at TCA, a charter school in Colorado Springs, Brendan Johnston lost only six times. Officially. But five of those losses were a forfeit, a self-induced medical default, and four of those were to one wrestler: Rios. The fourth is the one that’s going to stick in the record books forever, one of the last dominoes to fall before a flick of history’s thumb. At approximately ten minutes after 10 on a Saturday morning at Pepsi Center in the third round of the Class 3A consolation rounds, Johnston huddled at one corner of Mat 8 with his coach, Sean Collins, to go over last-second strategies. He stripped off his grey warmups, same as always. Only instead of getting loose near the center of the mat, where Rios was doing mental laps in her head and physical ones along another corner, he made a sharp turn right, toward the official standing at the scorer’s table. There was a brief discussion, some nodding of heads, and handshakes all around. When the official walked back to the center of the mat, where Rios now waited, Brendan didn’t join them. Said official instead lifted Rios’ left arm, declaring her the winner and — chronologically, at least, given the moment — the first girl to ever qualify, in the 84th installment of the event, for a podium finish at a Colorado high school state wrestling tournament. Faith and principles won out by technical fall. “You’ve got to respect his personal decision to do what he did, and standing on his principles,” said CHSAA assistant commissioner Ernie Derrera noted. “And I think there’s a bigger lesson there than wrestling.” You know what? He’d do it again. The walking away part. Not the wrestling-against-a-female part. Not now. Not ever. “I’m not really comfortable with a couple of things with wrestling a girl,” Johnston explained. “The physical contact, there’s a lot of it in wrestling. “And I guess the physical aggression, too. I don’t want to treat a young lady like that on the mat. Or off the mat. And not to disrespect the heart or the effort that she’s put in. That’s not what I want to do, either.” Johnston is forever a part of Colorado state tournament lore now. He’s cool with that.