Senior becomes IHS’ tenth State Champion
Like waiting in line for an hour outside some city’s nightlife hot spot, then denied entry because he couldn’t flash enough cash, or wasn’t hanging with the right crowd or wasn’t even, say, wearing the right shoes, Lincoln deKay undoubtedly asked himself throughout his wrestling career, ‘How do I get in?’
With plenty of wins and tournament titles to his name, he certainly had the street cred. Yet no VIP-level access.
“My family, and all the people that’ve won State titles in wrestling, they call it ‘the club,’” a grinning deKay explained Saturday night, Feb. 21, while relaxing inside one of the Mile High City’s preeminent entertainment sites. “And so ever since I was little, in pee-wees losing every match, they’d always tell me ‘You’d better figure it out or you might not join the club!’”
“I have a real bad habit of getting into my head before, like, every match – even if the kid has, like, never qualified for State,” he admitted. “But usually when I get out on a mat and the whistle blows, I figure it out and can wrestle again.”
And before a mostly packed Ball Arena crowd, Ignacio’s senior figured out how to best one last, um, bouncer, rip the proverbial velvet rope off its hooks and at long last enter an exclusive pantheon welcoming only Colorado’s most elite grapplers.
Pit in the 2026 CHSAA Class 2A State Championships’ 165-pound finale against Burlington senior Jason Saucedo, who qualified for State last year but did not place at 138, deKay (runner-up at 165 to Holly senior Tripp DuVall in ’25) wasted no time and quickly went up 3-0 after bringing the Cougar down to the mat and establishing control.
Almost pinned as the first period wound down, Saucedo managed to survive into the second but only after losing another four points for the near-fall. But deKay never relented and doubled his lead to 14-0 through four minutes. Having already eliminated Fowler’s Jesse James in one semifinal via an 18-3 technical fall, as well as Rocky Ford’s Marcos Villegas in the quarters via a 17-0 tech, deKay needed to either score one innocuous point or merely avoid catastrophe in order to make Bobcat history.
And at 8:43 p.m. Mountain, one final takedown did the tech trick and polished off a thorough 17-0 triumph.
“I was planning on coming in with just another shot as soon as I got his hands past my head. But he ended up taking a shot from far away, so it just turned into a front headlock where I could spin behind him,” said deKay. “He was just being real heavy with his hands – I think he didn’t wrestle his match. If he was on his best game, he would definitely have been one of the tougher opponents I’ve wrestled all year. But he just couldn’t get momentum going.”
“He was pretty fast … and he stayed on top; he was a hammer on top,” Saucedo said while waiting to join deKay on the walk to the podium for the weight’s awards ceremony. “I probably should have moved my hips a little more, trying to get out, but sometimes it just doesn’t work the way you want it to.”
“I know that I worked for this, so there’s no shame in it; nobody can take that away from me, all the blood, sweat and tears that I spent,” he continued. “And, yeah, it didn’t end the way I’d wanted, but hopefully my little brother can look up at the walls inside (Burlington’s) wrestling room and try to beat me in that aspect.”
Saucedo finished the 2025-26 grind standing 38-8 overall while deKay, whose season was interrupted by an injured right elbow (again well-protected for State), finished 27-1 in becoming Ignacio’s tenth State champ – the first since three-time king Alex Peña in 2011 – and bringing home IHS’ 14th individual State title.
“Regardless of how bad my elbow hurt, or if I ripped it off the bone even more, I wanted to win, so I was just going to wrestle with it like it was normal,” said deKay, now a three-time State placer whose father – and former IHS head coach – Chris copped crowns inside Denver’s old McNichols Arena in 1987 (Class A, 119 pounds; uncle Ray deKay conquered the 126-pound division) and ’88 (A, 126). “I’m feeling pretty relieved; I’m not going to lie. It’d be fun to wrestle again tomorrow, but I think I’m ready for a little break.”
In the end, deKay’s drive helped IHS tally 67.5 points and place a solid tenth. Atop the table, Ault-based Highland racked up a winning 111 points, while runner-up Hotchkiss North Fork finished with 105.5. Saucedo and BHS ended up with 94.5, as did Rocky Ford, with Buena Vista (93) and pre-meet No. 1 Cedaredge (88) following in the standings – which counted 49 scoring, and 53 represented teams overall.
AFTERMATH
His first-place finish the determining factor, Lincoln deKay was named First Team All-2A and fellow senior teammate Aven Bourriague, runner-up at 113 pounds, was a Second Team All-2A pick.
Also representing the San Juan Basin League well, Dolores’ Kenji Edwards received Honorable Mention All-2A distinction by placing third – he pinned Las Animas’ Gabriel Martinez 1:23 into the second period, after holding a 13-12 lead in the high-scoring bout – at 132. Norwood’s Kannon Sherman also received Honorable Mention after taking third at 215 pounds by pinning Springfield’s Jett Konkel in 1:11.