For somebody who loves to wrestle, Charlie Herting sure likes to get off the mat fast.
The Grandview junior opens the throttle at the start of every one of his matches, hoping to put his opponent under duress from the start with a goal to end the match early.
He executed his strategy to perfection during four matches at the Class 5A state tournament, as he pinned all four of his foes on his way to becoming the 165-pound champion with a 4 minute, 36 second, win by fall over Poudre’s Brett Lamb Saturday night at Ball Arena.
“I’m a pinner, I like to pin,” Herting said. “My coaches wanted me to have goals this season to work on stamina and be able to wrestle the whole six minutes. Usually, I’m not that long of a wrestler. I’m used to shorter matches where I throw a kid and pin him. I’ll give it to him (Lamb), it was a good match.”
Herting placed third at last season’s state tournament, but he was determined to go higher and he did so at the end of a season that saw him finish with a 47-5 final record.
On The Mat projected Pomona’s Dante Hutchings — who dealt Herting a loss by fall in the championship match at the Arvada West Invitational on Jan. 13 — as the state champion, but Hutchings’ path to the final got derailed with a quarterfinal loss to Legend’s Brody Shuss.
That opened the door for Herting, who dispatched Mountain Vista’s Charlie Rohlf and Fort Collins’ Beckett Cropp by pin early in the second period of his first two matches, then needed just 51 seconds to pin Brighton’s Izaiah Schoepp in the semifinals.
Up next was Lamb, who had a slew of incentives: a state title was on the line, he had lost to Herting in the regional final a week earlier and Poudre was jockeying with Grandview for third place in the team standings.
But Herting picked up a takedown in the opening five seconds of the match to set the tone and eventually got the chance to throw Lamb and finish off the pin, which gave him 38 for the season to break his own personal record of 36 set last season.
“I knew he was out for blood, he wanted the rematch and he wanted the win,” Herting said.
When the match was over, Budd — who qualified for the state tournament four times, but never won a title in his days at Grandview under former coach Greg Maestas — made sure to drill home the importance of the achievement to Herting, who was initially most excited about the pin record.
“When I got off the mat he told me ‘look at what you did, you are a state champion,'” Herting said. “I was about to cry, I was so excited.”
Budd said that he doesn’t need to give Herting a game plan, he just turned him loose and knew that most likely, something good was going to happen.
“Charlie beat the kid (Lamb) last week and I knew they were going to make some changes for this match,” Budd said. “But Charlie just goes out and does his own thing, so I told him ‘just go do you.’ It was so awesome to see the hard work come to fruition for him.”
Herting’s fall was one of just five among the 14 state championship matches, but it also made him one of only three 5A wrestlers — joining Legacy 220-pounder Quinn Funk and Centaurus heavyweight Xavier Valentin-Bradford — to win all four state matches by pin and earn the maximum points for his team.
Those final points pushed the Wolves past Poudre and into third place.
“I was watching the board and looking at the team points and I was just nervous, but I was excited for the chance,” Herting said. “That was definitely the cherry on top. We showed up as a team. It was a beautiful year for Grandview.”
Herting gave himself the chance to become the second two-time state champion for Grandview, as he could join Fabian Santillan (who won in 2018 and 2019) with a win next year.
Courtney Oakes is Aurora Sentinel Sports Editor. Reach him at sports@aurorasentinel.com. Twitter/X: @aurorasports. IG: Sentinel Prep Sports
