PUEBLO | Antonio Segura got everything he hoped for Saturday night.
The Regis Jesuit senior earned a chance to finished his Colorado prep wrestling career with a third Class 5A state champion and he got the opponent he wanted in Horizon’s Grayston Diblasi, who lined up across from him in one of the final matches contested at Southwest Motors Events Center.
Confident he had sized up Diblasi correctly a week earlier in the Region 2 championship match — which he won 2-1 — Segura went out in style with a 7-4 victory in the rematch in the 5A 152-pounds state final. The win brought him to the end of a season altered tremendously by the coronavirus pandemic with a 23-0 record.
Added together with his victories at 145 pounds in each of the previous two seasons, Segura earned a place alongside John Crowley — who won crowns in 2010, 2011 and 2012 — as Regis Jesuit’s three-time state champions.
Segura, who revels in the strategic portion of wrestling, did enough to get past Thornton’s Zack Zuniga in his opening match, a 6-5 victory. He had more breathing room in the semifinals when he downed ThunderRidge’s Presley Pilgrim 11-3.
In the championship match, Segura got the first takedown in the opening period and got one in each of the next two periods as well, with Diblasi scoring single points on escapes. A last takedown with 30 seconds remaining sealed the result for Segura.
Courtney Oakes is Sentinel Colorado Sports Editor. Reach him at sports@sentinelcolorado.com. Twitter: @aurorasports. IG: Sentinel Prep Sports