PARK CITY – Winning state championships with the regularity that Goddard does in boys wrestling, it might be difficult for the Lions to distinguish what makes one stand out from another.
 
Not Saturday, when Goddard defended its Class 5A team title with a parade of medalists that included four individual champions.
 
As thrilled as Lions coach Brett Means was for three-time champion Jacob Goodwin, two-time winner Jayden Grijalva, and senior Preston Hagel and sophomore Oscar Gauna winning their first titles, he also loved how things unfolded for senior Eastyn Vieyra, a grinder at 165 pounds.
 
Vieyra, seventh the previous week at the Newton regional, reached the state semifinals Friday before finishing sixth. His performance typified the work all nine Goddard qualifiers put in to finish in the top six of their respective weight classes.
 
“There’s no doubt that was the biggest highlight for me and the coaching staff,” Means said. “Having all nine guys place and a guy place higher than he did at regionals, that’s kind of neat.”
 

Humbled a bit by a runner-up finish to Bishop Carroll at regionals, Goddard re-focused in the days leading up to state and left nothing to chance. After building a 17-point lead on the first day of the tournament, Goddard’s persistence on the back side of the brackets and perfection on the front side yielded a 75-point victory, 173-118, over second-place Carroll.
 
“We knew once we got to the state tournament, we’d have a little more help throughout the brackets,” said Hagel, who started a 4-0 championship round for Goddard with a 12-3 major decision over previously unbeaten Lansing sophomore Noah Mathis to win the 215-pound title. “It was a big thing last week in practice. We talked about it, how we lost and got second place.
 
“There was a point where we were drilling bad and our coach stopped us and said, ‘You guys are going to get your butts waxed by Bishop Carroll again.’ More language than that, but you get the idea.”
 
Goddard’s motivation to avoid a regional repeat was evident on the mats.
 
Hagel’s title came a year after he finished second at state to Kapaun Mt. Carmel’s Omari Elias at 190 pounds. He didn’t lose to a Kansas wrestler during his senior season, finishing with a 30-match winning streak after the holiday break that pushed his final record to 43-2.
 
In Saturday’s final, Hagel led Mathis 5-3 with 15 seconds remaining. He then scored a takedown near the boundary and added four near-fall points as time expired before celebrating with raised arms followed by a twerk.
 
“It’s kind of been a lifelong dream to win a state high school title,” Hagel said. “The past 12, 13 years of my life, that’s been the main goal the whole time. It’s kind of a surreal thing.
 
“Last year at state was one of the biggest disappointments that I’ve ever gone through. Looking back at it now, I’m kind of glad that I lost it. It made me look at everything from that point with a positive mindset.”
 

Gauna, a state runner-up to Basehor-Linwood’s Trevor Christenson last season at 106 pounds, moved to the top of that weight class with a dominating performance. After reaching the final with two first-period pins and a technical fall, Gauna needed just 31 seconds to pin Blue Valley Southwest freshman Vince Maturo in the finalists’ first meeting.
 
“I think I just put in more hard work this year,” said Gauna, who finished the season 45-1 with the lone loss to Class 6A runner-up Pace Plankenhorn of Garden City. “I had thought about finishing runner-up last year, and I took a loss I shouldn’t have this year. Those things kind of drove me.”
 
With the opening weight of the boys finals determined by draw and starting at 165 pounds, Hagel and Gauna gave Goddard two champions in three matches. Grijalva made it three out of four with a 6-1 decision over Basehor-Linwood junior Eric Vielhauer at 113.
 
Grijalva, last year’s 6A champion at 106 for Derby, posted a 44-6 record in his lone season with the Lions. Making it to the finish line was no small feat, Means said, after Grijalva spent two nights in a Wichita hospital with an undisclosed medical issue following his regional victory.
 
“For him to do what he did was pretty awesome,” Means said. “His family and himself, they’re never going to use that as an excuse. That’s the type of people they are.
 
“But for him to come out of a hospital room and only have a short week of light practices and wrestle like he did is pretty unique.”
 

 
Grijalva went 36-3 as a junior at Derby, with two of the losses coming to Gauna at the Newton Tournament of Champions and Rose Hill Invitational. Longtime competitors against each other since youth wrestling, they formed an alliance as daily practice partners.
 
“We’ve known each other forever,” Grijalva said. “Just to be in the same wrestling room together, we feed off each other. It felt like a strong brotherhood.”
 
Goddard’s final points of the tournament were scored by Goodwin, who capped the most dominant season of his high school career with a 19-4 technical fall over Spring Hill senior Avery Bartek in the 157-pound final. After winning at 144 pounds as a sophomore and battling through an injury-plagued junior season to take the 150-pound crown, Goodwin went out with a 45-2 record that left him with 142 career high school victories.
 
“I just wanted to go out with a bang, honestly,” Goodwin said. “I put all my faith in my God. I’ve already put in the work. The hay was in the barn. I just needed to go out and do what needed to be done.”
 
The Lions complemented their individual champions with solid performances on the consolation side.
 
Junior Harrison Glover, who knocked off 2024 state champion Aiden Shields of Valley Center at regionals en route to a second-place finish, rebounded from a state quarterfinal loss to Shields on Friday to finish third at 126 pounds. Glover’s classmate, Kolton McElwain, placed fifth at 132 after taking third at regionals.
 
Goddard had a trio of sixth-place finishers in Vieyra, sophomore Kaston McElwain at 120 and junior Nick Miller at 138. Miller matched his regional finish to end his season at 38-16, while Vieyra ended with a 28-23 mark and Kaston McElwain was 19-30.
 
“We wrestle a brutal schedule and they go through a lot of adversity and a lot of ups and downs,” Means said. “For Eastyn Vieyra to make it to the state semifinals, that’s huge. That was just huge for us.
 
“Once you get knocked to the back side in a tournament like this, it gets brutal. For those guys to win matches and stay in the tournament is a great testament to all of them.”
 
While Goddard’s top-to-bottom depth produced the program’s 15^th state title and 10^th in 11 years, Carroll used some late heroics to claim the runner-up spot. Senior Brady Duling pulled out a 4-1 overtime victory over De Soto’s Emerson Tjaden in the 150-pound final, vaulting the Golden Eagles two points ahead of Basehor-Linwood and Blue Valley Southwest, which tied for third with 116 points.