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Thirty wrestlers have won four state championships in CHSAA history, and each time one finished off the feat as a senior, they were treated to a long, roaring standing ovation from the downtown crowd.
All Morgan Johnson wants is to soak in that moment, too. All she wants, in a year where there will be no male wrestler going for the four-peat, is for her name to be added to that list in February as Colorado’s 31st four-time champ — and the first female wrestler to do so.
And if you try to put an asterisk on her pursuit — because her first title as a freshman came in CHSAA’s unsanctioned, pilot state tournament in Thornton — she politely but strongly disagrees.
“There’s nothing else I could’ve done my freshman year,” Johnson said. “That (pilot state tournament) was the tournament I had to go to, and I’ve won all three years including the last two, but for some reason (a 2023 title) doesn’t count as four because….?
“It bothers me a lot. It makes me mad.”
A mad Johnson is trouble for the rest of the field. The Loveland star pinned her opponent in four of her six sanctioned state tournament matches over the last two years, with her closest competition coming in a 9-1 major decision in the finals as a sophomore. Johnson has yet to be beaten by another girl in Colorado with a glitzy 55-0 record.
“This whole journey has been fun,” Johnson said. “And all the success I’ve had so far makes me hungry going forward.”
But for the 110-pounder to get back to dominating local competition, she’ll need to get fully healthy first.
Johnson wrestled in last year’s state tournament with a torn ligament in her right wrist, which kept her from being able to use it on the mat. Then two weeks after state, Johnson suffered a severe concussion at Folkstyle Nationals that landed her in the hospital and kept her out of school for three months.
“That was really hard, because I’m a social person,” Johnson said. “Every time I went to school, I’d have to go home, because I’d throw up, I’d get dizzy. It was terrible and it felt like it wasn’t going away.”
While she was dealing with the fallout from her concussion, she had surgery on her wrist to repair the ligament. The July operation included putting a pin in her wrist to help re-attach the ligament back to her bone. The surgery required a three-to-five month rehab.
That means that although Loveland’s season is now in full swing, Johnson’s is not. She started wrestling live again in the Red Wolves’ room, and hopes to be at full strength and back competing in mid-January, a few weeks before the regional tournament.
“I’ve been drilling and I just started getting back in the room (in November), doing the stationary bike, stance-and-motion, whatever I could do,” Johnson said. “But it’s still a little scary, because last time I wrestled I ended up in the hospital. That’s in the back of my mind, but I still love this sport and would never give it up.”
Johnson knows that even if she isn’t officially recognized as a four-time champion this winter at Ball Arena, she’s still left an indelible legacy on a sport that’s burgeoning both in Colorado and nationwide. The 18-year-old, who signed with Division I powerhouse Lindenwood University, takes pride in being a central figure in the sport’s rise locally.
“I started when I was six and I was one of the only girls,” Johnson recalled. “My freshman year was the first time I even wrestled another girl. To have our own consistent tournament, that’s exciting. And what’s really exciting is I’ve got one more chance to win ahead of me.”
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