McCullar repeats, Pritchard three-peats as state champions

Fernley’s Nathan Pritchard won his third consecutive state title and Riley McCullar claimed his second to lead the Vaqueros to a second-place finish as a team at last weekend’s 3A state championships in Winnemucca.

In all, six of the nine Fernley boys and one of the three girls who qualified for the tournament won medals.

“The program wrestled really well and left it all on the mat,” coach Jake McCullar said. “I couldn't be more proud of them.”

Among the boys, Pritchard won his third consecutive state championship, beating Otis Ruth of Boulder City in the 144-pound championship match by a 15-0 decision. McCullar won his second consecutive title by beating Hagen Robinson of Elko 7-4 in the 175-pound championship match.

Pritchard said he was confident going into the state tournament because he had beaten most of the same opponents multiple times before.

“It was just more stressful, just getting the job done, not getting caught or anything like that,” he said. “I never really had a tough match.”

McCullar had lost to Robinson in the regional tournament the previous weekend.

“It was a super big upset. I was super bummed,” McCullar said of that regional loss to Robinson. “But I go to Gold Rush in Reno and I went every day and I fixed what I did wrong and I was able to do the job winning the final. I was super excited to get it done.”

Archie Mendez placed second at 106 pounds, Isaid Solis took second at 150 pounds and Jayse Jones came in second at 157 pounds, while Calvin Bacon was third in the 285-pound class.

As a team, Fernley scored 112 points to place second behind Lowry, which won the team championship with 154 points. Elko was third with 103 points.

Bronwynn Garrett led the girls by finishing in third place in the 100-pound class and became the third girl in program history to reach 50 wins for her career.

All of the girls teams competed in one division, with Fernley’s total of 16.5 points placing 19th out of 45 teams that had a wrestler qualify for the meet.

“I just want to thank everyone for all the continued support,” Jake McCullar said.