When the CIF Southern Section Division 3 dual meet wrestling playoff bracket was released, Santa Fe coach Anthony Romero knew what the mission was: advance to the finals and get a second shot at top-seeded Sultana.

So he isn’t surprised that No. 3 seed Santa Fe (19-3), after knocking off No. 2 Sonora 41-31 in the semifinals, is getting ready to travel to Hesperia today to take on Sultana at 7 p.m. for the championship.

Sultana (9-1) advanced to the final with a 53-19 win over Los Alamitos in the semifinals.

“They got some hammers on their team for sure,” Romero said of Sultana. “They have three guys ranked top 12 in the state. But we don’t get rattled by traveling and feel like this is our year to win.”

The championship is a rematch from the Rosemead tournament earlier this year, when Sultana beat Santa Fe 48-30 in the final. Santa Fe lost eight matches to its five wins in the head-to-head battle.

“We were missing two guys that day, and another guy got hurt during a match,” Romero recalled. “But we have eight returners who were in the dual finals last year, so they’ve experienced this and we’re ready. This is who we wanted to face and expected to face.”

Santa Fe has a rich history in wrestling. Romero was a wrestler on Santa Fe’s last dual championship team in 2009.

Santa Fe advanced to five straight dual finals from 2005-09, winning three championships. The other dual titles came in 2005 and 2007.

In team wrestling, Santa Fe won its lone CIF-SS title in 1986, but it has been to the team finals seven times.

The program wants to get back to its winning ways.

Santa Fe has come up short in its last three trips to the dual finals, losing in 2011, 2012 and 2024, when it lost to Chino 36-27 in Division 4.

“We were right there last year, one match from winning it all,” Romero said. “It came down to one match where we were expecting our guy to win and he came up short.”

Senior Fernando Toscano, who wrestles at 215 pounds, was the wrester who came up short in last year’s finals and is motivated to lead them past the finish line this time.

Toscano was a Masters qualifier last year and is one of their best bets to win today.

“It wasn’t his fault last year, it’s not one guy,” Romero said. “He has meant a lot to our program and knowing him, he’s going to give it everything he has to help us win.”

Two other key wrestlers for the Chiefs are Ricardo Rodriguez, a 120-pounder and a 2024 Masters qualifier, and Josiah Castillo at 150 pounds, who is a returning CIF-SS placer.

The key is having eight starters back from last year’s dual finals run and the experience that comes with it.

Normally in duals, coaches tend to juggle lineups looking for favorable matches, often sending wrestlers in matches out of their weight classes.

That likely won’t be the case for Santa Fe today.

“Last year we tried to manipulate the matches, but this year we’re going to go out there, be ourselves and live with the results,” Romero said. “We’ve wrestled them, we know them, and we want our guys going out there confident in their weights and having Santa Fe wrestling mentality.”