DENVER >> With blood dripping out of the side of nose, Mead junior Dalton Berg couldn’t hide the smile on his face after his Class 4A state championship match at Ball Arena on Saturday night.

The last of a quartet of Mavericks in the finals that night, Berg epitomized the drama that each match embodied. He and Vista Ridge’s Solomon Arnds-Volcin couldn’t get their 175-pound job done in six minutes.

Oh no, they had to really make their fans and coaches sweat.

In the first overtime period, Berg needed only a takedown to secure the 6-4 sudden victory. He was the second Maverick to go for gold Saturday, in front of thousands of fans in the stands. For him, hindsight was 20/20.

His view atop the podium was even sweeter.

“That kid beat me earlier in the year in a close match like that,” Berg said. “To come back and to just really win it, stick it to him, show him that I’m best, I can handle these top-level dogs, it just felt amazing. Nothing feels better than a revenge win in the finals.”

And, though Berg visibly portrayed his toughness with the red stain on his cheek, his teammate, junior Jake Glade, won in the grit department. In less than a year, Glade underwent the knife not once, but twice to fix a busted knee and a back injury.

On Wednesday, his birthday, he’ll do it again to get his other knee fixed. Those knee tears meant nothing — and everything — when he pinned Pueblo County’s Tony Macaluso with 27 seconds to spare in his 144-pound title match.

After all, wrestlers are a different breed.

“This whole week has been amazing. Complete domination. I give it to the knee. It drives me,” Glade said. “It’s just happiness and I’m just grateful for everyone that’s gotten me here. My mom (Bonnie), out of all, found a way to get me to every practice or to get me to the school I’m at and the coach I have.”

Years before he earned his gold, he made the Colorado high school state championships his preferred birthday destination, to watch the older grapplers he hoped to one day emulate. His coach, Leister Bowling III, was there with him from a young age.

His own son, sophomore Leister IV, finished runner-up in an incredibly tough, 3-2 loss to Falcon’s Javani Majoor at 157s. Leister III has taken pride in watching his son carry on his legacy 22 years after he wrapped up a high school career at Lyons with three state crowns.

“It’s awesome, super proud,” the elder Leister said. “(My son) puts in a lot of work and loves the sport. It’s cool to see him get to do it with two kids that I’ve coached since they were 5 years old. The three of them have been doing this for a long time. And this is far from the toughest tournament they’ve ever wrestled in.”

Mead, as a whole, put on quite the show in the finals, with four kids vying for state championship glory.

In the girls’ division, Ashley Booth — who attends Lyons but competes for the St. Vrain-area Mavericks team — ended her sophomore run with a runner-up finish to Chatfield’s Ryen Hickey, who won all but one match this season.

Hickey pinned her midway through the second period. Booth is already raring to return the favor.

“I want to have a rematch with her right now, but I can’t do that until next season, can I?” Booth said. “This is the most incredible feeling because it’s like, I get to do something that not a lot of people get to do. And then I get to have the most amazing people from both schools here to support me.”

Once everything was said and done for Booth, she was all smiles with her fellow schoolmate, LHS junior Jaden Gardner, who a day earlier completed his own revenge tour against Meeker’s Connor Blunt. In his Class 2A, 157-pound finals match, he couldn’t get the better of Buena Vista’s David Arellano.

The two ended the first period with a 4-2 score and carried that figure all the way through the next four minutes. Win or lose, Gardner’s never made it this far at state.

“It’s not making me so down that I have one more year. That kind of relieves the stress a little bit,” Gardner said. “I’ve definitely improved, but I still got work to do.”

Berg, Glade, Bowling IV, Booth and Gardner will still have unfinished business when they make their way back to Ball Arena for another state tournament in 2024. If Saturday night is any indication of what these St. Vrain kids are capable of on the mats, the rest of 4A and 2A should be worried.

“Talk about a culture,” Mead head coach Ty Tatham said. “It’s a culture of hard work. Kids come to practice and help each other out. It doesn’t matter what level they are. We’ve got a lot of kids that just work hard and that becomes the expectation.”