CYPRESS — Facing an 0-2 hole early in her championship bout, Donna High’s Precious Hernandez needed to put points on the board quickly.
She flipped Corpus Christi Ray’s Mia Epps-Hicks on her back on the perimeter of the mat to tie it up seconds before a key stoppage.
Then she flipped the switch.
Hernandez shifted into another gear and in just 17 short seconds, she tossed Epps-Hicks away from the center of the mat, took her to the ground and locked up her arms and legs for an epic pin and victory to bring home the gold and the girls 5A heavyweight state championship at the University Interscholastic League’s 2020 State Wrestling Championships on Saturday at the Berry Center.
“It feels crazy. If you had told me that I was going to win the state championship a week ago, I would’ve never believed it,” Hernandez said. “It’s crazy, but everything happens for a reason and I’m a strong believer. Now I can take this back to my community, put them on the map and hopefully give kids like us more opportunities to get out there.”
It was the culmination of a long four-year journey for the Donna High senior. Hernandez, who was first introduced to the sport as freshman, learned quickly and proved to be an immediate asset to the Bravettes’ program.
“When I first saw Precious her freshman year, she was stretching in P.E. class,” Donna High head coach Raul Cardenas said. “I invited her to wrestling after school that day and she just came in as a freshman and helped our team win the district title in the last match. She was young, she was wrestling up a weight class and it was a shock to everybody.”
Hernandez’s wrestling career took off after that. She secured an invite to the 2019 UIL State Wrestling Championships as a junior and followed that up with a regional championship and a 25-1 senior season.
“She came in determined. Last year she didn’t make the podium, so we worked hard,” Cardenas said. “She dominated the tournament and we dominated all year. The one loss was an emotional one with an injury to someone else on the team, but she came in focused. She knew what she had to do, and she just wanted to make sure she got it done.”
Hernandez was nothing short of dominant during her perfect 4-0 run through the state tournament. She pinned three out of four opponents — including Epps-Hicks in the championship bout — in less than 140 seconds, the seventh most for a heavyweight in the history of the state tournament.
Hernandez made history by becoming the first Rio Grande Valley girl wrestler to compete for and win a heavyweight state championship match. She’s the first female wrestler from the RGV to win a state championship since 2013, the first Valley wrestler overall to take home the top prize since 2016 and the fourth ever Valley wrestler to win a state title.
After the dust settled, Hernandez dedicated her performance to her team, her school and her community, including an influential, late Donna High coach. She hopes that her performance inspires other girls from Donna and across the Rio Grande Valley to follow in her footsteps.
“Our powerlifting coach just suddenly passed away and we needed some good news to bring us back from that,” she said. “We were here competing, and they were having his funeral. We couldn’t be there, but we’re here and I know I’m making him proud.”
“I’m speechless,” Donna High girls wrestling coach Amanda Valdez said. “I’m from Donna, too, and I told her before this match, ‘Precious, you and I, being from Donna, are not supposed to be here at the state tournament. But you know what? You’re going to prove everybody wrong and show that kids from the Valley can be champions.’ She gave it all she had, she left it all on the mat and she got that medal.”
At the 6A level, PSJA High’s Nayeli Hernandez (31-5) split her first two matches of the day to line up across from El Paso Montwood’s Karla Garcia (29-13). Hernandez dominated Garcia and racked up a huge point lead before taking her to the ground and securing a pin 2:01 into the match, earning her a fifth-place finish in the girls 110-pound division.
Hernandez was making her second straight appearance at the state championships and improved upon her 2019 finish, when she took sixth place.
Edinburg High senior Emmanuel Duron (45-9) also took home a fifth-place finish in the 220-pound division with a pair of savage takedowns. He set the tone for the day in his first match, catching Houston Westside’s Daelon Clark (38-13) by the leg and tossing him to the mat to win via pin 2:36 into the bout.
“I just picked his legs up and it just came out of nowhere,” Duron said. “I’ve just been practicing with Coach with fixed times and just putting all my effort into wrestling. I was just doing what I had to do.”
Duron narrowly lost his consolation semifinal match on a 12-9 decision, but rebounded in a big way in his fifth-place match. After going back and forth with Klein Cain’s Johrdan Howard (39-10), Duron dropped him to the floor with a thunderous clap and pinned him for the win just 80 seconds in.
“I realized that it’s not that easy when you’re here,” he said. “Coming from the very bottom, this is my first year here. I’m just trying to make it.”
Sharyland Pioneer, which brought a Valley-best seven wrestlers into the state championships, saw two come up just short in fifth place bouts: Angel Avila and Emily Treviño.
Avila (44-9) took home sixth place after a rocky Day 2 to follow up his stellar Day 1 performance. After going 2-0 Friday, he lost his final three bouts of the tournament.
Treviño (36-9) also snagged a sixth-place finish but had to dig and fight just to make it there. She came out on top in the single-most competitive match of the tournament when she battled through a bloody nose and took out Fort Worth Chisholm Trail’s Tabitha Garner (38-12) for a 2-0 sudden-death victory in overtime.
“It’s very intimidating seeing all these people, these competitive strong people. But I’m very grateful for this and it’s very exciting to be here,” Treviño said. “I’ve done this so long and I’ve never made it this far. This is the farthest I’ve made it. I’m so happy. She was good and super aggressive, and I just had to leave it all out there.”
Four of the nine Valley wrestlers — La Joya Palmview’s Brooklyn Garza, McAllen Memorial’s Serenity De La Garza, McAllen Rowe’s Petey Lozano and Sharyland Pioneer’s Ethan Garza— to advance to Day 2 of the competition fell during their first matches of the day.