Windsor’s Dominick Serrano wins Big 12 Conference wrestling championship for Northern Colorado ...Saudi Arabia

Dominick Serrano, a dominating four-time high school state champion wrestler at Windsor, added college conference champ to his resume on Sunday.

The Northern Colorado junior won his first Big 12 Conference Championship with an 11-4 victory over Kyle Burwick of North Dakota State at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Serrano, the second seed, improved to 23-2 this season with a dominating win over the fifth-seeded Burwick, clinching a spot in the NCAA Championships later this month as a conference champion.

“Very aggressive,” UNC coach Troy Nickerson said in a text message of Serrano’s performance. “He looked excellent.”

The tournament champion at each weight class qualifies for the 330-wrestler NCAA Championships scheduled for March 20-22 in Philadelphia.

UNC 157-pounder Vinny Zerban later in the night also booked a spot at the NCAAs as a first-time conference champion. The sixth-seeded Zerban scored a 7-4 over No. 4 Cobe Siebrecht of South Dakota State.

Zerban (18-4) scored five first-period points in the bout. He was the top seed for the conference championships at 157 a year ago, but lost in the quarterfinals and finished seventh.

Zerban is a redshirt junior from Illinois, where he was a state champion. He was also a state high school champion in Missouri, according to his bio on the UNC wrestling team web pages.

Serrano, 22, finished third as the third seed at the Big 12s a year ago — his first competing with the Bears after transferring from Nebraska in 2023.

Serrano, like Greeley’s Andrew Alirez, joined the Bears after winning four state titles in high school. Alirez was a four-time champion from 2016-19 at Greeley Central. He won the 141-pound Big 12 Conference and NCAA titles in 2023.

Alirez (16-1) lost Saturday in the 141-pound semifinals in Tulsa. He won two consolation matches Sunday to finish third.

Serrano was undefeated in 168 high school matches at Windsor while winning state titles from 2017-2020. He won 122 matches by fall, or pin. A highly recruited wrestler coming out of Windsor, Serrano opted to go to Nebraska over UNC.

Serrano qualified for the 2024 national tournament in Kansas City, Missouri, along with teammates Stevo Poulin and Zerban. Serrano was seeded ninth at 133 for NCAAs last year, but he lost his first two matches and didn’t advance.

Poulin finished fifth in the conference at 125. He started the championships as the second seed, but was pinned by No. 3 Jett Strickenberger of West Virginia in the semifinals on Saturday.

Poulin lost his first consolation match with a place in the third-place match on the line to top-seeded Richard Figueroa of Arizona State. Figueroa pinned Poulin at the 3:47 mark. Poulin then beat North Dakota State’s Tristan Daugherty on a 9-1 major decision for the fifth-place finish.

Each Division I conference is designated a set number of automatic qualifying spots for the national tournament, according to the NCAA. The Big 12 Conference received 61 pre-allocations across all 10 weight classes. Only the Big Ten Conference has more at 87.

The pre-allocations were awarded based on regular season performance through Feb. 23.

Wrestlers who don’t earn automatic qualifying spots through a conference tournament may get into NCAAs by way of an at-large bid. The at-large qualifiers will be announced Tuesday. Brackets and seedings will be announced at 7 p.m. Wednesday at NCAA.com.

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