Chesterton junior Max Quiroz wins 9-7 decision vs. Center Grove senior Dominic Brown to earn state championship at 126 pounds on Saturday night at Gainbridge Coliseum and charms the pro-Max crowd in the process

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

A big contingent of maroon-clad Chesterton fans let themselves be heard with chants of “Let’s Go Max! Let’s Go Max! Let’s Go Max!” Saturday night at the state wrestling meet at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
Bronwsburg fans joined in, and before Trojans junior Max Quiroz had won the state title at 126 pounds with a 9-7 decision over Center Grove senior Dominic Brown, seemingly every spectator not from Center Grove was in his corner.
He’s just that exciting as a wrestler and has that much charisma that his fan base instantly grew when he took his turn at partaking in a tradition for fresh state champions, an interview on the mat with Greg Rakestraw, broadcast on the Gainbridge scoreboard.
Rakestraw asked Max if he had anything to say to the Chesterton faithful who supported him with so much passion and volume. Still breathing hard from the six hard minutes on the mat, Quiroz summoned enough energy to holler into the microphone, “I love you guys!” and his breath already was all the way back as he formed a heart with his hands. The crowd roared. He flashed his Hollywood smile, enlarged by the scoreboard, and it lit up the building. The unplanned party in the stands grew even wilder.
As Chesterton head coach and assistant Brian Bolin planted hugs on him after the victory, Quiroz cracked them up by saying the first thing that came to his mind: “I’ve never even wrestled here before and I won the state championship. That’s crazy.”
Quiroz fell behind in the match, which is not unusual for him. His extraordinary stamina has enabled him to execute several comeback wins on the way to a 49-2 record, 24-0 since dropping from 132 pounds to 126.
But might this be different? After all, this was his first state wrestling tournament and his opponent had defeated him twice the previous year.
“He whupped me at Al Smith,” Quiroz said. “It was a technical fall.”
Quiroz’s father acknowledged he was “nervous, very nervous,” when Brown scored the first takedown.
Then in the second period, Quiroz’s predatory instincts took over and he took down Brown to take a 4-3 lead that became a 5-5 tie, then a 9-5 lead.
“After the first takedown, it was mine,” Quiroz said in his mat interview. “I started to break him.”
Later, Max said: “When I got that first takedown, Dude, I was like, ‘Oh my God this is actually going to happen. I’m seriously going to win this.’ I had no doubt.”
When you know, you know. He knew.
His father, Jaime, said he sensed the match was about to turn right before his son’s first takedown.
“When he got taken down, I was kind of a little worried, and then he escaped right away,” he said. “And then later I just looked at him, how he looked, and I looked at my wife and I said, ‘The tide’s going to turn right here, man.’ Sure enough, he gets that takedown, starts controlling the match.”
Max’s shaky history with Brown until Saturday led to a little uneasiness for Jaime.
“This kid beat him twice last year and I was kind of afraid of that because you know how the mind can work,” he said.
Max, introduced as Maximus for his matches, said he didn’t let that same fear creep into his thoughts.
“I trusted my coaches and I knew I was a different person than I was then,” Quiroz said. “That’s not the same me anymore. I’m at a different level. I just don’t feel like I can lose right now.”
It’s not the same coaching staff either. Trevino, a state champion himself, has no insecurity about letting his coaches coach and filling his staff with bright wrestling minds. Trevino enhanced his staff a year ago with the addition of Nick Chavez. Before this year, Anthony Hawkins left juggernaut Crown Point to come to Chesterton and several wrestlers have raved about how much they have learned from him.
Crown Point, by the way, finished third in the team standings with 86.5 points. Center Grove edged Brownsburg for first, 137 to 133.5, despite Quiroz denying Center Grove first-place points at 126. That’s why Brownsburg was rooting him from the start. The rest of the top 10: 4. Lowell 73.5, 5. Delta 71, 6. New Prairie 68, 7. Avon 61.5, 8. Columbus East 48.5, 9. Indianapolis Cathedral 47.5 , 10. Evansville Mater Dei 40.5.
Quiroz’s title and Lucas Anderson’s eighth place finish at 190 pounds earned Chesterton 15th place with 27.5 points.
A giant photo of Quiroz will go up on the East wall of Chesterton’s wrestling room along with the school’s other state champions: 1981: Jim Popp (31-3); 1982: John DeHart (32-1); 1988: Keith Davison (37-2); 1989: Keith Davison (38-0); 2017: Andrew Davison (42-0); 2018: Lucas Davison (52-0), Eli Pokorney (42-0); 2020: Evan Bates (41-1); 2021: Sergio Lemley (37-1); 2023: Aidan Torres (52-0).
After Chesterton athletic director and IHSAA board member Jeff Hamstra reached up to hang the state championship medal around Max’s neck as he bent down from the highest step of the eight-wide podium, Trevino and Bolin ushered their state champ into a freight elevator and pressed the up button. When the doors opened, a huge group of family members, friends and teammates erupted with one more ovation for the man of the hour.
Several wrestling teammates were there. Torres, now wrestling for Indiana University, was quick to congratulate him. Members of the girls wrestling team, including Ally Williams, were on hand. Diver Ruby Fowler was there. So were several young boys, aspiring wrestlers, who lined up and asked Max for autographs that he was happy to sign.
Quiroz flowed in a way this season that was reminiscent of Torres, state champion with a 52-0 record in 2023.
“That was so good,” Torres said of Quiroz’s championship match. “I mean, it’s great for the program, too. Especially because he’s a junior, so they’ll have him in the room next year and hopefully the guys will buy in, realize, ‘I’m doing the same thing he’s doing. I can do it, too.’”
Max’s older brother Anthony, a state runner-up as a freshman in 2009, has trained his kid brother since he came to high school.
“He’s something special, isn’t he?” Anthony said. “He’s one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met. We started this journey when he actually started taking it seriously because he was kind of off and on from first grade through seventh grade and he actually took two years off,” before middle school.
“Our very first training session, I said, ‘Well, why don’t you get on the treadmill and run the fastest mile you can possibly run. Let’s base where your skill is at. He was a freshman, very first time he was timed in the mile. He ran a mile in five minutes.”
Jaime said his earliest memory of Max wrestling was when he took him to a tournament in Illinois at the age of 5 or 6: “He took to it pretty good right away. He’s always had that amazing work ethic. We’re just proud of him.”
He paused and seemed to want it known that the parental pride that he and his wife share extends well beyond what Max does on the mat.
“He’s always happy, and he’s such a good boy,” the father said of his son.
Always happy. What a nice compliment. What a fortunate trait for a person of any age.
“He’s always happy, always smiling,” his father repeated.
Perhaps never happier than Saturday night, when he became a state wrestling champion, a title he can wear with pride for the rest of his life.