Kolton Claflin is a junior wrestler at River Falls High School in Wisconsin. He has Down syndrome.

At a recent meet, at the junior varsity level, he faced Mounds View’s Christian Uy in his first match.

“Kolton’s wrestled since seventh grade,” said his mother, Sheryl Tasker. “Normally, we go to a tournament and he’ll get to wrestle. Sometimes, the kids will be nice and let him stay on the mat for a bit. Most of the time, he’s on the mat for 10 seconds and gets pinned. He’s like any other boy. He gets upset.

“The first match is always a big deal, because if you win, you’re in the winners bracket.”

The match began, and Tasker noticed that Uy was allowing her son to compete.

“He let him wrestle for almost the whole match ... and then he actually let Kolton pin him,” Tasker said. “I thought my son had won the Olympic gold medal. I mean, he was high-fiving the other team, high-fiving anybody that would high-five him. I thought, ‘That was a super nice kid.’ I’m thinking that his parents went the extra mile to teach that kid that winning isn’t everything.”

In his next match, against a wrestler from a different school, Claflin was pinned quickly. “So Kolton’s mad, and he doesn’t really have a filter, so he’s mad and laying on the mat,” Tasker said. “His emotions are out all of the time. They call him the Hype Man because he’s always pumping everybody up.”

The third match would determine third place. Tasker noticed that her son’s opponent was letting him compete. She noticed that the opposing coach, Mounds View’s Dan Engebretson, was telling his wrestler to push Claflin. Tasker wondered whether Engebretson was urging his wrestler to win.

“I thought they’d let Kolton get to the end and then pin him, so their wrestler would get third place,” Tasker said. “Then he let Kolton pin him.

“Kolton was so happy. He went around high-fiving everybody again, and when we got in the car, he said, `Mom, that’s the best day of my life.’

“In a world where everything is so messed up, my son got to feel like everybody else feels when they win.”

Tasker realized that both of the wrestlers who allowed her son to win — Uy and Julian Sherman — were from Mounds View.

When she returned home, she wrote an email to Mounds View athletic director Jim Galvin and the wrestling staff, saying: “Thank you for not embarrassing my son. In a world where different doesn’t fit in well, your students were exactly what our world needs, kind, compassionate people who embraced different.”

Wrestling is a brutal sport, and the Mustangs are used to competing for high stakes. They finished second as a team at the state meet in 2024, and Engebretson’s former assistants, Marty Morgan and Jeff Swenson, are wrestling royalty.

Swenson is the coach who built Augsburg wrestling into a national power. He recently retired as Auggies athletic director. Morgan was the first Gophers wrestler to go undefeated while winning a national championship.

Engebretson describes himself as a hard coach, but the atmosphere before practice Friday was relaxed and jovial.

“We all want to win,“ Mounds View senior captain Owen LaRose said. ”Here, we also learn what’s the right thing to do.”

Said senior captain Will Schneider: “I think this shows the character Mounds View wrestling brings. We hold ourselves to a higher standard. Dan always tells us that you want to win, but it’s not just about winning. It’s about sportsmanship, too.”

Uy and Sherman, both sophomores, say they weren’t instructed to lose to Claflin.

“I just felt like it would be a nice little deal,” Uy said. “I felt, during the match, that it’s just a match and I’ll have more. This kid, I believed that he should win. It would make him really happy.”

Said Sherman: “It just proves how amazing our coaches are and what Mounds View wrestling is all about.”

Where did sophomore wrestlers get the idea that losing is sometimes acceptable?

“I think Julian had seen us do it in the past,” Engebretson said. “He came up to me to talk about it, and then we got busy and I told him we’d talk later. Turns out we didn’t talk about it later, and he just went ahead and did it.

“I was pretty proud of those two. I thought that was fantastic.”