PT Garcia is a Colorado wrestling icon.

And to top off one of the greatest prep careers in our state’s history the Bear Creek senior was honored as the wrestler of the year by the National Wrestling Hall of Fame Colorado chapter.

Garcia, along with a handful of others, was honored at the 16th Annual Hall of Fame Honors Banquet last Saturday at the Marriott Hotel in Colorado Springs.

A three-time Colorado state wrestling champion, Garcia defeated Greeley West’s Adrian DeLaCruz 10-7 on Feb. 22 to win a 132-pound state title. He also won a state championship at 132 as a junior and 120 as a sophomore.

Also honored was Valley head coach Mike Caciari who was tabbed as high school coach of the year after leading his Vikings to a 2013 state title.

Bill Bragg, David De Giacomo, Mickey DeRock, Harlan Hankins, Greg Maestas, Art Martinez and Harvey Starbuck were also honored for their lifetime service to wrestling.

And others who were honored Saturday night included: College Coach of the Year Chuck Pipher, Colorado Mesa University College Wrestler of the Year Josh Martinez, Air Force Academy, Youth Coach of the Year Ben Menzor, Youth Wrestler of the Year Josiah Rider, Wrestling Media Award Tim Yount, Wrestling Officials of the Year Ryun Mendoza and LD Powell, Dave De Giacomo Award Steve Valdez and the Special Merit Award Kevin Bracken.

In other wrestling news: CHSAA’s Legislative Council announced Thursday wrestling will use its own enrollment number cutoffs to determine classes.

According to CHSAANow.com, wrestling will now join football as the only sports to have separate enrollment cutoffs, where as every other sport uses figures primarily determined by the number of basketball schools in each classification.

The affected are classes 4A, 3A and 2A but there were no changes in 5A.

The problem stemmed from wrestling looking at a standout disparity of teams in each classification, with 4A set to have 71 teams while 3A would’ve had 38. Now with the change 4A and 3A will have 53 teams each.