All three Demons - Breed, Sandoval and Whirlow - won their opening matches in the 2008 state tournament.

Breed, making his fourth consecutive appearance at the state championships, opened the 2008 tournament with a close 5-3 decision over junior Casey DeMarrias of Northglenn.

Sandoval, at 160 pounds, also won his opening match; he topped Justin Marts of Bear Creek 5-0.

Breed led 2-0 after a first-period takedown in his match; DeMarrias escaped for a 2-1 score.

DeMarrias tied the match in the second period.

But Breed took the lead for good with an escape early in the third period.

He added another takedown and gave up one point on a stalling call for the final 5-3 decision.

Breed, 24-4, will take on Oliver Yaney of Air Academy in today's quarterfinals. Yaney is 35-4.

Sandoval wrestled a solid and steady duel with Marts, taking a 2-0 lead and expanding on it through the match.

Sandoval, 36-7, will move into today's quarterfinals.

Whirlow used a third-period escape to score his 6-4 victory over Robert Ranney of Boulder on Thursday night.

Whirlow improved to 23-14 on the season.

He'll go up against unbeaten James Breidel of ThunderRidge, 38-0, in today's quarterfinals.

Durango's Ty Penning dueled with Mike Sikorski of Colorado Springs Pine Creek in a thriller of an opening-round match at 112 pounds.

Sikorski held on to score a dramatic 4-3 victory in the battle of juniors.

Penning, 29-11, drops to the consolation bracket with the loss.

Daniel Toledo, Durango's 125-pounder, lost a similar thriller in his first-round match. Tyler Nelson, a sennior from Thunder Ridge, scored the first takedown of the match and used it to hang onto a 3-1 decision.

Nelson improved to 34-5. Toledo falls to 27-6 with consolation matches today.

Senior Ronnie Goodman, 145 pounds, lost a high-scoring, one-point match to junior Daniel Kelly of Ponderosa on Thursday.

Goodman fell behind 7-1 before a big rally in the second and third periods.

He used a reversal, a takedown and back points in the third period to tie the match 11-11 before Kelly escaped for the 12-11 win.

In team scoring, Ponderosa started strong Thursday in its quest for a sixth consecutive state wrestling championship at the 73rd annual Class 5A tournament.

The Mustangs, led by coach Tim Ottmann, who will cap his 25-year career by retiring at the end of the season, advanced nine of their 10 wrestlers to the quarterfinal round.

The perennial 5A wrestling powerhouse finished the preliminaries with 27 points.

Loveland was in second place with 20 points, while Centaurus and Legacy were tied with 17. Rocky Mountain rounded out the top five with 15½ points.

Wrestling resumes today.

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