The queen knew. Janessa George entered Ball Arena with a tiara in her bag and a trick up her sleeve.

“Just (how) her arm (kept) staying up,” was how Chatfield’s George explained the upset of the 2023 Colorado state wrestling tournament Saturday night. “Over this whole season, I’ve been doing cow catchers, just catching the arm and throwing them over. And once I saw the opportunity to take it like that …”

She pounced. Loveland’s Morgan Johnson, 21-0, a prohibitive favorite, three-time-state-champ, shot for George’s legs. The Chatfield senior grabbed the taller Johnson by the right shoulder and flipped her completely.

The crowd gasped. Some 98 seconds into the match, it was over.

With a potential four-time champ in Johnson rocking Mat 1 for the girls’ 110-pound championship, Ball Arena had fixed its eyes to the center of the floor, expecting sweet investiture.

Only it was George, 42-1, who walked away with the crown.

Well, technically, it was a tiara.

“It was from the Douglas County Tiara Challenge Tournament,” Sandra George, Janessa’s mother and Chatfield’s girls wrestling coach, explained to me later. “She was like, ‘If I win, I want to wear my crown.’ She wanted to wear her crown.’”

Janessa went from Captain America to Miss America in a matter of seconds, donning the tiara and waving to a startled crowd as she left the floor with the shocker of the night.

The queen knew.

Even if nobody else did.

“Did you have the tiara in your bag at any other match this weekend?” I wondered.

A happy head shake.

“Oh, no,” Janessa explained. “This one felt like a big moment. So I felt like it would be a perfect opportunity.”

As a stunned Johnson disappeared into the deepest, darkest bowels of Ball Arena, George leapt into one congratulatory hug after another.

“You brought the heat!” somebody shouted.

Another leap.

Another hug.

“You should’ve seen the look on her face!” someone else bellowed as they clutched Janessa tight. “She was like, ‘What the (expletive) is happening right now?’”

So were the rest of us, to be frank. Johnson hadn’t just dominated opponents heading into Saturday night. She’d obliterated them.

In her 11 state tournament matches prior to the 110-pound championship, seven ended in victorious pins. Three of those falls came before the match was even a minute old. Two more of those wins were by 15 points or more.

At the 2022 tourney, the Loveland star’s first three opponents were eliminated within 95 seconds. This weekend, her first two foes got pinned at 54 and 36 seconds, respectively.

It was expected to be more of the same Saturday night, as Johnson rocked and stepped in time to the tunes coming from her headphones, her right wrist taped.

That is, until George, all tiara and toughness, went to work.

“Last time I’d wrestled her was my junior year,” Janessa recalled later, “and she pinned me then. But I wasn’t 100%. Nerves took over.”

This time, it was Johnson who looked nervous. So did her coach, Loveland’s Troy Lussenhop, shouting from the corner at the unfathomable.

“Elbow!”

“Two hands!”

“Two HANNNNDS!”

“Get your hips under you!”

“Left hand inside!”

Too late.

“I think there (were) a lot of nerves beforehand,” Janessa offered. “But once I stepped on the mound, the nerves went away. It was my match.

“I was planning to go three periods, put up a fight. But I was glad that I found a weak point.”

The arm.

The queen knew.

Johnson walked away with a 1,000-yard stare. George, who’s hoping to wrestle at Division II Gannon (Pa.) University or Division III North Central outside Chicago, walked away with a crown.

“There was a lot of pressure,” Janessa said. “I think most of the pressure was on her for being (the favorite), or in general. I just wanted to come in and (spring) a big upset.”

What the expletive is happening right now?

Not just a party.

A coronation.

“Oh, it’ll be,” Janessa laughed, “a late night.”

Long live the queen.