ROCKY FORD — Cayson Van Dyk stood in the shadows, dripping sweat, just off the mat where the spotlight was focused in the Melon Dome. Still catching his breath from his match, the third-generation Rocky Ford wrestler pointed to the packed bleachers on both sides of a gymnasium simmering with energy during the Meloneers’ dual.
These people and this place, Van Dyk explained, is why wrestling is the heartbeat of the town located in the Arkansas Valley in southeast Colorado.
“This is a tough community, and everybody needs something to fall on — it seems like our thing is wrestling,” Van Dyk said. “Everybody leans in and contributes to keep this program going and keep it a family. Because that’s what Rocky Ford wrestling is — it’s a family that brings everybody together, and we take a lot of pride in being good at what we do.”
Rocky Ford is known as the state’s sweet melon capital, but its true identity is wrestling. And Van Dyk, a 190-pound freshman, understands that better than most.
Van Dyk’s great-great-grandmother graduated from the school in 1914, his grandfather wrestled at state for the Meloneers in the late 1960s, and his dad and uncle were heavyweight state champions in the 1990s. Now, Van Dyk epitomizes the bond between the sport and a community where on-the-mat greatness has been the standard for a half-century.
Rocky Ford is an agricultural/manufacturing town of around 3,900 where duals at the Melon Dome are the town’s top attraction. The school has won 12 team wrestling titles, tied for second-most all-time, and has had 71 individual champions. And their angry melon singlets are an iconic staple of the annual CHSAA state tournament, which starts Thursday at Ball Arena.
How a small town became synonymous with high school wrestling is a long tale interwoven with a few godfathers, plus a lot of sweat and community buy-in.
“This is what Rocky Ford is known for — sweet melons and good, quality wrestling,” Rocky Ford athletic director Sean McNames said. “But this definitely wasn’t something that happened (overnight).”
Roots of a wrestling dynasty
Rocky Ford was named by frontiersman Kit Carson, who crossed the Arkansas River at a shallow spot overrun with shale and boulders, and proceeded to call it Rocky Ford Crossing Place. The name stuck.
While the Rocky Ford School District goes all the way back to 1893, the wrestling program wasn’t founded until 1949, 13 years after the first CHSAA state tournament. And the Meloneers didn’t gain traction as an elite program until the 1970s, under the direction of Charles White. White coached Rocky Ford from 1969-89, leading the school to nine Class 2A titles in that span. He built the program by developing a youth system and traveling out of state with his teams well before that was the norm in competitive wrestling.
“He’d take the kids to California in the summer, and he’d find teams to wrestle along the way,” recalled Ron Aschermann, a lifelong Rocky Ford resident whose sons wrestled in the program under White. “They would stop in Arizona, sleep in the gym, wrestle those teams. On the way home, they’d find another school on the way back to stay at night, and they’d do the same thing.
“He had those kids wrestling all the time, and the day the high school season was over, White was down in the elementary school, coaching those kids. He’d go down there and tell every kid who comes out on the mat, ‘You’re going to be a state champ!’ And they believed it.”
After White set the wheels in motion for Rocky Ford’s transformation into a wrestling powerhouse, Mike Jurney kept the legend alive. Both men had guidance from Allen Cutsforth along the way. Cutsforth, a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, was a longtime assistant to both White and Jurney. The Rocky Ford wrestling progenitor died last September. His funeral was a town event at the Melon Dome.
“When I got here, I was only 24, but I was dedicated to doing whatever it took to win and to developing young wrestlers, and we worked hard,” Jurney said. “In season, out of season, during the summer. It was similar to what Charlie did — we tried to outwork everybody to win.”
In his 31 years at Rocky Ford, Jurney has won two state titles (2015 and ’17), finished runner-up four times and had a state placer every season but one.
But initially, he was viewed as an outsider who lacked experience. Jurney had graduated from Adams State a few years earlier and spent two seasons as the head coach at Antonito High School before arriving in Rocky Ford to a cold reception in 1992. The fact that the coach immediately after White (Mike Hampton) lasted only three years added to the scrutiny.
“When we first came, there were probably about five families who welcomed us,” Jurney’s wife, Teri Jurney, recalled. “Other than that, we were outcasts. He was young, and I don’t think a lot of people thought he knew what he was doing.”
It didn’t take long for Jurney to make an impact, however. He’s now a local icon, and many believe “he can turn any kid into a state champion,” former Meloneer wrestler TJ Oliver explained.
“When I came into the wrestling program, I was a kid who got picked on, and I never thought I could be a wrestler,” said Oliver, now 42. “By the time I was done wrestling I had the guts to join the Marine Corps. I never thought I could be a wrestler, let alone dream of being a Marine. But he gave that to me.
“He and that program gave me that confidence that I could do anything, fight through anything, be anything. It’s the same thing for a lot of kids in this town.”
Community behind the dynasty
Rocky Ford would probably be just another rural wrestling program if not for the network of loyal assistant coaches Jurney has cultivated over the past three decades.
Dave Venem, Jurney’s teammate at Adams State, has been with him since the start. Ray Rodriguez, Rocky Ford’s youth director since 2000, is another key influencer in a program that thrives on homegrown talent.
“For the most part, we know our kids from when they’re in elementary school,” Jurney said. “To me, that’s really satisfying. We had kids who won a state title who weren’t very good as a little kid or in junior high, and that’s a beautiful thing.”
The Meloneers, like other rural programs, face significant socioeconomic hurdles when trying to maintain their place amid the top of the heap. Jurney’s annual budget for the wrestling program from the school district is $200, and the Meloneers are allocated money to buy new uniforms once every four years.
Factor in a poverty rate of 37.9% per the 2020 census, the 73% of the school eligible for free/reduced lunch and the fact that Rocky Ford students don’t have to pay to wrestle, and the result is a program that must pay for its own equipment, meals, tournament fees and travel.
It takes money from local sponsors — many of whom are alumni — to fund the program through the Rocky Ford Wrestling Foundation spearheaded by Teri Jurney. One of the program’s biggest boosters is Neil Van Dyk, Cayson’s grandfather and the former foundation president.
“Our budget doesn’t cover a lot, obviously,” Jurney said. “So it’s up to the community to help us make up the rest.”
Most recently, the foundation helped build Rocky Ford’s wrestling facility — a separate structure from the school that sits behind the Melon Dome. The building opened in 2012 and gave the Meloneers a major upgrade over their old practice set-up at the elementary school. Before breaking ground, the foundation had to raise $100,000 to get the project going.
Over the past decade, the 2,800-square foot training room has served as a reminder of the past — the walls adorned with pictures of all of the school’s state champions, numerous mentions of Cutsforth and a mural of a Meloneer dominating a match.
There are drill stations everywhere, a cold tub, motivational slogans taped to the walls and exercise bikes. There are nine mini circles to drill on, plus a main circle. If you want to be a Meloneer wrestler, it’s where you live from middle school onwards.
“When you step into that room, (Jurney) is going to treat you like his own, and he’s going to want you to accomplish more than the next guy,” said alum and assistant coach Jacob Rodriguez, a three-time state champion. “It’s constant pressure, constant motivation. But the community also knows what they are getting (in the young men) coming out of that room.”
Future of Rocky Ford’s pastime
Jurney’s had chances to leave Rocky Ford, but he can’t ever see himself selling the family house on Main Street. Or abandoning the network of wrestlers and community members he’s built around town.
“Mike could go anywhere to coach,” Oliver said. “But he loves Rocky Ford. Here, he’s really put together a family that sticks together throughout the years, throughout the decades. That really resonates with people here, and makes new families want to join the program.”
Despite recently retiring from teaching, Jurney has no plans to stop coaching. Now, his daytime gig is running The Rock House Bar & Grill with Teri. It serves as a Meloneer bookend on one side of town, while the Van Dyk Insurance building is the other, just a half-mile southeast on Elm Avenue.
The Rock House is the official hangout spot for Meloneer faithful. Late at night after wrestling duals, football games, volleyball matches and the like, the restaurant is officially closed, but not if you’re a Rocky Ford fan. The Jurneys open the doors to the Meloneer community; the pizzas come out piping hot and the beer flows on cue.
On Feb. 2, after Rocky Ford’s final home dual of the season, the Rock House was packed with coaches, administrators, state champions and fans, who wound down the night with food and drink as the Meloneers’ win over Widefield replayed on the bar’s big screen.
“It’s the place to be after a dual,” assistant coach Dave Venem said. “And this (sort of community ritual) is why guys want to stay involved with the program when they grow up.”
Even with Jurney’s roots staked deep into the fertile Rocky Ford soil, he and his staff will need to hustle extra hard to keep the Meloneers elite in Class 2A.
Rocky Ford’s population has shrunk about 10% since the turn of the century, and will likely continue to slowly decrease. That means lower numbers in each graduating class — the Meloneers currently have 34 students in the Class of 2024, and 39 in the Class of 2026 — and fewer wrestlers for Rocky Ford.
“Enrollment is down, population is down,” Jurney said. “I don’t have anything up my sleeve other than just getting more young kids into wrestling. We’re going to put our head down, work hard and do it, just like we did at the beginning.”
With that tradition at stake and the future uncertain, Jurney and the 10 Rocky Ford qualifiers at Ball Arena are intent on making as much noise as they can this weekend, despite being a dark horse in the title race to heavily favored Wray and Meeker. And Cayson Van Dyk, making his state debut, is shouldering that responsibility as much as any Meloneer.
“(Jurney) is hard on us, but we’d do anything for him, and we know he’d do anything for us, or anybody else who has been raised around this team,” he said. “That’s what comes with wrestling for this program, with the history of it, like my family has. Everybody around here knows, ‘Oh he’s a Van Dyk wrestler,’ but that also comes with, ‘Oh, he’s going to be something.’ It’s a tradition that’s on me to keep going for the people around me in this town; to do it for Rocky Ford.”
