If John Faczak said no, Bennett wrestling might have gone extinct.
Twenty-five years ago, Faczak had just finished his college career at the University of Wyoming when he got a call from the Bennett principal, who asked if Faczak would return to coach at the school where he won a state title in 1997.
The program was then one of the worst in Class 3A. It had churned through four coaches in as many seasons, and had only five, untalented kids on the roster. Faczak wanted to coach high school wrestling at a bigger school. But when the principal told him the program was likely to be dropped by the district if he didn’t take the job, Faczak relented.
“I told the principal, ‘Why would you say that to me?’” Faczak recalled with a laugh. “He goes, ‘You know exactly why I’m saying that.’ So I told him, ‘Don’t cut anything, I’ll be there.’ I was 21, a pretty arrogant Division I wrestler, and I thought in a couple years I could fix it and move on.
“Well, here I am a quarter-century later, and I wouldn’t change a thing. And I couldn’t imagine being a coach for any other team besides my own Bennett Tigers. (Our program’s stability) isn’t magic. It’s a matter of time and effort, and I have some really dedicated alumni who’ve come back to help me coach at all levels.”
All in the family
This season, Bennett wrestling’s grassroots, family feel is once again on display for a program sustained by its youth wrestling program, the Bennett Wrestling Club.
Of the 11 wrestlers on the boys team, five are from the Jordan family: sophomore Mormon Jordan (144 pounds), junior Kenneth Jordan (165) and senior Ethan Jordan (150) all qualified for this weekend’s state tournament at Ball Arena, while two more Jordans (freshman Jacob Jordan and senior Daniel Jordan) are also on the team.
Ethan, Kenneth and Jacob are brothers, as are Mormon and Daniel. The former are Kimball Jordan’s sons, and the latter duo belongs to John Jordan. The Jordan family has deep Bennett roots going back to Faczak’s days as a high school wrestler.
The Jordans, who apparently did not receive the message about the world’s plummeting birth rates, come from enormous families. Kimball and John are part of a 10-sibling family, and now Kimball has 14 kids and John has nine.
“I’ve known the Jordans in Bennett wrestling since I got (in the district) in 1987, and John Jordan and (his brother) James Jordan were upperclassmen when I was a freshman,” Faczak said. “They took me under their wing and treated me like a little brother.”
The Tigers’ family element also extends to the program’s most accomplished wrestler.
The quest for four state titles
While Ethan is a title contender — he advanced to Friday’s semifinals with a couple pins on Thursday — Faczak’s daughter, Emma Faczak, is a sophomore seeking her second state championship.
Emma Faczak won the title at Class 4A 105 pounds in 2025 and is the top-seeded wrestler at that same weight in this year’s tournament. She breezed through her first two matches. Her coach and stepmom is Brittaney Hudson, a 2011 graduate who wrestled at Bennett and is one of the few girls to ever make the boys state tournament.
The sophomore, who is talented enough to one day join the exclusive club of four-time CHSAA state champions, has seen what her dad has built with the Bennett program. One day, she wants to be a part of continuing that success.
The Tigers are a perennial top-10 team on the boys’ side despite being a smaller Class 3A school and funding challenges. Bennett’s enrollment is 435 this year, according to Colorado Department of Education data, in a classification where schools can have upwards of 898 kids. And socioeconomically, the nonprofit Bennett Wrestling Club has been key in providing youth and high school wrestlers with gear and opportunities to compete in a district where 50.4% of kids qualify for free or reduced lunch.
“This town and this family means so much to me,” Emma Faczak said. “Eventually, I want to do what my dad did, where I can come back, raise his kids in a small town where everybody knows everybody, and make an impact on the program that made such an impact on me.”
Hard work and accountability
Hudson added that the Tigers’ success is rooted in the belief that “if you’re willing to do what it takes, we’ll take anybody.”
“We’ve taken kids in this program with no homes, from broken families, with no parents,” Hudson said, “and we’ve turned them into really outstanding humans. It doesn’t matter who you are or your background. If you want to work hard, we’ve got a home and a family for you.”
For the Jordans, the latest crop of the family’s grappling talent was sharpened on mats in the family’s basements.
Kimball Jordan and John Jordan live on adjacent plots of land in Bennett, and the brothers/neighbors both have set-ups that allow their sons to train year-round. When COVID-19 hit, John Jordan’s facility became the host for tournaments throughout the summer of 2020, where the Jordan brothers/cousins as well as other top local wrestlers, would come and battle.
“We held tournaments every weekend in the basement,” John Jordan said. “We put the ankle bands on, scored it, timed it, reffed it. The boys at this year’s state tournament learned how to get around the mat. We did round-robins, we did takedown tournaments.
“As a family, we’ve been here (to the state tournament) a bunch, and it’s hard to feel like you’re every truly prepared. But I think this group of kids this year is ready for here, more than ever, and a lot of that goes back to that summer.”
Ethan hopes all of the training since that summer will pay off on Saturday, when he could become the first of nine brothers to win a title. Three of his older brothers placed at state, and Ethan took fifth last year.
His Bennett career started as the “team screw-up” because of eligibility issues and missing weight for tournaments as a freshman. But a switch flipped in his sophomore year, when he became a team captain and qualified for state for the first time.
“The coolest thing is having older brothers who were very good at the sport to idolize, and try and be better than them. I always have something to chase,” Ethan Jordan said. “I do see this weekend as a big payoff. I owe a lot of my wrestling ability and career to my Uncle John, we all do.
“Everybody who was in that basement the summer of 2020, we were all working while everyone else was sitting at home. I hope that is (one factor) that propels me to a title this weekend.”