The champ wore his heart on his sole. Traven Sharon stalked the center mat at Ball Arena Saturday night with two letters and a number, faded by sweat and toil — BB1 — scribbled on the outside of his left shoe. The same three characters were written on the outside of his right.
BB, for Blevyns Brown. “1,” for BB’s old number in football, basketball and baseball.
“He’d be climbing over the fence,” Sharon, a senior at Fowler, told me after becoming the 35th four-time CHSAA state wrestling champion by fall in the Class 2A final at 126 pounds. “He’d be on top of everything.
“It’d be really cool to visit with him about it. He’s been my biggest fan, all the way through.”
BB passed away in a single-car crash on Oct. 15, 2023. After church on a Sunday morning, Traven’s cousin had gone to check on the family cattle and fell asleep at the wheel.
They were thicker than thieves, born just weeks apart — Blevyns in January 2007, Traven in February. The pair grew up a few miles down the road from each other, breaking hearts and raising Cain. Blevyns was a do-it-all athlete. Sharon … wasn’t.
“Don’t win very many sprints in the room,” Traven laughed. “I can just run a long way. My knees hit together when I run. I’m dead serious.”
BB played quarterback at Crowley County. Sharon wrestled for the Grizzlies. They bonded over faith, over rodeo. Not necessarily in that order.
“(That) can be a grind, just like anything,” Traven recalled. “And he always found a way to make it fun. When we were done practicing hard, I called Blevyns up and we would rope steers and ride them until they were done. And then we’d go inside and have some ice cream or something.”
Work hard. Pray hard. Play hard.
“We’d always wrestle at Christmas and everything,” Traven said. “If he would’ve wrestled, he would’ve been pretty good. … I always tried to get him to wrestle. He was way more of an athlete than I was.”
He was never a four-time champ, though. Sharon joined Colorado’s four-timers club with a nifty second period pin of Meeker’s Koy Weber.
Wink at history, sometimes it winks right back. Traven’s grandma, Loretta Sharon, used to babysit Brent Van Hee, the only other four-time state champ at Fowler, four decades ago.
Small town.
Small world.
“They just had that bond, besides the Good Lord above,” Loretta said of Traven and BB. “It was tough. It really was. Knowing where Blevyns is, it doesn’t make it easier. But it does.”
BB was watching from above, surely, as his cousin took a 3-0 lead after the opening period.
With about a half a minute to go in a rough-and-tumble second stanza, Traven, up 5-0 on points, rolled one of Weber’s shoulder blades to the mat. Then he started wringing the Meeker sophomore like a wet towel.
“Don’t let him off the hook,” Sharon told himself.
He wouldn’t. With nine seconds left in the period, Traven shifted the second shoulder hard and squeezed, a pin that cast his name into Colorado legend.
“Wrestling, rodeo and ranching,” Traven’s father Trent explained. “That’s all. That’s what we do.”
Sharon’s heading to Wyoming in the summer to wrestle and compete on the rodeo team, a born cowboy riding to Laramie for the next chapter.
“He grew up on the back of a horse, basically,” Dad laughed. “He absolutely loves wrestling. But his way of life has been cowboying. So that’s the everyday stuff.”
BB’s first love, meanwhile, was baseball. He hit .373 with a 1.054 OPS with 31 steals in 42 varsity games with Crowley County. As a QB with the Chargers, Blevyns threw for 11 scores with two picks in the fall of ’22. The day before the crash that took his life, BB tossed three touchdowns in a 64-6 rout of Custer County.
“They were just cheering each other on, wanting the best for each other all the time,” Lindy said.
“And it’s changed Traven’s outlook to, ‘Life is a privilege.’ Success is just a cherry on top. But life is a privilege and eternal life is the most important thing. It’s really made that perspective for the kids.”
BB left a scar.
More than that, he left a lesson.
“We’re not guaranteed anything in this life,” Traven said. “It brings perspective of what we’re supposed to do on this Earth. When your time gets cut short, it’s important to live. And for your first priorities (to be) first. And that’s why Jesus is my First Priority.”
When destiny called, the champ was a shoe-in. As the Ball Arena crowd rose in salute, Sharon saluted right back, pointing with both fingers to the sky, smiling at the Heavens. Blevyns saw that, too.
“Never did anything halfway in his life,” Sharon said. “He always found a way.”
So did his biggest fan. Traven had BB’s number. The angels had his back.
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