How Gerrard Flores was felt at Ball Arena Saturday, if only in spirit

He won the first date by technical fall.

“When’s your birthday?” Gerrard Flores asked.

“June 5,” Rene McElhany replied.

“Are you serious? That’s my birthday, too.”

He was a longtime CHSAA wrestling referee, a bachelor with kids of his own. She was a single wrestling mom. They’d seen each other for years at events, had mutual friends. Flores, a habitual flirt and unabashed free spirit, wasn’t looking for love. But six years ago at state, McElhany pinned his heart to the mat.

“He knew a lot of girls before he knew me,” Rene said of her fiancee. “We danced a couple of times. And then at the end of the night, he just said, ‘If I asked you out, would you go on a date with me?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ He said, ‘How about we meet up at Brooklyn’s after state finals next week,’ And I said, ‘OK.’”

They were inseparable ever since, on and off the mat. Until last month, when the angels had other ideas.

During a wrestling tournament at Arvada West this past Jan. 7, Flores felt ill, collapsed and, despite resuscitation efforts by first responders, died at the scene. He was 55.

“I read that grief is just love with nowhere to go,” Rene said softly, pausing for a deep breath. “And so that’s where I find myself sometimes. I’m doing OK. It’s hard. But it’s good. Wrestling and the wrestling mat are my safe place.

“You know, the week after he passed, I went out on the mat and I officiated matches. And people said, ‘How can you do that?’ I’m like, ‘Listen, this is where Gerrard would want me. If he knew that I was sitting out because he’d passed, he’d be saying, ‘Girl, get (out there), this is not where you belong. That is where you belong. And that’s where you represent me the best.’ ”

•••

Flores, a February fixture at Ball Arena, was nowhere to be found at the 2024 state wrestling tournament. Yet he was everywhere.

Six years after the weekend of their first date, McElhany worked the table next to Mat 6. A few feet away, a small cutout standee of Flores rested in the corner that bridged Mats 5 and 6, smiling back, eyes still twinkling.

“I walked in the very first day (of state), on a Thursday afternoon and sat my stuff down at the table and looked up,” McElhany recalled, “and there was one of them in the corner. And I went, ‘Oh, gosh,’ just because it made my heart stop. There are difficult things about being here, but I wouldn’t be any other place. And he wouldn’t have been any other place. So I know his presence is here.”

In the island of folding chairs in the middle of the arena floor, referee Lenny Venegas got out his phone, opened up his photo album and swiped furiously. He stopped, grinned, and lowered the phone to eye level, revealing a shot of him rubbing Flores’ belly.

“I loved him,” Venegas said, “because he made me look like I was skinny. It was an inside joke.”

They had dozens. Lenny would find Flores’ bag, if he had left the room, and fill it up with candy and burritos. They wrestled in the officials’ locker room last year at state like little kids.

“He was my year-round friend,” Venegas said. “I used to call him, my ‘cuddle buddy.’”

Lenny’s cuddle buddy officiated wrestling for 25 years, football for 30 and baseball for nearly 20. A proud native of Brush, Gerrard was the second-youngest of 13 kids, a family tree like a mighty sequoia. Lenny cracked that Flores used to ask other officials for spare tickets to Saturday night’s finals for extended family members, even though he suspected it was so that he could get the loudest applause of the evening while the refs were being introduced.

“Just a great dude,” Lenny continued, wiping away a tear. “Everybody loved him.”

Years earlier, Flores became an ordained minister. When good friend Nick Diede and his then-fiancee Stephanie were kibitzing with him in Vegas 11 years ago, Flores married them, right then and there, just outside the Wynn Hotel.

The December that Diede, also a CHSAA wrestling ref, spent a Christmas divorced, Flores invited him over to spend time with his family, knowing how dark the holidays can be alone.

The cutouts were Diede’s idea, Nick’s tribute. One sat in the refs’ locker room, where a locker was kept open for Flores’ shorts, wristbands and whistle.

Last Christmas, two weeks before his passing, Flores had bragged to Diede and Venegas that he could do more push-ups than either of them.

Only while Nick and Lenny were toughing it out on the floor, it wasn’t long before they heard this giggling behind and above them. Flores had baited the two into tiring each other out for his amusement.

“Here he was, on the couch, laughing and watching us,” Diede said incredulously. “And he never did one.”

•••

You know when a winning wrestler acknowledges his family, his coaches, his fans in the stands as his or her arm gets raised? That’s a Flores special, too. Another piece that lives on.

“He filled a room,” McElhany said. “And he was known for not only his love for sport, but his love for kids.”

Flores didn’t invent the idea, Rene said. But he made it his post-match signature move, and encouraged his peer officials to do the same.

“(Flores) initiated that,” McElhany said. “For a while, he got a little criticism over it, at times, because (they said), ‘Oh, you take too much time.’ (He said), ‘No, this is their special moment.’

“He’s the one that championed it. It was one of his signature things.”

Blessed are those who bring out our best selves, in victory or defeat. Rene said she never karaoked in public before she met Flores. Heck, she’d never even thought about becoming a referee. But for about half a decade, they often worked events together. Wrestling. Football. Baseball. At softball, they danced to the song “Return of the Mack” between innings.

“As a woman official, sometimes coaches and parents want to give you a little bit of a harder time than they would have (otherwise),” she said. “And he wouldn’t have it. He would go marching right over and he said, ‘Don’t talk to her that way. You will not say that kind of thing. If you don’t have respect for her, you’re out.’ So he was very protective in that way.”

They held his funeral at Brush High School, because there wasn’t a church in town with the capacity to handle the mourners. A head count estimated the crowd at around 2,000. They played one of his favorite tunes, Garth Brooks’ “Friends In Low Places.”

Last summer, he and Rene had driven to Nashville together to celebrate the 21st birthday of a friend’s daughter and recorded a version of “Friends In Low Places” at the Ryman as a keepsake.

“He loved Rene, loved her,” Lenny said. “Before Rene, he said he’d never get married again. Even when he’d flirt, he’d (tell her), ‘It’s OK, babe, you know I’m going home with you.”

Saturday night felt like home, with all those arms raised again. Flores’ son Trea’ was slated to attend the final session. Rene even planned on taking Flores’ son to Brooklyn’s late Saturday night, same as it ever was, never the same again.

“We just shared so much in common.” McElhany said. Another pause. Another tear. “I truly believe that he was my soulmate.”