From a long lens, the 2025 CIF California wrestling championships are going according to plan. At least among the boys team competition.

In Day 2 of the three-day event at Mechanic’s Bank Arena in Bakersfield, defending champion Poway of San Diego, with 162 points, has a narrow lead over Buchanan (152.5), Gilroy (143) and St. John Bosco (141.5). Clovis, which was right in the hunt after one day, has dropped off slight to fifth at 126.5. Clovis North (106.5) is the only other team to break triple digits.

As far as how many wrestlers each team has alive, Poway and Bowco each have 13 and Buchanan and Gilroy each have 10. Buchanan has the most championship round wrestlers with seven.

The girls team race is even tighter with Southern Section’s Northview in first with 51 points after two days, followed by Clovis East (44.5), Corona (44.5), Marina (41), Highland-Bakersfield (40.5), Clayton Valley (40), Poway (39.5), Birmingham (38.5) and Buchanan (37).

The three-day event — the 52nd boys tournament combined with the 14th girls tournament — figures to fill to its near 9,000 capacity all three days. There’s close to 1,000 competitors qualified from the entire 760-mile length of the Golden State.

Among the 14 previous state champions there’s been few surprises. Here’s a look at how those wrestlers performed on Friday

113 — Henry Aslikyan, Birmingham: won 106 last season: Defeated Aaron Meza (St. John Bo

120 — Rocklin Zinkin, Buchanan: Won 113 in 2024: Scored a TF over Ellijah Almarinez (Vacaville), 15-0 4:58

126 — Isaiah Cortez, Gilroy: Won 120 in 2023: Scored a majority decision over Robert Jones of Poway, 13-1

126 — Ronnie Ramirez, Walnut: Won 113 in 2023, 120 in 2024 : Lost in the quarterfinals to Paris Ruiz from Buchanan.

138 — Elijah Cortez, Gilroy: Won 126 in 2023: Recorded a pin in in 1:26 to defeat James Ruiz of Esperanza.

144 — Nikade Zinkin, Clovis: Won 126 in 2024: Recorded a second round pin over over Vince Partingtton of Cypress in 3:52.

150 — Daniel Zepeda, Gilroy: Won 132 in 2023 and 138 in 2024: The No. 1 ranked 150-pounder in the nation scored a majroity decision over Sergio of St. John Bosco, 20-7.

215 — Angelo Posada, Poway: Won 175 in 2024: The No. 1 seed took less than a minute to pin Adan Castillo of Clovis, 0:59.

100 — Jillian Wells, Lakeside: Won 100 in 2024 for Central Catholic: Just got by Destiny Hultron, of Arroyo, 7-

120 — Isabella Marie Gonzales, Clovis East: Won 115 in 2023: Made quick work of Svea Gonzalez of Benicia with a pin in 1:18. sd

140 — Yzabeela Austin, Pitman: Won 130 in 2024: Recorded a second-round pin over Sumaya Lazaro of Northwestern.

145 — Delarie Juarez, Northview: Won 145 in 2024 for Brawley: trvptfrf s 5-0 win over Kelly Meehan of Tokay.

170 — Leilani Lemus, Clovis: Won 160 in 2023 and 170 in 2024: Gave the home crowd plenty to cheer about with a pin over Olivia Furlong of Salinas in 2:38.

190 — Juliana Marquez, Gabrielino: Won 190 in 2024: Another pin for another defending champion as Marquez pined Centennial’s Onyi Oragwam in 1:56.

Here are California male wrestlers ranked among the top 30 nationally in each weight class (number is national rank) as selected by Billy Buckheit

1-Samuel Sanchez (Esperanza, CA) FR

11-Anthony Garza (Clovis, CA) SO

12-Nathaniel Granados (Merced, CA) SR

13-Jorge Rios (St. John Bosco, CA) FR

3-Paul Ruiz (Buchanan, CA) FR

4-Henry Aslikyan (Birmingham, CA) JR

7-Rocklin Zinkin (Buchanan, CA) JR

8-Edwin Sierra (Poway, CA) SR

28-Sean Willcox (St. John Bosco, CA) JR

2-Ronnie Ramirez (Walnut, CA) SR

5-Antonio Rodriguez (Los Gatos, CA) JR

8-Nathan Carillo (St. John Bosco, CA) JR

9-Isaiah Cortez (Gilroy, CA) SR

13-Paris Ruiz (Buchanan, CA) SR

28-Slater Hicks (Valencia, CA) SO

29-Siraj Sidhu (Del Oro, CA) JR

6-Moses Mendoza (Gilroy, CA) JR

7-Ashton Besmer (Buchanan, CA) JR

18-Billy Townson (Poway, CA) SR

10-Jesse Grajeda (St. John Bosco, CA) SO

11-Elijah Cortez (Gilroy, CA) SR

15-Leo Maestas (Clovis North, CA) SR

16-Raymond Rivera (Clovis, CA) JR

19-Jacob Perez (Monache, CA)

3-Nikade Zinkin (Clovis, CA) SR

4-Joseph Toscano (Buchanan, CA) JR

27-Michael Romero (St. John Bosco, CA) SO

29-Arseni Kikiniou (Poway, CA) SO

30-Braden Priest (Bakersfield, CA) SR

1-Daniel Zepeda (Gilroy, CA) SR

15-Ivan Arias (Buchanan, CA) JR

8-Leo Contino (Buchanan, CA) SR

16-Beau Priest (Bakersfield, CA) SR

17-Alias Raby (Anderson, CA) 

12-Mario Carini (Poway, CA) SO

13-Slava Shahbazyan (Birmingham, CA) JR 

14-Joseph Antonio (St. John Bosco, CA) SR

19-Travis Grace (Gilroy, CA) JR

5-Tyler Eise (Gilroy, CA) SR

10-Dylan Pile (Los Gatos, CA) SR

18-Mason Ontiveros (John H Pitman, CA) JR

27-Isai Fernandez (St. John Bosco, CA) FR

29-Adrien Reyes (Clovis, CA) SR

13-Levi Bussey (Granite Bay, CA) SR

15-Jonathan Rocha (Clovis North, CA) JR

19-Brokton Borelli (Los Banos, CA) SR

3-Angelo Posada (Poway, CA) SR

10-Khale McDonnell (Fountain Valley, CA) SR

12-Kayden Kartee (Mayfair, CA)

President Donald Trump is obsessed with how California manages its water supply, demanding changes as one price of giving the state billions of dollars in aid to cope with Southern California’s deadly and destructive wildfires.

However, Trump’s specific complaints are not grounded in hydrologic or managerial reality — such as his insistence that a lack of water from Northern California was a factor in either the fires’ eruption or the firefighting efforts. Hydrants dried up largely because systems were designed to deal with individual structure fires, not widespread wildfires involving thousands of buildings.

That said, there’s much to criticize in how California, once a global leader in large-scale water management, has faltered. Population growth and evolving agricultural practices have increased demand, while federal and state environmental laws, judicial decisions, political foot-dragging and climate change have restricted supply.

One major failing has been a slow response to an obvious need for more water storage — either in reservoirs or underground aquifers — to capture winter rains and spring snowmelts as a buffer for dry years.

Scientists believe that even if California’s overall water supply from rain and snow storms doesn’t decline, wet and dry cycles have become more intense, and more precipitation is coming as rain instead of snow. Thus the natural reservoirs of snowpacks in the Sierra and other mountain ranges are becoming less dependable, increasing the need for supplemental storage.

California’s most recent experiences — two wet winters that defied some forecasts — underscore the need.

A new report from the Public Policy Institute of California points out that the atmospheric rivers that dropped immense quantities of rain and snow on the state this month, following a very dry January, did not result in substantial new storage in the state’s major reservoirs.

“Rather than storing all the water they can, during the winter reservoir operators are required to maintain enough space in their reservoirs to capture high inflows and reduce the risk of flooding downstream,” PPIC researchers Jeffrey Mount and Greg Gartrell wrote.

“When the February storms arrived, the surge of water into the state’s two largest reservoirs — Shasta and Oroville — quickly filled the flood reserve space. Because the winter flood season is far from over, dam operators had no choice but to let the water go to make space for possible future floods.

“And they let go a lot of water. Between February 1 and 18, those two reservoirs alone released more than 2 million acre-feet of water into the Sacramento and Feather Rivers to maintain space for future stormwater.”

An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons and 2 million-acre feet equates to more than half of Oroville’s capacity, or about 20% of what Californians consume each year for non-agricultural purposes.

Overall, Mount and Gartrell calculated, 5.1 million acre-feet of water flowed into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta from storm runoff and reservoir releases during that period in February. Just 4% of it could be diverted into storage because of insufficient capacity and operational mandates.

Even a relatively tiny increase in storage capacity could pay huge dividends when wet winters such as this evolve into periods of drought. Had the long-proposed Sites Reservoir on the west side of the Sacramento Valley existed, it could have banked as much as 1.5 million acre-feet of that excess flow.

California’s water managers acknowledge the need for more storage to take advantage of high-precipitation winters such as this one, but clearing all of the legal and financial hurdles and actually building it take decades. Sites, first proposed seven decades ago, is just now beginning to appear feasible.

The hydrological reality of California’s water supply is changing faster than our willingness to deal with it. The outcome of that disparity is perilous.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.

Northern California’s Karuk Tribe has for more than a century faced significant restrictions on cultural burning — the setting of intentional fires for both ceremonial and practical purposes, such as reducing brush to limit the risk of wildfires.

That changed this week, thanks to legislation championed by the tribe and passed by the state last year that allows federally recognized tribes in California to burn freely once they reach agreements with the California Natural Resources Agency and local air quality officials.

The tribe announced Thursday that it was the first to reach such an agreement with the agency.

“Karuk has been a national thought leader on cultural fire,” said Geneva E.B. Thompson, Natural Resources’ deputy secretary for tribal affairs. “So, it makes sense that they would be a natural first partner in this space because they have a really clear mission and core commitment to get this work done.”

In the past, cultural burn practitioners first needed to get a burn permit from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, a department within the Natural Resources Agency, and a smoke permit from the local air district.

The law passed in September 2024, SB 310, allows the state government to, respectfully, “get out of the way” of tribes practicing cultural burns, said Thompson.

For the Karuk Tribe, Cal Fire will no longer hold regulatory or oversight authority over the burns and will instead act as a partner and consultant. The previous arrangement, tribal leaders say, essentially amounted to one nation telling another nation what to do on its land — a violation of sovereignty. Now, collaboration can happen through a proper government-to-government relationship.

The Karuk Tribe estimates that, conservatively, its more than 120 villages would complete at least 7,000 burns each year before contact with European settlers. Some may have been as small as an individual pine tree or patch of tanoak trees. Other burns may have spanned dozens of acres.

“When it comes to that ability to get out there and do frequent burning to basically survive as an indigenous community,” said Bill Tripp, director for the Karuk Tribe Natural Resource Department, “one: you don’t have major wildfire threats because everything around you is burned regularly. Two: Most of the plants and animals that we depend on in the ecosystem are actually fire-dependent species.”

The Karuk Tribe’s ancestral territory extends along much of the Klamath River in what is now the Klamath National Forest, where its members have fished for salmon, hunted for deer and collected tanoak acorns for food for thousands of years. The tribe, whose language is distinct from that of all other California tribes, is currently the second largest in the state, having more than 3,600 members.

The history of the government’s suppression of cultural burning is long and violent. In 1850, California passed a law that inflicted any fines or punishments a court found “proper” on cultural burn practitioners.

In a 1918 letter to a forest supervisor, a district ranger in the Klamath National Forest — in the Karuk Tribe’s homeland — suggested that to stifle cultural burns, “the only sure way is to kill them off, every time you catch one sneaking around in the brush like a coyote, take a shot at him.”

For Thompson, the new law is a step toward righting those wrongs.

“I think SB 310 is part of that broader effort to correct those older laws that have caused harm, and really think through: How do we respect and support tribal sovereignty, respect and support traditional ecological knowledge, but also meet the climate and wildfire resiliency goals that we have as a state?” she said.

The devastating 2020 fire year triggered a flurry of fire-related laws that aimed to increase the use of intentional fire on the landscape, including — for the first time — cultural burns.

The laws granted cultural burns exemptions from the state’s environmental impact review process and created liability protections and funds for use in the rare event that an intentional burn grows out of control.

“The generous interpretation of it is recognizing cultural burn practitioner knowledge,” said Becca Lucas Thomas, an ethnic studies lecturer at Cal Poly and cultural burn practitioner with the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe of San Luis Obispo County and Region. “In trying to get more fire on the ground for wildfire prevention, it’s important that we make sure that we have practitioners who are actually able to practice.”

The new law, aimed at forming government-to-government relationships with Native tribes, can only allow federally recognized tribes to enter these new agreements. However, Thompson said it will not stop the agency from forming strong relationships with unrecognized tribes and respecting their sovereignty.

“Cal Fire has provided a lot of technical assistance and resources and support for those non-federally recognized tribes to implement these burns,” said Thompson, “and we are all in and fully committed to continuing that work in partnership with the non-federally-recognized tribes.”

Cal Fire has helped Lucas Thomas navigate the state’s imposed burn permit process to the point that she can now comfortably navigate the system on her own, and she said Cal Fire handles the tribe’s smoke permits. Last year, the tribe completed its first four cultural burns in over 150 years.

“Cal Fire, their unit here, has been truly invested in the relationship and has really dedicated their resources to supporting us,” said Lucas Thomas, ”with their stated intention of, ‘we want you guys to be able to burn whenever you want, and you just give us a call and let us know what’s going on.’”