Part V

She was the only girl on the boys’ team. At Fairview High, Zingano — then Cathilee Albert — wrestled at 130 and 135 pounds. Her parents hated the idea.

“I loved it,” she said.

She devoured the sport. In the offseason, she showed up at gyms looking to learn. She pushed her way into a practice session at nearby Lyons High, where some of the area’s top prep wrestlers worked out. She wanted to wrestle the best.

Leister Bowling, on his way to becoming a three-time Colorado champion, didn’t want Zingano anywhere near his mat. This was a boys’ club. In a practice session, he intentionally shattered her cheekbone.

“He tried to make me quit all the time,” Zingano said of the wrestler who, sure enough, would one day become one of her coaches. “They were like: ‘Oh, this chick thinks she’s going to go with us? She’s never going to wrestle again after this.’”

Cat returned the next day.

“I got beat up a lot, but it made me really tough,” she said.

Wrestling defined Zingano. It gave her a purpose through high school. It propelled her to college. It allowed her to dream of making the 2004 U.S. women’s Olympic team.

Then her world fell apart.

Cat was a freshman at the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Ky., when one of her closest friends back home, 17-year-old Mary Rogers, was found tortured and killed in Westminster. Rogers’ boyfriend was later convicted of first-degree murder.

“I don’t feel like I recovered from that,” Zingano said of her time in college in the early 2000s. “She was one of my best friends since I was 8 years old. It was really traumatic. Now I look back, and I just feel — a lot of my drive for what I wanted to do with wrestling was smoldered by that.”

She came home from college. Her Olympic dream now faded, she stepped away from the wrestling mats. It would be years before she got back on. In 2007, now a new mother, Cat walked into Zingano Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym in Broomfield.

She saw Mauricio, one of the instructors. He suggested she take a jiu jitsu class. It was love at first fight — with the sport and the instructor.

“I was in awe of him, how strong he was, how talented he was,” Cat said of Mauricio, twice a national Brazilian jiu jitsu champ. “The presence he carried, he was just so bold and impressive. And he really made me laugh.”

On a gym trip to Water World, Cat recalled in a soft voice, “He held my hand.” Though she was wary of dating her coach, these feelings were new and exciting.

“Finally, I went back to a class,” she said. “And he said, ‘All right, you and me are (sparring)!’ After class, he pulled me aside, and we were connected at the hip after. Always, forever.

“At first, it was perfect. I was so gung-ho on impressing him, being his prodigy, winning every tournament. Everything I did, I wanted to keep handing him trophies: ‘This is for you. I won this.’ I felt like I couldn’t do any wrong. And he was so proud of me.”

They became addicted — to each other, to success. Work hard, fight hard, win hard. But the dynamic was toxic. Her new boyfriend, whom she married in 2010, was also her coach. And her business partner, running multiple gyms. Oh, and they were parents, raising her son, Brayden.

But Mauricio saw greatness in her fists and constantly challenged her to make sacrifices — to eat certain foods, to go for an extra run at night, to learn from criticism at all hours. It became too much.

“I didn’t know who I was talking to,” she said. “I had so much respect for him, I would never say anything. I would look at him as my coach and my boss, but I needed to be able to talk to him like my husband.

“There was depression,” she said of Mauricio. “I feel like we would’ve figured it out eventually, but he made some bad choices to make things worse, and I couldn’t put up with it and have my son around it. I had to do something, but I didn’t know what to do.

“So I left him.”