AURORA — Over the course of the last year, the Colorado High School Activities Association hosted 23 music festivals around the state, including its first ever Mariachi Festival, enjoyed the second season of the Sweepstakes awards in speech and debate, saw a bevy of first-time champions in esports, hosted Colorado Governor Jared Polis for the spring esports championships, ushered in a new class of hall of fame inductees, and experienced a ton of growth with its Summer Leadership Conference.
That is only a taste of all the exciting developments and happenings CHSAA’s activities experienced over the last year though. Here are some more:
Music
Once again, the CHSAA Music Festivals showcased the top musical talent throughout the state of Colorado, hosting 23 festivals all across the Centennial State. The CHSAA music festivals are an educational opportunity to showcase the student’s talents, and to grow from the experience of receiving feedback from trained adjudicators. CHSAA has around 40,000 students that participate in music throughout the school year, and Colorado offers many opportunities to showcase a plethora of disciplines.
This year’s festivals saw Fossil Ridge become the host of the A Capella/Show Choir festival, and it was also the first year that Denver South hosted one of the solo/ensemble festivals.
Another exciting development was CHSAA holding its first-ever Mariachi Festival this February. The Mariachi Festival was a one-day collaborative event for students across the state to perform, learn music together, and enjoy a first-class mariachi concert from Mariachi Las Dahlias, a Colorado-based female mariachi group.
Speech & Debate
In the second year of CHSAA’s Sweepstakes awards, George Washington and Delta repeated as 5A and 4A team state champions, while Pueblo West earned their first-ever 3A team championship.
Resurrection Christian also had a remarkable season, as they claimed individual championships across six different events — the most of any program across any classification this year.
This season also saw Pueblo Central play host for CHSAA’s 4A Speech and Debate State Championship Tournament, marking the first time in a decade that a speech and debate state championship tournament was hosted in the ‘Steel City’.
Esports
In the second year that esports was a sanctioned activity by CHSAA, four more champions were named. Two schools, Valor Christian and Pueblo West, won their first-ever esports state titles overall, while Cherry Creek won its first title in League of Legends and Grandview won its first title in Super Smash Bros.
Esports participation was tremendous in the activity’s second season, with the number of represented schools growing from 119 to 140, and the number of student participants inflating from around 1,200 to more than 1,850.
With more avenues to participation opening next season, those numbers should only continue their climb. This summer, CHSAA announced both Splatoon 3 and a unified classification for Mario Kart will be joining next year’s championship slate, which will provide even more opportunities to its membership schools and students.
“Esports certainly isn’t just a niche activity, it’s a movement that’s capturing the hearts and minds of many of our students across the state,” CHSAA Commissioner Mike Krueger said, earlier this summer. “Year after year, we have continued to see remarkable growth in esports engagement; expanding and diversifying our offerings is a reflection of this growth as well as the incredible dedication and passion that is shared by students and educators alike.”
The growth of the activity was underlined at this year’s state championships, as Colorado Governor Jared Polis attended to cheer the students on.
“It’s great to see how gaming is bringing people together and building community, fostering passions and helping prepare people for success,” said Polis, who also led the crowd in a round of applause for all of Colorado’s athletic directors and coaches. “We know that the skills you get gaming are very highly transferable in life, just as they are in many sports, of course. Leadership, collaboration, but also problem-solving, critical thinking, all of those you use in gaming.”
CHSAA also held its first-ever esports coaches clinic this fall at Aurora’s Expo Recreation Center.
Student Leadership
CHSAA takes pride in doing its part to help develop its student leaders. CHSAA hosts both a four-day CHSAA Student Leadership Summer Camp, an Advisor University meeting and three leadership summits throughout the year.
This year’s Advisor University meeting was once again hosted by CU-Boulder, and featured a special presentation from some of the campus’ biggest stars, Ralphie’s Handlers, who discussed what it takes to hold that lofty title.
The CHSAA Student Leadership Summer Camp was also a tremendous success, as more that 250 different student leaders and advisors attended the event, including a record-setting 64 students from Denver Public Schools.
On the state representative side, Central-Grand Junction’s Bryce Davis became the first-ever President of the State Representatives to be elected for a second term. Eaglecrest Senior John Krug III will now look to take over for the 2024-2025 year.
Hall of Fame
This year’s CHSAA Hall of Fame class was made up of four coaches, two participants and two sponsors.
Two of the coaches, Al and Sue Snyder, are a married couple who savored the opportunity of entering the CHSAA Hall of Fame together. Al Snyder spent his entire coaching career with Simla’s girls basketball team, and during that tenure he took Simla to its first state championship tournament, won two state championships, in 1996 and 2010, and appeared in two more championship games, in 1997 and 1998. Meanwhile, Sue Snyder spent 24 years as the head coach of Simla’s girls volleyball program, during which she won more than 500 total games, captured two state titles, in 1994 and 1996, and finished as the state runners-up four other times.