DENVER — With the 2020-21 high school football calendar being altered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Denver Broncos and the Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA) have launched the Denver Broncos High School Virtual Combine, an online program designed to assist Colorado student athletes with aspirations of playing college football.
In partnership with GMTM, an athlete exposure platform, the all-virtual combine provides student athletes the opportunity to create a player profile, upload highlights and statistics and display individual skills and talents while building an online recruiting brand platform.
Participation in the program is free, and prospective athletes are able to connect with collegiate recruiters — Division I FBS through Division III — and participate in 11 pre-set combine tests to showcase their abilities through athletic, football and character challenges.
In addition, the combine features footage of Denver Broncos NFL Combine performances and video presentations from Broncos Director of Team Nutrition Bryan Snyder, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach Loren Landow and members of the football operations staff. The 11 pre-set combine tests include:
Athletic highlight challenge
Football highlight challenge
40-yard dash
3 cone drill
20-yard shuttle
Broad jump
Bench press or pushups
Your position, your drill demonstration
Character challenge – What does character mean to you?
Character challenge – What does football mean to you?
Nutrition challenge – How do you fuel your workouts?
High school students of all ages are eligible to participate, and submissions for combine-specific elements will remain open for an eight-week period.
After 34 years of prowling a football sideline, Frank Ybarra is opting for a seat in the stands.
The Horizon football coach got his team through a tricky Season A schedule but has decided that the 2020 season has been his last. After coaching and educating for more than three decades, he’s heading into retirement.
He leaves behind a life dedicated to the service of young student-athletes both on the field and in the classroom.
“It was my life,” Ybarra said. “I’ll remember all the relationships built with my kids and fellow coaches. I’ve met some of my best friends of the world through coaching. Some of the kids I coached are now in their 40’s and we still keep in contact and they’re still a big part of my life.”
His coaching career featured an even split as an assistant and as a head coach. The first 17 years of his coaching career were spent at Northglenn as an assistant. He then took the job to be the head coach at Horizon, where he remained for the final 17 years of his career.
“I never thought I’d leave Northglenn,” Ybarra said. “I played there and that was my whole life growing up. I never thought I’d go anywhere else, but I’ve been here just as long.”
Although the Hawks had struggled recently, they had put together a solid year back in 2015. They claimed the Class 5A Front Range League title and beat Doherty in the first round of the state tournament before falling to Pomona.
But Ybarra never measured success by wins and losses. He measured it on whether or not his players lived up to and exceeded their potential and how they applied the lessons learned on the field to their lives.
Coaching is admirable profession to get into, yet has its challenges. He wants to encourage the growth of the coaching ranks, but knows that support is needed not just in his building but throughout the community overall.
“New coaches want everybody to love them,” Ybarra said. “It just doesn’t work that way. You have to earn that trust and earn that love. You’re going to take some bumps along the way, you just have to fight through it.”
Class 6A may once again be part of football’s future.
During their annual meeting on Thursday, the football committee voted to recommend the addition of an eighth classification. This recommendation will need to be voted upon and approved by the Legislative Council this spring in order to be implemented.
If approved there, 6A would join the other seven classes — 5A, 4A, 3A, 2A, 1A, 8-man, and 6-man — in the fall of 2022.
“I think it’s a start to the process,” said committee member Bruce Grose, the athletic director at Vista Ridge, during discussion. “It’s the start of creating classifications that are like programs, and not just [enrollment] numbers. All along, we’ve divided pretty much just by numbers, and I think we need to reevaluate that process. I think this is the right step forward to create more equity.”
CHSAA assistant commissioner Adam Bright mentioned that his overarching goal for football is to “figure out how we can have like programs competing against one another, and create some equity amongst our classifications.”
“It’s not simply about the number of kids that walk in the door,” Bright added. “Let’s look at programs, and like programs.”
Football has had a 6A classification before, from 1990-93, but this would look different for a number of reasons, most notable that it would be larger than it was back then, which will reduce the size of all classes — and not just large schools.
With 287 schools declaring that they will have football teams in 2022, it means each classification could be comprised of roughly 36 teams or so. Currently, they are in the 40-42 range.
Additionally, the membership has empowered the CHSAA office in recent years with the ability to classify schools with criteria other than just the traditional factor of enrollment. This includes factors such as on-field success of programs, participation rate, geography, enrollment trend, and socioeconomics of school’s population.
“Adding the 6A classification gives us the platform … to really reinvent football and allow for that competitive equity that we keep talking about. I think this is a step in the right direction,” said Steamboat Springs athletic director Luke DeWolfe, a committee member who is also on the CHSAA Board of Directors.
Said committee chair Chris Noll, the district athletic director for District 11 in Colorado Springs: “For the last 6 or 7 years, we continue to talk about the same problem, and we continue to kick the can down the road. … We’ve talked a lot today about Championship Weekend, and ‘state championship this,’ and ‘league champion that’ — I think we also have to focus a little bit of our time on those teams that struggle.”
Added committee member Ryan Goddard, the coach at Pueblo South: “Looking at this globally, I think our biggest problem across the state in each classification is our top-8 teams in each classification and the bottom-8 teams in each classification are nowhere near each other. Is it how we classify teams, or how our classifications are structured? I think ‘both’ answers that question.”
Other sports, such as basketball and volleyball, are also considering whether not to to add a Class 6A in the near future.
The idea of 6A football has been brought up a few times in recent years. Various proposals to add an eighth classification were shot down at Legislative Council in 2015 and again in 2019. It was also discussed in 2017, but no proposal materialized.
It is worth noting, however, that the 2015 and 2019 proposals looked much different than this current plan. In 2019, for example, the 6A classification would have been created solely for the postseason.
And, perhaps most notably, in both 2015 and 2019, the football committee not only did not endorse or recommend the plans, but instead actively spoke out against them.
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Postseason
The football committee made a series of moves that sets the sport up to have all championship games on one weekend. It also opens the potential for a single site to host all championship games in the future — something that was done this past fall for the first time in the sport’s history, and has been met with great enthusiasm around the state.
First, they voted to have a 10-week regular season in all classes, with each class having the option of playing 9 or 10 games. Then, they voted to have the same number of playoff qualifiers in each classification.
“I think they should all be equal,” said committee member Greg Jones, the athletic director at Monte Vista. “If everybody’s the same across the board, it goes along with what we just did with 6A.”
Following a long discussion, the committee voted to have each classification have 24 teams make the postseason.
“If we’re talking about kids, kids want that experience, kids want to be part of something,” said committee member Marty Tonjes, the athletic director at Horizon. “If it’s what’s best for kids, we should create opportunity for kids.”
Currently, 5A and 4A have 24 qualifiers, while 6-man through 3A have 16 teams make the postseason. In the past, there had been three weekends of state championship games.
Finally, the football committee also passed a motion to have semifinal games hosted by the higher seed in the semifinals, and championship games at neutral sites in all classes.
Seeding will be done by the CHSAA Seeding Index: CHSAA RPI, MaxPreps Rankings, Packard Rankings and the CHSAANow coaches poll. Teams can only be moved due to geography.
As with 6A, these recommendations need to be approved by the Legislative Council in order to take effect. If approved, these changes would take effect in 2022.
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Fall 2021 championship sites
Following overwhelming positive feedback about a single-site state championship, the committee moved to have the 6-man, 8-man, 1A and 2A title games at CSU-Pueblo for the fall 2021 season. Those games are scheduled for the weekend of Nov. 27.
“There was a lot of discussion and positivity about how each game had their own moment and their own spotlight,” Goddard said.
Added Regis Jesuit coach Danny Filleman, another committee member: “It just makes that state championship a little more special for those kids and players.”
The 3A game will remain at CSU-Pueblo the following weekend, on Dec. 4. And 4A and 5A are set to return to Mile High that same date.
Going forward, “we will explore all options” for a single-site state championship for all games, Bright said.
Earlier, the committee voted to add a 10th game in 6-man for the 2021 season, so that the alignment of championship games with 2A, 1A, and 8-man would be possible.
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Summer camps
With 48 schools set to play football this spring in Season C, the decision was made to change the usual 10-day summer contact camps to an extra week of practice in the fall.
There was concern from the national Sports Medicine Advisory Committee for states that are playing spring football seasons surrounding a lack of rest.
If approved, football teams would begin practice on Aug. 2 rather than Aug. 9, and ramp up their contact from there.
“This provides us to get the work in we would in the padded camps, but also provide our athletes who compete in the spring the chance to rest, and avoid any equity issues of some teams being allowed to have camps while others cannot,” Bright said.
Jordan Woolverton knew Durango had something special brewing heading into the 2020 football season.
Just a year earlier, the Demons looked poised to make a run to the Class 3A state title game before falling short against Pueblo South. That loss provided a mental spark for the team, specifically quarterback Jordan Woolverton.
Once Durango hit the field, the team looked nearly unstoppable as it accomplished a major goal in winning the 3A state title — the first state football crown since 1954 and the first outright state title in program history — and along the way, Woolverton was named the 3A player of the year.
Simply having the goal of winning a state title wasn’t enough for the Demons to achieve it. In order to get there, they had to focus on the smaller, more specialized goals that would ultimately serve as the fuel behind the championship run in 2020.
“A state championship is always the goal,” Woolverton said. “But the goals behind that goal were all about coming together as a team and playing together and holding each other accountable.”
The Demons were slated to open the season against Pueblo South, the very team that eliminated them from the 2019 playoffs, but COVID-19 had other plans. Durango was forced to wait a week before making its 2020 debut. A trip to Colorado Springs and a 64-0 win over Mitchell certainly got the attention of plenty of teams from around the state.
(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)
But Woolverton doesn’t think the Demons were legitimately viewed as a threat until the next week when they beat Pueblo County 49-21. Oddly enough, it was a game in which Woolverton missed the entire second half because of an injured shoulder which might’ve shown just how much Durango was operating as a full team.
“A lot of people had us losing that game to Pueblo County,” Woolverton said. “That didn’t sit well with us because we knew what we could do. After we won that one, that opened people’s eyes.”
They closed that out then won their final three regular season games by two scores each. In fact, the Demons finished each game comfortably going through the playoffs and all the way to the state title game against Roosevelt.
Woolverton found Gage Mestas for a wide-open touchdown throw in the first quarter to get the Durango scoring effort going.
“They wanted to stop the run,” Durango coach David Vogt said after the Demons won the title. “To win the game we had to make some deep catches. I’m glad we did that.”
A big touchdown run from Ben Finneseth ripped off a long touchdown run to tie the game and then Woolverton saved his best throw for a big moment. He found Mestas again for a big touchdown throw to put Durango ahead for good. Woolverton looked right at home on the biggest stage of his high school football career.
“I feel like I’ve been playing on big stages my whole life,” he said. “I wasn’t too anxious about playing on a big stage, I think I just kept going with the (flow) of the game.”
Durango hoisted the championship trophy and the 2020 team secured a permanent place in the program’s legacy. But Woolverton refuses to allow praise to go to anyone else other than the full roster.
“It was a full team effort,” Woolverton said. “Those five guys up front were the center of our team this year. They got us to where we were and got us those big wins. They were the piece of the team that came together the most. When people talk about our team in the future, I hope they talk about those five guys up front and our team as a whole.”
Ever since he was little, Brady Kuntz has been running around the Fleming football program. When his older brother was playing for the Wildcats, Kuntz served as the water boy for the team which would earn him the nickname “Liquid.”
Years later, he became crucial to the team as a standout player on two state championship teams. Kuntz wasn’t raised by a pack of wolves, but he was accepted at a young age by a destruction of Wildcats. And they taught him to be destructive.
A defensive player at his core, Kuntz helped the Wildcats claim a second straight 6-man football title and won the classification’s player of the year in the process. When thinking back to August, the thought of either achievements coming to fruition seemed far-fetched.
“I knew we were going to be good,” Kuntz said. “It just shocked me how good of a team we were. And being the MVP of 6-man, that surprises me a lot.”
Maybe it shouldn’t. Fleming felt like it went into the 2020 season a bit under the radar. After the Wildcats beat Stratton/Liberty to claim the 6-man title, several seniors moved on from the program and the Wildcats felt as though no one believed they could win state again.
But if Kuntz’s energy on the field could be seen by everyone in the state, it would be no surprise to see the Wildcats once again perform at that championship level. It had been something Kuntz had been dreaming of since slinging around liquid for the varsity players as a kid.
“He’s been around (the program) for so long,” Fleming coach John King said. “He’s been such a big part of this for all these years.”
(Lance Wendt/wendt5280.com)
Kuntz was a vital part of the Widlcats offense as he led the team with 293 receiving yards and seven touchdowns. But his heart is always on the defensive side of the ball and that’s where his true ability on the field tends to show.
He totaled 88 tackles and led the team with six sacks on the year. With just six players on the field, that production tends to come from a middle linebacker but Kuntz did it from the defensive line.
“I like to do the hitting,” Kuntz said. “We’ve had a great middle linebacker (Chris Goss) the last two years and it came down to him and me for the best defensive player on the team.”
Offensively, Kuntz had normally played the running back position but was kept primarily on the defensive side of the ball in 2019. He was back on offense this year, but as an offensive lineman.
“I guess I surprised everyone with how well I can catch,” Kuntz said.
It all came down to what King knew he could do with his standout senior. Having known the kid for nearly a decade, King had every bit of confidence that he would succeed in any situation in which he could make an impact.
And Kuntz proved him right. And by doing so, he made the 2020 season one that will be memorable not just for the coach or the community, but for the players and for the rest of their lives.
“Everyone is going to remember this year,” King said. “This has been an extremely bright spot in a year that has had very few positive moments for anybody.”
For a kid that went from slinging water to catching touchdown passes and making big plays on defense, the memories will stick around the program forever.
Myles Purchase didn’t see the offensive side of the ball until the final two games of the season. It seems like a silly notion, ridiculous even, that someone with the talent level of Purchase was contained to one side of the ball.
But the thing is, he was really good at what he did. Purchase grew up loving the game and played running back all the way through his freshman year. But as a sophomore, when he made his way onto the Cherry Creek varsity roster, his focused shifted to defense.
Three seasons later, Purchase ended his career as a two-time Class 5A state champion and the 2020 5A player of the year. That path began when the 2018 season began and purchase was lined up at cornerback.
“In the summer going into my sophomore year I started transitioning into a defensive back,” Purchase said. “I started talking to the defensive coordinator about playing corner and I ended up starting my first varsity game as a corner in my sophomore year.”
It didn’t take long for him to get noticed. He ended the season picking off six passes, three of which came in a playoff win over Ralston Valley.
He became more of a threat in his junior year when he recorded four pick-sixes. Not only was he creating turnovers, he was directly turning them into points. At that point he also started contributing on the offensive side of the ball as he rushed for 125 yards and three touchdown through the course of the season.
“There are some really good football players in the state, but I think Myles Purchase is the best all-around football player in the state of Colorado,” Cherry Creek coach Dave Logan said prior to the state championship game. “I’ve coached him for four years and there’s not a lot that he can’t do.”
(PaulDiSalvoPhotography.com)
Purchase scored the first two touchdowns for Cherry Creek in the 21-0 win over Valor Christian. He rushed for 153 yards, showing the full depth of his versatility on the football field.
“It feels good to be able to make plays on the other side of the ball,” Purchase said.
It’s likely his future coaches at Iowa State were paying attention on that particular day. Despite his level of ability and the fact that in-state coaches were constantly looking at players within the Bruins’ program, Purchase wasn’t a high priority.
His dream going up was to play college football at the University of Colorado where his dad, Brian, was a student-athlete. But he wasn’t getting any attention from Boulder or Fort Collins. Rather than dwelling, he simply moved on with his life.
“They really didn’t take the time to recruit me,” Purchase said. “I had to look past them.”
His excitement about playing at Iowa State is clear when he talks about his football future. Playing in three state championship games and winning two of them was a big boost to his his resumé, but he still feels he has so much to prove at the next level.
“Anyone in the world would want to be in my position, to prove people wrong, and make big time plays in a big time conference” he said. “I just can’t wait to put my skill set on showcase in Ames. It’s a big opportunity and I can’t wait to get out there.”
When Kory Tacha was a kid, he spent time watching the Limon Badgers rattle off three straight Class 1A football titles.
He was born in Limon and the local high school team played a big part in developing his love of the game. All these years later, he paid the program back and leaves his own chapter in a rich football history.
He played a crucial role in the Badgers claiming three straight titles — they he watched them do it as a kid — and for the second straight year, his efforts earned him 1A player of the year honors.
Not bad considering that he and his teammates spent a good chunk of 2020 wondering if they would even get on the football field at all. The championship win and the postseason honors just felt different this year than they did before.
“This year was probably the most special since it was my senior year and we went through all the stuff we did with basketball (ending early) and missing out on baseball and track,” Tacha said. “Finally getting back to a little bit of normalcy, start playing again and then being able to do something with the opportunity; it was more special to win this year than the last two.”
Tacha was very on-brand with his play this season. He didn’t lead the Badgers in rushing yards at 740, that honor belonged to Jeremiah Leeper with 839. But he did lead the team in rushing touchdowns, including the first touchdown in Limon’s 28-0 win over Strasburg in the 1A state title game.
(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)
Numbers are certainly one thing, but what made Tacha so valuable this year was his steady demeanor, even in the most adverse times.
“The thing that I think he brings is that quiet calmness or confidence, however you want to say it,” coach Mike O’Dwyer said. “As long as we can go out there and be on the field, he’d say that we’re going to be ok.”
That comes from taking the things O’Dwyer has told him to heart. The Badgers were hit with a team quarantine because of a COVID-19 related issue with two weeks remaining in the season. That meant that their next game on the docket was the first round of the playoffs where shaking off rust isn’t an option.
The team had to be ready to go after two weeks of no practice and no play.
“Coach always told us to control our controlables and everything else will take care of itself,” Tacha said. “That was something we couldn’t really control.”
But they got through it. Tacha rushed for 63 yards in the first-round win over Holyoke. He scored a rushing and receiving touchdown to help the set the tone.
Leeper led the way against Wray but it was Tacha who got the Badgers off to a fast start against Strasburg. He broke for a 77-yard touchdown and Limon never looked back.
Two hours later, the Badgers were holding up their third consecutive state title and state record 20th overall. And perhaps there was a kid watching that moment and dreaming of the day where he, like Tacha, can help lead his hometown team to another historic run.
“I hope we leave a big legacy,” Tacha said. “I grew up in Limon and when we went on our run in 2003, 2004 and 2005, I looked up to those guys and now (some) are my coaches. I’ve looked up to them ever since I was little.”
Sometimes, the most amazing feats can results in just a few simple actions. That’s how Sanford’s Kelton Gartrell explains the staggering numbers he put up in 2020.
Gartrell averaged over 165 rushing yards per game, but more impressively he averaged 10.4 yards per carry. If he touched the ball, there was a good chance that Sanford was getting a first down.
At season’s end, Gartrell was voted the 8-man player of the year. He and his teammates advanced to the state championship game before losing to Sedgwick County. But Gartell shined in his time at the Neta and Eddie DeRose ThunderBowl.
He ran for 207 yards and four touchdowns and did so by trusting his teammates just as they trusted him.
“It’s easy for for me to play hard for them,” Gartrell said. “I’ve been playing football with them for a long time. They’re my teammates and my best friends. If they can just block that one person, I’ll do the rest. If they can do their part, I can do mine.”
Gartrell ran for more than 200 yards three times in 2020. He got everyone’s attention in the state championship game by breaking a pair of long touchdown runs that gave Sanford an early edge over Sedgwick County, a team that has been nothing short of dominant for the last six seasons.
“Sedgwick County has a bunch of athletes that are big, strong and fast,” Sanford coach Joe Cary said. “That just went to prove what kind of athlete Kelton is, that he can break loose and get over 200 yards on a team like that. It speaks levels of what he’s capable of doing.”
(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)
The jump from Gartrell’s sophomore season to his junior season in numbers came in big part thanks to his work ethic in the offseason. He made sure to hit a solid weightlifting program and took advantage of every opportunity to get better.
The results showed once the season started in early October and Gartrell was able to perform his role on the field.
“I worked really hard this offseason, pumping iron there at the start of the summer,” Gartrell said. “The difference between my sophomore and junior years was insane. I’m hoping to stick with the same program and see the same benefit from this year to next year.”
And it didn’t take long for next year to enter into his mind. When the all-state teams were announced last week, Cary lobbed Gartrell a phone call to congratulate him on player of the year honors, but reminded him that there is still work to be done for 2021. Gartrell was way ahead of his coach.
“I said don’t be content with what you’ve done this year because you have to work twice as hard to be as good next year,” Cary said. “He said ‘Coach, you know I will.’ The mindset the kid has about being better and not being content with what he’s done is unreal.”
What makes him all the better is when Gartrell eyes his goals for next year and they’re not focused on individual accolades.
The taste of getting to the state title game was so good that Gartrell is aiming to get his team right back there and come away with a much better result than this year.
“I still need a ring,” he said. “The ring is what I’m chasing next year. Hopefully I can be the player of the year again, but if I don’t and I get a ring, I’m good with that. Winning a state championship is the goal now.”
To accomplish that goal, he’ll focus on doing his job while allowing his teammates to do theirs.
Zane Rankin makes watching football fun. The Lamar quarterback was one of the most highlight worthy players on the field during the weekend in which all seven state football championship games were contested at the Neta and Eddie DeRose ThunderBowl at CSU-Pueblo.
This season, he has shown to be a special player in all of Class 2A. His ability to improvise and somehow come away with a positive result led Lamar to the 2A state championship game. It had been 57 years since Lamar had last played for a football tile.
And Rankin was a big part of the reason they played for the title and even had a shot at winning it. For that effort, he was named the 2A player of the year.
More of a gunslinger than a traditional quarterback, Rankin’s biggest strength is ability to escape bad situations, even if it gives the Lamar coaching staff a scare in the process.
“There have been a lot of times where I’ll snap the ball and run to one side of the field and turn backwards and run 10 more yards to the other side of the field and throw the ball away or finally get up field,” Rankin said. “You can just tell all those guys are over there holding their breath, hoping I don’t get hit for a 20-yard loss.”
The crazy thing is that even if that were to happen, Rankin might be one of the most mentally tough players in the entire state, regardless of classification.
(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)
That was evident all the way back in a Week 1 win over Elizabeth. Rankin didn’t overly thrive in the passing game, going just 8-for-17 for 164 yards and a touchdown. He also threw three interceptions.
But at no point did he seem phased. He broke the huddle with the same energy all night and fully expected to deliver a positive result on each snap that he took.
“He has a true gunslinger mentality when you think about NFL quarterbacks and quarterbacks that just go out there and live in the moment,” coach Jason Tice said. “They don’t dwell in the past. They just focus on making a big play on the next play.”
He battles. It’s something that’s ingrained in him and it’s not exclusive to football. Rankin claimed the 3A 132-pound wrestling state title in 2018 and 2019 and when football season began this year, he began playing both sides of the ball.
“That was the first time in his career he had to play full-time both ways and a lot of special teams,” Tice said. “The physical exhaustion that he and some of his teammates would experience, I think being a quarterback and being that exhausted was a big challenge for him. But he’s been there before.”
Just being there before isn’t enough. His whole style of competition is about having been there and learning to turn adversity into success when things aren’t going his way.
“Things aren’t always going to go your way,” Rankin said. “There’s always going to be that adversity and it’s how you choose to handle that adversity and what you do with that whether you break down and quit or keep going. That’s something I’ve always tried to do.”
He tries on a single football play, through the course of a full game or wrestling match, or just in life as he and his friends have tried to navigate the trickiness of a COVID-19 fueled year. It’s how he got Lamar into the state title game and it’s how he’ll attack the rest of his life from here on out. And it’s going to be a fun ride.
Loveland running back Zack Rakowsky doesn’t fit the stereotypical build of a standout football player.
His measurables according to the team’s roster on MaxPreps has him listed at 5-foot-10 and weighing 150 pounds.
Rakowsky isn’t a physically imposing kid — at least until it’s game time. He shined for Loveland all year, eventually taking Class 4A player of the year honors. And when watching him on the field, it’s clear that he’s example No. 1 that it’s not about the size of the dog in the fight, but rather the size of the fight in the dog.
“What most people don’t realize is how well he runs the ball inside the tackles,” Loveland coach Jeff Mauck said. “He initiates contact. Even though he has a small frame, some people just pack punch or a thud when they hit, he initiates contact and takes it to the defensive player.”
Opposing defenses aren’t dealing with a scat back who works well in open space when Rakowsky gets the ball. His physicality ranks up there with any large-frame back in the state. Combined with his competitiveness and overall toughness, Rakowsky was one of several factors that led to Loveland’s 42-6 win over Palmer Ridge in the 4A state championship game.
Loveland’s goal was simple on the very first drive: establish the tone and run as many plays as possible to try and get a gauge on how the Bears were going to attack defensively. Eighteen plays and two 4th-down conversions later, Loveland had a 7-0 lead and never looked back.
“After we scored the touchdown I remember looking over at their defense and they had no idea what just happened,” Rakowsky said. “They were exhausted and really frustrated. After that (first) touchdown, I was very confident that it was going to end in our favor.”
Rakowsky ended the night rushing for 169 yards and three touchdowns. He also picked off two passes to help on the defensive side of the ball.
He erased any doubt that size in his case mattered in how he plays the game. His mindset on how he approaches the game has been far more vital to his success at Loveland it will be every bit as vital to his success at the college level.
(Dennis Pleuss/Jeffco Athletics)
“I’ve been around sports a lot in my life and it causes everything in my life to be competitive,” Rakowsky said. “I think that drive that gets you to want to win; there’s nothing like it.”
And he wants to win.
It was clear in the regular season finale, a de facto win-or-go-home game against Skyline, that he wasn’t ready for his season to be over.
That translated directly into the playoffs where he rushed for at least 180 yards against both Broomfield and top-seeded Dakota Ridge. Heading into the state championship showdown with Palmer Ridge, Mauck was comfortable singing Rakowsky’s praises to anyone who would listen.
“I told everybody and I told (the staff at) CSU-Pueblo that he would be the best player on the field,” Mauck said. “He has a giant chip on his shoulder and he’s going to prove to everyone what he can do. He’s electric.”
When it comes to electricity, Rakowsky may look like just a spark. But he’ll provide a jolt that opposing players will feel long after the game has ended.
