AURORA — Brent Schwarz pitched a complete-game, two-hit shutout as second-ranked Regis Jesuit baseball beat Chaparral 13-0 on Wednesday.
Four different Raiders had two RBIs, including a 2-for-2, performance from Justin Thaxton that included a home run.
AIR FORCE ACADEMY — It took exactly 63 seconds to stave off devastation.
Centaurus had led the whole way against Air Academy in Tuesday afternoon’s girls lacrosse game matching the top two teams from this week’s CHSAANow.com ranking. But with 16:41 remaining, No. 1 Air Academy jumped on a turnover and took the lead for the first time at 8-7.
The moment had every potential to be back-breaking for the Warriors.
Yet Centaurus, ranked No. 2, won the ensuing draw and Sarah Brown eventually parked her talented self just outside the Air Academy net with her back to the goalie. She deked right, left, right, left and right again, before finding an opening and knotting the game at 8 with 15:38 to go.
No disaster. No broken backs. 63 seconds.
The Warriors would score nine of the game’s final 10 goals en route to a 17-9 win over the top-ranked Kadets.
“This team is really mentally tough,” Centaurus coach Genny Horning said afterward. “That kind of stuff, honestly, it doesn’t phase them in the negative. It encourages them to just go get the ball back. They’ve just got that shift: ‘I want the ball, I want the ball.’”
Said Brown, who scored five goals in the win: “Before every practice, every game, we get in a circle, Genny talks and we get rid of anything that’s happening outside of lacrosse. We focus on what we want to do, what goals we have, and what we want to accomplish.
“I think it really helps — we don’t let (anything) get us down. If they score, we’re going to answer back. And that’s what we do.”
Centaurus is now 7-1, 6-0 against in-state competition. Air Academy, which got two goals each from Kayley Holmes and Emily Trousil, is now 5-1 — 3-1 against Colorado teams.
The Warriors led 3-0 and 6-3 in the first half before Air Academy stormed back to tie it at 6 just before the half.
At the break, “We talked about the little things,” Horning said. “Anytime there’s a big game, there’s a little bit of that amped-up energy. And we just weren’t executing the finer things.”
As the second half dawned, Centaurus seemed like a different team. The Warriors got outstanding play from goalie Kayli Weiss, and Brown dazzled in the open field.
Among Brown’s goals was a long run with 14 minutes to play which had Horning quietly, matter-of-factly mutter to no one in particular on the sideline, “She’s gone.” Of course, there was her goal to stave off Air Academy’s momentum and knot things at 8 a little bit earlier. And then there was her sneaky-smart play with 6:26 remaining.
Brown, a senior and University of Colorado recruit, approached a heavily-defended net and feigned pulling the ball back out toward midfield. Instead, she quickly reversed field to find no one between her and the net. It resulted in her 28th goal this season. (She’s played six games.)
“That’s what the girls on my team call the ‘Sarah move,’” Brown said. “They initially think once you turn your back, you’re going out, but if you turn right around — you’ve got to notice where your defenders are, and that’s what I try to always do.”
But it wasn’t all Brown. Sarah Myres also scored five goals, while Olivia Holmes had three and was excellent all over the field.
Then there was Weiss, who made a number of key saves. The biggest came on MacEllen McDonough’s free position shot with 10:14 to go. At the time, Centaurus led 11-8.
Weiss got a piece of the shot with her stick and Holmes quickly scooped up the ground ball. She pushed the ball down the field, and it led to Andrea Kim’s second goal of the game.
“I had a lot of energy, and I really wanted to get the ball, I wanted to attack the ball and just get the ball in my stick so I could bring it down to our offensive end,” Weiss said of the save. “It rebounded off my stick, and Olivia Holmes picked it up. It was just a beautiful transition down the field. Everyone just really executed. It turned into a pretty play.”
That made it 12-9. Ultimately, Centaurus scored the game’s final seven goals.
“We can get on a run,” Brown said. “Our confidence, obviously, goes up and then we just get in a groove. We’re like, ‘You’re open. We see you.’ It just clicks. We just work really well together when that happens.”
Centaurus now owns two wins over No. 1 teams this season. The Warriors beat then top-ranked Cherry Creek on March 20.
“Air Academy’s an amazing team. Cherry Creek had a great team,” Horning said. “We’ve got (No.7) Kent coming up, we’ve got (No. 4) Arapahoe. We’ve got a lot of big games coming up.”
Centaurus reached the title game for the first time last season. They want to get back.
“We don’t want to peak too early,” Weiss said, “but it’s definitely exciting moving forward. Just keep getting better and keep improving and really bring it as far as we can into playoffs.”
PUEBLO — The Pueblo West baseball team seemed prime to write another chapter Tuesday in what was becoming a Cinderella South-Central League for the Cyclones.
Canon City, however, had other ideas.
Logan Nethercot collected four hits and pitchers Trey Owen and Dante Teigen stymied West’s offense, powering the Tigers to a 12-2 upset in an S-CL game at Andenucio Field.
“This was a very big win for us,” said the senior Owen, who had solid outing, allowing just two runs before being relieved in the fourth inning. “We stayed focused and made the routine plays.”
Canon City improved to 6-2 overall and more importantly put itself back in the league race with a 1-2 record. The Cyclones dropped to 5-4-1 overall and to 3-1 in league. West, with a roster full of seniors, advanced to its first Class 4A state title baseball game in school history a year ago before losing to Mountain View 7-6 in eight innings.
“Our mission (Tuesday) was to get back in the S-CL race,” Ritter said. “If you go 0-3, you make it real tough on yourself in this league. The kids did what they had to do to come out and get a win. We have been finding ways to win and this was a new way for us to win. We haven’t scored a lot of runs this year and we got some timely hits and scored some runs.”
Canon City lost to upstart Centennial (12-5) and South (7-0) in its first two S-CL games.
Those losses were a distant memory against the Cyclones as the Tigers roared out to a 5-2 lead after two innings off of West starting pitcher Dallas Dwyer.
“We needed to just bounce back and keep doing our thing and that’s what we were able to do,” said Nethercot, a 6-foot, 185-pound senior. “We played relaxed and we had a heck of a lot of fun (Tuesday).”
The Tigers pounded out 15 hits off of Dwyer and relievers Cam Brinkley and Zack Maize.
Trailing 5-2, the Cyclones had a grand opportunity to cut into the Tigers’ lead when they loaded the bases with no outs in fourth inning.
West failed to seize the moment.
The Cyclones’ Josh Drury was picked off of third base and the next two batters were retired in order.
Wasted opportunities became a theme for the potent West offense. In the fifth and seventh frames, the Cyclones also loaded the bases and came up empty on the scoreboard.
“We were just not ready to play at all,” veteran West coach Dan Sanchez said. “They threw out some slower pitchers and we hit better velocity, but we just have to make adjustments. We were just mentally flat and they beat us in all aspects of the game. We just deserved to get our butt kicked because we were not ready to play.”
Tim Ritter, Canon’s coach, knows his squad needs to use the West victory for a springboard as it also plays S-CL games against Pueblo East (Thursday) and Pueblo Central (Saturday) this week.
“We need to focus on East and then just take things one game at a time from there,” Ritter said. “We got ourselves back in the league mix.”
LITTLETON — It was a game befitting what are considered to be the two best Class 5A soccer teams in the state.
True to form, at least this time, No. 1 prevailed as Mountain Vista overcame a stiff Rock Canyon defense to defeat the Jaguars 3-1 and secure the top spot in the Continental League.
For much of the first half, it was No. 2 Rock Canyon playing as if it had something to prove. The Jaguars’ offensive push kept the ball on the Mountain Vista side of the field for better than three quarters of the half.
That was until Megan Massey took a pass on the right side and tapped it with her right foot from 10 yards out, just sneaking it inside the right post to put the Golden Eagles on the board.
They nearly added another with 30 seconds remaining in the half on a shot that hit the right post.
What started out as a test of defenses turned into an offensive attack by both teams in the second half The Jaguars again took the early initiative, but it didn’t last long. The Golden Eagles’ Mallory Pugh sent a pass on front of the Jaguars’ goal. The shot attempt was stopped but Pugh was there for the tap-in rebound with her team-leading eighth goal of the season and a 2-0 Mountain Vista lead less than four minutes into the half.
It was only the third goal given up by Rock Canyon all season.
“I feel like our mentality was the thing,” Pugh said of the difference in the Golden Eagles’ play in the second half. But that didn’t mean the Jaguars were going to give up without a fight.
A short time later, Rock Canyon’s Kacie Young beat a pair of defenders and slipped a shot to the left side of the goal, again cutting the Jaguars’ deficit to one. It was Young’s team-high seventh goal of the season.
But Pugh, a sophomore midfielder, sealed the deal with less than six minutes remaining on a nifty spin move to score on a shot inside the left post.
She gave credit to her opponents.
“I think they were playing really good soccer,” she said of the Golden Eagles’ inability to solve the Rock Canyon defense early.
“Our backs had to figure out what their striker was doing,” Mountain Vista coach Theresa Echtermeyer said. “It took us a little but to sort it out.”
While Mountain Vista and Rock Canyon can probably expect to see each other again in the playoffs (the Golden Eagles beat the Jaguars in last year’s state title game, the third straight year the teams have squared off in the playoffs), both teams have a lot of soccer to play to get to that point.
But give the early nod to the defending state champions.
COLORADO SPRINGS — A total of 21 points separated No. 1 Cheyenne Mountain and No. 2 Sand Creek in this week’s CHSAANow.com rankings. It took 97 minutes and 52 seconds of a highly-contested game Tuesday night at Cheyenne Mountain High School to show why those 21 points exist.
The Indians and Scorpions held each other without a goal through all of regulation and all of one extra time period. The game appeared destined to end in a tie until junior forward Hannah Gerdin struck the back right corner of the net from 30 yards out to give the Indians a 1-0 win.
“I wish I could’ve (done it earlier),” Gerdin said after the game. “I just saw my opportunity and took it, the goalie was out of her position and we were tired of overtime so I just did what I had to do.”
The game-winning goal came after a see-saw battle that saw Cheyenne Mountain’s vaunted defense limit the opportunities for Sand Creek before finding the back of the net over an hour and a half after the opening kick.
The Indians saw several scoring opportunities in the first half, mostly as a result of dominating the time of possession. The defenders kept the early Scorpion offensive pushes away from the net and goaltender Hunter Pfeifer didn’t see a true scoring opportunity the entire half.
It was a much different story on the end of the field. The Indians kept pressing the attack, challenging Scorpions goalie Karlene Pappert several times, but were unable to convert those chances into a goal. Forward Hannah Gerdin was able to sneak by the Scorpions defense twice late in the half, but both shots were corralled by Pappert.
“I think we weren’t expecting them to be that strong and to come out really hard,” Gerdin said. “We just couldn’t work together to get the ball in the beginning.”
The lopsided time of possession in the first half wouldn’t hold in the latter part of the game. Both teams began to find a rhythm offensively, even if they weren’t netting goals. While attacking the Scorpions’ goal, a blocked shot was picked up by Indians midfielder Summer Halle who had a look at a wide-open net. Her shot was deflected by a Scorpions defender.
On the ensuing corner kick, Halle once again had a look at the net but the shot was defended by Pappert. At that point, the game became much more of a back and forth affair than it was in the first half as the Scorpions found a way to attack the Indians the goal, but ultimately to no avail.
“I feel like obviously we got tired and they were rolling four or five subs at a time and we weren’t subbing at all,” Sand Creek coach Craig Decker said. “I said before the game that our starting 11 can play with any starting 11 and we showed that tonight.”
Regulation ended with no score and before Gerdin’s game-winning shot, the Indians had other chances to walk away with the win. Thalia Kusulas and Kyra Darr both had shots right in front of the Scorpions net, but Kusulas pushed hers wide while Pappert smothered Darr’s attempt.
The next extra time period began and although there were fewer opportunities, Gerdin made the most of the one chance she had, ending the game and likely keeping the Indians atop the 4A rankings.
But it’s not about standings or rankings for this Indians team. Coach Tomas Martinez simply wants his team to make the playoffs and to see tough competition en route. Even if they are capable of doing so, finishing with a perfect season is far from a goal for Martinez and his team.
“We haven’t had a blowout game all year and we don’t want one,” Martinez said. “At this point we’ll take close games all the time and I’ll take a couple losses here and there to make us better for the playoffs.”
Cheyenne Mountain is back in action Thursday when they No. 5 Lewis-Palmer. Sand Creek will also be back in action Thursday when they travel to Air Academy.
HIGHLANDS RANCH — Ralston Valley got six innings of shutout baseball from Jordan Holloway, and the senior also went 2-for-4 with an RBI as the Mustangs beat Valor Christian on Tuesday.
Holloway struck out five against just one walk in the win, and allowed four hits. Teammate Jacob Knipp was 3-for-4 with 2 RBIs.
Ralston Valley, ranked No. 4 in 5A, improves to 9-1. Valor, 4A’s No. 3, is now 7-4.
AURORA — Cherry Creek coach Marc Johnson won the 700th game of his career as his Bruins beat Overland 6-4 on Tuesday.
Cody Wood pitched all seven innings in the win, striking out six against two walks. He allowed four earned runs. The Bruins’ Aeneas Roberson and Jack Gillett were each 3-for-4.
Overland’s Joe Slocum went 2-for-3 with three RBIs and a home run.
HIGHLANDS RANCH — No. 1 Mountain Vista beat rival Rock Canyon, ranked No. 2 in 5A girls soccer, 3-1 on Tuesday.
Curt Wilson, current president of the CHSAA Board of Directors, has been named the Colorado High School Principal of the Year by the Colorado Association of School Executives.
Wilson, 47, is principal at Centauri High School in La Jara. He was a finalist for the award last year.
“I cannot articulate how proud I am of our school, our kids, our staff and our community,” Wilson said on Wednesday. “Because this is them. It is a unified team effort.
“Individual accolades are appreciated, more than I can articulate,” he added. “But I am cognizant that this is just a reflection of so many good people, and that includes the kids that come to Centauri High School everyday and their accomplishments, their attitude, their willingness to strive for excellence. This award is nothing but a reflection on their efforts, and — along with good colleagues — I appreciate and love every single one of them.”
CASE gives the award annually as a recognition of “leaders who have succeeded in providing high-quality opportunities for students.” The process starts with a nomination, then a application from each candidate. An interview committee selects the winner.
Columbine’s Frank DeAngelis, set to retire at the end of this school year, won the award in 2013.
“(Wilson) has a great passion for success in education. He’s all about kids,” said Elizabeth principal Greg Wieman, who sits on the board for the Colorado Association of Secondary School Principals and oversaw the interviews for the award.
As Colorado’s winner, Wilson is now eligible to win National High School Principal of the Year, an award which will be announced later this year.
Wilson served on CHSAA’s Board of Directors prior to his appointment as board president this school year. He remains the District 8 representative on the board, though a new rep will be appointed for 2014-15. Wilson will be board president through 2015.
“The CHSAA is honored and excited to hear that Curt Wilson has been selected as the Principal of the year,” CHSAA commissioner Paul Angelico said Wednesday. “All of us that have worked with Curt have come to know him as an outstanding educator that stands for integrity, honor and high standards while keeping the needs of kids as his primary concern. We are proud and honored to be associated with Mr. Wilson and wish him a hearty congratulations on this appointment.”
CHSAA board president is one of many hats Wilson wears. In addition to Cenaturi’s principal, he also serves as district assessment coordinator and has absorbed various administrative roles within the North Conejos School District.
“Many jobs in the district had shifted because of some changes,” Wilson said. “So I’ve had the support of a staff and a high school office that has allowed me to fulfill other responsibilities beyond high school principal. And a family, a wife and kids, that have sacrificed and supported me to make that happen.”
As is his habit, Wilson deflected credit for the award. Wednesday, he continually pointed to his family and Centauri’s students, staff and community as reasons for the award.
“That’s really where the action is: a student who’s willing to get it, teachers who do far beyond the contract, and a community that has supported those type of efforts,” Wilson said.
He also pointed to his experience with other teachers and administrators around the state.
“Through my service as a principal and through my service with CHSAA,” Wilson said, “I have learned much from some superior top-shelf people. And you emulate what’s good in them.
“Being exposed to CHSAA has been an integral part to that. Because I emulate what is good, effective. It makes you grow. And for that, I am appreciative. In this state of Colorado, we have the best individuals working with our kids.”
WESTMINSTER — Mountain Range senior Noah Draper threw the first seven-inning no-hitter in school history, striking out 18 batters while walking only one in the process in a 9-0 win over Poudre.
Draper and fellow senior Jake Walker both had three hits in the game.