AURORA — The 2015 CHSAA Hall of Fame class was inducted in a ceremony on Wednesday.

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(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)

COLORADO SPRINGS — Vista Ridge was in trouble. After holding a 20-point lead over Sand Creek in the third quarter, the Wolves were down two with less than 10 seconds left. And it was Sand Creek’s ball.

Robert Fernandez, rather than fouling, was able to steal the ball and find an open player, sophomore Raymon Harper.

He fired up the 3-pointer and after dancing on the rim for what felt like an eternity, the ball trickled through the cylinder, sending the home crowd into a frenzy and giving Vista Ridge a 63-62 win over the Scorpions.

Administrators from both schools had to step in to prevent the celebration and interaction from both student sections from getting out of control, but once tensions eased, it hit home that the Wolves (12-4 overall, 5-2 Pikes Peak Athletic Conference) are indeed a force in Class 4A.

“As a high school game goes, with big plays being made, that was as good as it gets,” Vista Ridge coach Joe Hites said. “Everyone that came in here, standing room only, got their money’s worth.”

That they did.

Sand Creek (9-6, 4-3) struggled to find a rhythm early and found themselves in a quick 19-9 hole after the first quarter. Things didn’t get much better as the combination of Hunter Maldonado and Noah Beatty paced the Wolves offensive as the game inched to halftime.

The one-two punch of D’Shawn Schwartz and Jordan Phillips just weren’t able to get a consistent offensive set going for the Scorpions.

“What I have found is that we are a defensive team,” Sand Creek coach Mark Bowers said. “When we play defense and our defense creates offense, it’s unbelievable. And we didn’t start playing defense until the second half.”

But it didn’t seem like it at first. Maldonado knocked down an early 3-pointer in the third quarter then went on a run where he scored 11 consecutive points for his team that helped the Wolves build a 47-27 lead.

“Usually everything’s falling, but I have to give Sand Creek credit, they always had a man on me,” Maldonado said. “Coach just put me in positions to get an open shot and I hit them.”

But it was a much different story in the last eight minutes of the game. Maldonado went cold and the Scorpions slowly started crawling back into the game. With the Scorpions up 55-45, Schwartz scored five points on two quick possessions to make it a five-point game. He sank a couple of free throws to keep it close at 58-56.

And then things got crazy.

Beatty drove and hit a quick layup to regain a four-point lead for Vista Ridge. Phillips took the ball straight down the floor and hit a 3-pointer to cut the lead to one.

Harper was fouled, but missed free throws and the Scorpions came away with the rebound. Phillips hit another 3-pointer to make it 62-60, giving Sand Creek its first lead of the game. After calling timeout, the Wolves were looking to set up a play to tie or win the game, but turned the ball over on an errant pass.

As Sand Creek inbounded the ball, that’s when it was tipped and found its way into Harper’s hands who fired it toward the hoop, knocking down the most important shot of his young career.

“I would say it’s the top one,” Harper said. “People started rushing out of the stands and it just felt like a dream.”

But no need to pinch him. The game was indeed a reality. The Vista Ridge win sets an interesting week for the team as it travels to Falcon and Lewis-Palmer for their next two games.

The Scorpions will have their chance at revenge when they host the Wolves on Feb. 19 in the regular season finale for both teams.

More photos. (Matt Mathewes/MVPSportsPics.com)

DENVER — Denver East High School was the place to be as a showdown between two of Colorado’s top 10 ranked squads pitted No.6 Denver East against No.4 Regis Jesuit (13-2) Wednesday night.

The game lived up to expectations as it came down to the wire, but Regis Jesuit was able to prevail for the 61-58 victory.

The game began as any spectator would wish for when two heavyweight squads collide; a back and forth affair with both teams trading punch after punch.

Both teams had four players get on the board in the first quarter while being led by their respective big men: Daytone Jennings of Denver East and Mark Reininger for Regis.

Midway through the second, Regis (14-2 overall) broke through as they found a rhythm offensively with fluid ball movement to go along with sound pick and roll execution. The Raiders consistently knifed their way through the Angels’ zone, allowing them to strike on an 8-3 scoring run on the backs of guards Elijah Martinez and Connor Hobbs.

“They had their way with us. They had their way with us all night,” Denver East coach Rudy Carey stated in disgust after the loss Wednesday night. “Their guards kicked our guards’ butts.”

Coming out of the half down 33-27, Denver East (10-6) seemingly clamped down defensively, as they found a way to disrupt the pick and roll game of Regis and halt ball movement. As a result, the third quarter practically became a track meet giving the advantage in this style of play to the Angels.

Denver East senior Deron Harrell flourished in the up-tempo pace of the third quarter as he alone injected life back into his team with a turnaround short-corner jumper over two Raiders for a quick deuce, following it up with a ferocious block the next sequence down on defense.

Harrell had help from Jennings as he converted a bucket and foul shot to get his team within one point heading into the fourth period, 42-41.

At that point, the East student section was back into the game and momentum seemed to be swinging with Regis limping into the final quarter of regulation, clinging to their minuscule lead.

To begin the fourth, it seemed as if the Angels would take command of the game as Kwane Marble nailed a three to not only keep his team’s momentum alive, but also give his team the lead since early in the first period.

Regis on the other hand didn’t panic, as they cashed in on two offensive possessions to take the lead once again. From there, it was back to a heavyweight bout with each team one-upping each other each time down on offense.

Ultimately, the game came down to poise in the face of pressure and panic and Regis answered the call every time throughout Wednesday night’s game.

After taking the lead for the second time in the fourth period, East unraveled as they fouled Regis in a scrum for the ball on the ground, sending Raiders into the one-and-one bonus at the 4:53 mark.

As the players were lining up at the line, a technical foul was called on East senior Hassani Moore giving Regis all the momentum – and they delivered.

The Raiders knocked down three of the four free throws and added a two-point basket on the side-out possession, giving them a 54-49 lead with three to go in the contest.

The Angels continued to make push after push to overcome the deficit late in the fourth quarter, their strongest attempt coming after a clutch three from Ian Osburn with 15.1 seconds left to get his squad within two. Although timely free throws by Regis and stout late game defense eventually led to the Angels falling, 61-58.

“It could’ve went either way, we were fortunate we had a one-point cushion,” Regis Head Coach Ken Shaw said. “We defended the three down there really well and we were fortunate to win the game.”

When asked how he remained calm under the pressure at the charity stripe late in the game, junior Connor Hobbs cited his practice preparation.

“(We) practice free throws every day,” he said. “I just had to go up there and focus. Focus is the main thing on free throws.”

DENVER — Fourth-ranked Regis Jesuit boys basketball beat No. 6 Regis Jesuit in a Class 5A game on Wednesday, 61-58.

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COLORADO SPRINGS — Pine Creek wrestling beat Rampart 66-12 in a dual meet on Thursday.

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COLORADO SPRINGS — Noah Hernandez scored four goals as No. 8 Denver East hockey beat Rampart 9-0 on Wednesday.

Andrew Nolan added two goals and two assists, while Max Bublitz had two goals and an assist.

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(Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)

AURORA — The much-anticipated vote about a change to the transfer rule never came to fruition at Thursday’s Legislative Council. Instead, it sparked a discussion that ultimately led to the creation of a subcommittee which will examine the transfer rule.

The Denver Prep League had submitted a proposal to simplify the transfer rule.

“The Denver Prep League brought this forward because we feel like there is a need for change,” said LeRoy Lopez, the athletic director at Lincoln.

Prior to the vote, though, Cherry Creek Schools district athletic director Larry Bull asked the Council to consider the creation of the subcommittee. He thanked the DPL “for bringing (the transfer rule) up and making some conversation,” and then said that the subcommittee could create “something that will work and is updated” and “makes sense.”

“The Association can take some time to process and take a look at things to make sound decisions and meet the needs of all schools,” Bull said.

The subcommittee proposal we met with overwhelming support, and 99 percent of the Legislative Council voted in favor of its creation. As a result, the DPL proposal was not put to a vote on Thursday.

“The membership needs to take a close look at the really very necessary transfer rule, but how to apply it in the 21st century, the way society lives today,” said CHSAA commissioner Paul Angelico.

He added the subcommittee would likely conduct surveys, and look at historical transfer data.

It’s possible the transfer rule subcommittee could bring something to the April Legislative Council meeting, but more likely is that they present to the All-School Summit in August, with breakout sessions on the rule. From there, the next opportunity to put something in front of the Legislative Council would be the meeting in January 2017.

It’s likely that the subcommittee will be comprised of somewhere around 12 people, Angelico said.

“We need all sizes of schools, in all ends of the state,” Angelico said. “The needs of schools in Colorado Springs are not the same of the needs of those in Denver, and those are not the same of the needs of Lamar.”

Further details about the subcommittee — including the members — will be announced by the CHSAA office at a later date.

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Notables

• With CHSAA commissioner Paul Angelico set to retire after the 2016-17 school year, Board president Eddie Hartnett discussed the process for finding his replacement. “Paul has helped define leadership, and inspire leaders of leaders,” Hartnett said. The Board has sought input from leagues and schools around the state about qualities and requirements for the next commissioner. Future information, including a timeline, will be announced in the near future.
• A proposal strengthening the requirements for CHSAA membership was overwhelmingly passed. Now, the process will take 24 months.
• CHSAA has extended its official ball supplier contract with Wilson.
• The CHSAA Hall of Fame inducted its 27th class on Wednesday night with eight new members.
• Baseball committee chair David Schuessler reminded the members that the new pitch-count rule goes into effect this spring.
• A proposal to change the way the 2A state cross country meets are scored failed. It sought to score four of six runners instead of the current three of six.

More coverage

• Football’s realignment and use of RPI was approved.
• The widespread use of RPI in other team sports was also approved.

Football committee chair Mike Krueger. (Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)

AURORA — Football league schedules are going to look vastly different in 2016 than they did last season.

During Thursday’s Legislative Council session, the proposed football league realignments (deemed the “waterfall alignment”) passed through a council vote, with 99 percent approving the football committee report.

Class 5A leagues are now officially divided based on a two-year average of teams’ total RPI. Other classes were divided with a combination of a waterfall and their geographical location.

The move for all sports to move to an RPI-based postseason selection process also passed Thursday.

“I’m excited for it, I think it’s going to more indicative of the final result than the Wild Card points,” CHSAA assistant commissioner Harry Waterman said. “Wild card served its purpose at the time, but it’s outdated now and I believe we have a better system.”

The general idea for the waterfall proposal was divide teams evenly throughout the state, using the RPI formula to determine league placing. The top seven teams in that ranking will each be placed into seven separate leagues. From there, teams will be snaked into leagues. So, No. 8 will be placed into the same league as No. 7; No. 9 will be with No. 6; No. 10 with No. 5, and so on — until all teams are placed into a league.

Also in 2016, all classes will move to a 16-team playoff field.

“With 5A, it was really important; it was the only one we could truly waterfall,” Waterman said. “In order to align with a 16-team bracket from 32, I think it was necessary to waterfall 5A, as the competitive balance wasn’t where we would’ve like it to be.”

In past years, 6-man has had an eight-team bracket while 5A has had a 32-team bracket. Every other class has held firm with 16 teams that qualify for the postseason.

The proposal was first introduced at the football committee meeting in August and the vote became official during Thursday’s meeting.

“The cool thing about standing up there was that I was trying get across that the document that was put before this body, came from this body,” football committee president Mike Krueger said. “Everybody had input, there was representation all over the state from all classifications.

This isn’t something that came before everybody today and had them thinking that some committee put together. The committee was an extension of the entire state.”

This will be the start of a new era for Colorado high school football. The RPI replaces the current wild card system. After the adoption of RPI by football, all sports began looking into using the system starting in the 2016-17 school year. Baseball will be the first sport to use RPI as they move to the format this spring.

“We’re a part of something bigger than football,” Krueger said. “We want to see kids that play baseball, softball and soccer compete and have fun. If it’s good for kids, it’s good for kids, period. It doesn’t matter what sport they play.”

The passing of RPI and the league alignments now brings a single, uniform process for football postseason selection. The playoff field will be determined by league champions and RPI, then a selection committee will build and seed the playoff bracket. A member of each conference will sit on the selection committee, but that member cannot be a coach.

“That’s the part that we’re going to have to wait and see,” Krueger said. “We’re excited because we anticipate that it’s going to go well and we think what we put together is good based on what was great about each classification and adopting aspects of all of them.”

The Legislative Council met on Thursday. (Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)

AURORA — The new RPI-based system for postseason qualification was passed by all team sports committees who presented reports at the Legislative Council on Thursday.

It will go into widespread effect with the 2016-17 school year, but will get its official start with the baseball season this spring.

“After looking at past results and evaluating the data of previous years, it’s definitely the way to go,” said Eddie Hartnett, the athletic director at Boulder who is the president of CHSAA’s Board of Directors. “It’s progressive, it’s going to be more fair.

“The formula is transparent, and anyone can look at it and understand it — whether it’s a student, a parent, a coach, or an athletic director,” Hartnett added. “It doesn’t have to be, ‘Well, there’s some magic formula out there that nobody understands.’ And that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to be transparent with the entire membership.”

The RPI (Rating Percentage Index) system will give postseason qualification a similar approach across the board. It is also an objective way to select teams that make the bracket, as it is a formula which weights the relative strength of teams in each classification.

The specific formula to be used will be comprised of 25 percent of a team’s winning percentage, 50 percent of the winning percentage of a team’s opponents, and 25 percent of the winning percentage of the opponents of a team’s opponents.

The RPI system was a mandate that came from CHSAA’s Board of Directors in August. That group was acting on a which from the membership to standardize the way of approaching the postseason across all team sports. (Full details of the RPI system, including a list of answers to frequently asked questions, is available here.)

Starting with baseball’s season this spring, all RPI data will be posted on CHSAANow.com. A quick reference to that data will be linked from CHSAARPI.com. The plan is to have those data feeds update nightly.

Baseball’s desire to move away from the much-maligned Wild Card points was so strong that the committee recommended the immediate move to the RPI this spring.

Originally, the committee also recommended not counting out-of-state games, but changed its position prior to the Legislative Council meeting. The result was a vote which split the use of RPI in baseball into two questions: Should the RPI be used this spring? And should out-of-state games count?

On the first question, the answer was an overwhelming Yes. Seventy-six percent of the Legislative Council voted in favor of moving on RPI.

But the Council also voted to include out-of-state games in the formula. And that fact likely helped the immediate use of RPI pass on Thursday.

The RPI system also replaces Wild Card points in football, which have been used for a number of years. It replaces various other systems in field hockey, soccer, softball and volleyball.

Football’s RPI system will use a modified for account for classification. All other sports will not.

Ultimately, the approval process went very smoothly across the board.

“The reason why it went smooth today, there wasn’t a lot of resistance, or there weren’t a lot of questions or concerns, is that people felt empowered to address that situation for a long period of time,” Hartnett said. “Committees went out, educated people. Change is scary, and in the beginning I think people were afraid of change, but as we educated the population and said, ‘This is where we want to go for the future, and this is going to work,’ the membership’s trusting us to give it a try.”

RPI still needs to be approved by basketball, hockey and lacrosse at the April Legislative Council.

(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)

COLORADO SPRINGS — On a night that free throws weren’t friendly to either Widefield or Sierra, it’s fitting that their game Tuesday night was decided at the charity stripe.

C.J. Jennings knocked down two and Kion Wingo added one more in the waning seconds to give the Stallions a 65-62 win over the Gladiators.

But the game could’ve gone either way if only one of the teams would connect on their foul shots. Widefield (9-7 overall, 5-2 Class 4A Colorado Springs Metro League) sank 19 of 32 of their free throws while Sierra (12-4, 7-0) sank only eight of 20, a disappointing 40 percent, in their winning effort.

“Free throws are all mental,” Sierra coach Terry Dunn said. “We are much better free throw shooters than that.”

Dunn also believes that his team is much cleaner team than what they showed on Tuesday. The Stallions had difficulty knocking down early field goals and Tre Pierre scored 10 quick points for the Gladiators as they jumped out to a quick 14-8 lead.

Sierra finished the first quarter on a 12-4 run to take a 20-18 lead. Jennings exploded in the last four minutes of the quarter, scoring 11 of his team-high 17 in that stretch.

“It’s always a good sign to have someone to go to when we need to score,” Jennings said. “I feel like I can be that person to step up when the team needs me to.”

But then Jennings went dry. He was held scoreless through the entire second and third quarters and only netted one field goal in the fourth.

But it was enough for the Stallions to come away with the win.

Sierra held a 62-54 lead with less than three minutes to play before Tyrone Davis and Lucas Lacy knocked down an couple of 3-pointers for the Gladiators to make it a 62-60 game in the blink of an eye. Jennings was fouled and missed the front end of a one-and-one and Widefield was able to snag the rebound.

Dazmeir Rodgers drove and connected on the layup to tie the game with 13 seconds remaining. Jennings drove to the basket and was fouled once again. But this time he sank the free throws. The Gladiators had another shot to tie the game and got the ball down low to Pierre, but Jennings tied him up for a jump ball. The possession arrow gave the ball, and essentially the game, to the Stallions.

“We’re not happy with this,” Widefield coach Mark Munoz said. “We missed double-digit free throws and in a three-point game, that’s the difference.”

Last year’s Sierra team had a tendency of blowing out its opponents as it made its way to the 4A Final 4. This year, the wins are going to be tougher to pull out and Dunn’s squad is going to have creative in order to try and repeat their success from a year ago. But it’s still a good sign to pull out a tough league game on the road.

“We got a different team this year,” Dunn said. “We’re not going to blow anybody out. Any win in somebody else’s house is a big win.”