Marc Johnson, CHSAA’s Winningest Baseball Coach, Rides Off Into The Sunset

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AURORA — From Peyton Manning and John Elway to Ray Bourke, the Mile High City has a history of sending its sporting legends off into the sunset with a championship trophy in tow. Now, Marc Johnson, Cherry Creek’s legendary baseball coach, will join that club.

Before the season started, Johnson announced to his team and to the media that this would be his last season at the helm of the Bruins’ baseball program, and from that point on, his players were determined to secure this final championship for their coach.
 

“He always says it’s not about him, and that it’s always about family,” Cherry Creek second baseman Brayden Yasuzawa said. “But this time, it’s all about him and sending him off on that ninth win.”

And it wasn’t just Coach Johnson’s current players that rallied behind that goal, as former players and assistant coaches turned up at games throughout the season in droves and even some rival teams cheered him on.
 

“I mean, it’s kind of funny,” Cherry Creek athletic director Jason Wilkins said. “This is one of the odd times when people from other schools are rooting for us. They don’t have a team in it, but they’re rooting for us because of Coach Johnson. Usually, other schools don’t root for Cherry Creek. They just don’t. Usually, we’re enemy No. 1 on the list. But, in this case, Coach Johnson hasn’t made any enemies. You’ve got head coaches with really good programs saying how much he did for them, and that’s just not the norm.”

Johnson took over the Bruins baseball program in 1973 and built the team up into a dynasty.

Finding athletic success at Cherry Creek seems like a given now, but that wasn’t the case when Johnson got the gig, and that school-wide reputation is, in part, a product of Johnson’s construction.

“It’s hard to put his impact into words, but you could argue he helped build, not only the baseball program, but the whole athletics program in general,” Wilkins remarked, after the Bruins punched their ticket to the championship finals. “His baseball program has always been so solid and successful. That just brought reputation and excellence and things of that nature to Cherry Creek. Then people came to Creek to play baseball, but they would play other sports too, so his presence has been really helpful. Obviously, we’ve had a lot of good teams and a lot of good programs over the years, but there’s only one guy who’s been there for 52, and how special would it be to send him off with his last state championship?”

During those 52 seasons as the head coach of Cherry Creek’s baseball program, Johnson tallied 871 wins (the most of any baseball coach in CHSAA history), nine state titles (the most of any 5A coach in CHSAA history) and had 53 players selected in the MLB Draft.

His program was a constant fixture atop the Class 5A standings of the ‘90s, as Johnson led the Bruins to six titles during the decade, including five in a row, from 205301995 through 1999.

Johnson’s excellence didn’t fade with age either. He carried his mastery well into the 21st century too, leading Cherry Creek to seven championship games, the second-most of any CHSAA 5A program during that span. He was also one of just four coaches to win multiple 5A state titles over the past 15 seasons.

The 2024 campaign might just be the sweetest one of them all though.

The 11 seasons between the 2012 and 2024 titles marked the second-longest gap of his career, and the 2024 championship game appearance snapped a four-year stretch in which Cherry Creek failed to reach the tournament’s final round.

It was far from a given that the stars would align for Coach Johnson in his farewell season.

In fact, that storybook ending seemed to be an outright fantasy early in the year. The Bruins lost their season opener to the Pine Creek Eagles 9-8 and lurched to a 6-4-1 start.

From there on though, Cherry Creek would find its groove, closing the season on a 19-1 run that included eight shutout victories and just four games in which Creek scored fewer than eight runs. During that stretch, the Bruins outscored their opponents 206-45, good for an average score of 10.3-2.3. Their lone loss over those 20 games came in the semifinals to Regis Jesuit, before Cherry Creek got its revenge in the championship round, beating the Raiders twice on Championship Saturday for the state title.

Reflecting on that turnaround, Yasuzawa believes his teammates were putting too much pressure on themselves early in the year to deliver their coach a title.

“Over the season, there was a lot of pressure, and I think that’s why we struggled a little bit at first. We had a bunch of D-1 guys on the team and we knew we were good and just had to execute how we know we could,” the senior infielder reflected, before demonstrating that flip. “I’d say the pressure was all on Regis [on Saturday]. They had to win just one game, and everyone was saying they were going to win, so we had no pressure on us.”

Coach Johnson said he knew this team was one capable of pulling off such a magical finale, despite being cornered.

“We knew we had our backs against the wall,” an emotional Coach Johnson recalled. “We had to win three games, they had to win one. I told my players, ‘There’s no team I know of in this state that could do this besides this one.’ I knew that.”
 


That belief epitomizes Johnson’s belief in his players.

Even as he celebrated one last victory, hoisted one last state title, participated in one last postgame interview, and soaked up the cheers from his one last crowd, Coach Johnson continued to thrust the spotlight back towards his players and assistant coaches at every turn.

“It’s been an awesome run,” Johnson shared. “I’ve loved every second of every day that I’ve coached. Every kid that I ever coached. I had guys in attendance here from the ‘70s, from the ‘80s, from the ‘90s, from the 2000s, guys who are just in the family, and they wanted [the title] as badly as we did. I can’t explain it. How would you explain something where it just seems like everything falls into place?

“And trust me on this, it wasn’t because of me. It was because of these guys. It’s because of my coaching staff and my players. It’s because of all the people who believe. We love the family, our Cherry Creek baseball family. It’s massive. It’s huge. We tell them we’ll be there for them, no matter what, and, no matter what, they know I love every one of them.”
 

Coach Johnson ended his legendary tenure with one last decree to his players.

“I got one more thing to do,” the retiring coach exclaimed. “Let’s dance!”

And dance they did, right off into the sunset.

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