AURORA – Back in December, Mancos won the Colorado High School Activities Association’s 8-Man Football State Championship. That victory marked the school’s first-ever football state championship, its first state championship of any kind in a quarter-century, and just its second state championship of any kind, period.
“Honestly, it’s hard to explain,” Kaiden Wyatt, a senior this season and captain from the championship team, said as he remembered what it was like to see the clock finally hit zero in Mancos’ 40-0 state championship victory over Haxtun. “There’s just no feeling like it – seeing a small town that’s never experienced it before, just get that championship. There’s no other feeling like it. I was just getting praised by people I hadn’t even seen in a while. It was amazing.”
“It was a lot of emotion, a lot of hype, and a lot of just looking back at all the work we put in to get there as a team,” Colten Vannest, a returning member of the offensive and defensive lines added. “One of the best ways to describe it was just, brotherhood. I was so excited to celebrate with all my guys.”
When the Blue Jays returned to Mancos, they were greeted by a proud and jubilant town, a parade through the community, and a grocery store that played the game film of their championship game triumph on a loop, for several weeks in a row, without any sort of break.
“That feeling was awesome, man,” Mancos football head coach, Josh Gardner, added. “There’s people at the P&D, our local grocery store, people at the gas station, and they even had a police escort for the bus. It was just a really awesome experience.”
Surprisingly though, if you ask the Blue Jays about their favorite memory from last season, it won’t be the six touchdowns senior quarterback Kail Wayman rushed for, the on-field celebration with coaches, teammates and loved ones that immediately followed the state championship, or even the subsequent parade held in the team’s honor.
Instead, you’ll hear about the home atmosphere that Mancos enjoyed for its final home game of the season – the state championship tournament semifinal against Lyons.
“Beating Lyons at home was my favorite memory. There’s just nothing quite like winning a playoff game at home,” Wyatt recalled. “There were so many people there from the surrounding towns. Like there were a lot of people from Cortez and Dove Creek and they all wanted us to win, so they were all there. Just the amount of people there, the noise that they were making for us, and then knowing that I was going to get to play another game with those boys was just amazing.”
“That was probably one of the best atmospheres I’ve had in my high school career,” Brandon Vannest, the brother of Colten and the quarterback for the upcoming season, said. “All the surrounding schools were there and it was so 
loud. It was pretty cool.”
Colten Vannest remembers the details of that powerful moment.
“We were down by two going into that fourth quarter, and it was a really chippy game,” Colten Vannest explained. “We go into that fourth quarter drive and all of their team was super excited, but we just put our head down and got to work. I think it was like 14 plays, and it was just amazing to have the offense drive the ball five yards every snap. We were advancing side by side, five yards each time. There was nothing that they could do to stop it. That’s just my favorite memory. That moment just perfectly captured our team’s philosophy and personality.”
That’s all in the rearview mirror now though, as Mancos looks forward towards defending its title and potentially building a new football dynasty in southern Colorado.
“Obviously the goal is to win another state championship,” Coach Gardner said. “Sedgwick County had six state championships in a row when I first started coaching for Mancos, and seeing Sedgwick go on a real long stretch just makes me think, let’s do better than that. Let’s establish a dynasty at Mancos, and let football be something special for all the kids that come up in our town.”
Most programs, coaches and players might shy away from heaping all that pressure on themselves. You rarely start hearing ‘dynasty’ talk after a program wins its first-ever championship, but the Blue Jays view that added weight with a unique fondness.
“As an athlete in our program, there’s never really any bad pressure. It’s just not something that’s in our thought process,” Colten Vannest expressed. “There’s never bad pressure. You just come in, put the work in, trust your brothers, and everything else falls into place. Obviously, there’s some pressure, but pressure comes from being good, and pressure can be a good thing. The way we look at it is, pressure is a privilege, and we want the pressure because we feel we’ve earned that privilege.”
Plus, the Blue Jays look primed to pursue their coach’s dynasty vision.
Mancos earned the No. 1 spot in the CHSAA’s preseason coaches poll for 8-man football and claimed more than half of the first-place votes cast, even despite the Blue Jays graduating last year’s first-team All-State stars — Levi Martin and the aforementioned Kail Wayman.
“We started our title defense back in April with working out, getting on the field, and making sure that we know our stuff to prepare for the upcoming season,” Wyatt said. “I mean, we’ve been there before, but this is a whole new group of boys, and we want to prove that this new group can get it done too, just as well as the last group. And I believe we can. I believe we’re bigger, stronger, and faster than we were last year.”
The Mancos Blue Jays will kick off the title defense campaign on Aug. 30, at home, against Melrose.