Three autumns ago, the Dakota Ridge freshman team put Class 4A on notice.
That Eagles team, featuring the core of this year’s seniors who have Dakota Ridge ranked No. 1 in the Post Preps preseason rankings, was a juggernaut. In a 10-0 campaign, they had a staggering plus-499 point differential, with their closest victory coming by 39 points.
“That was a really, really fun year,” recalled Dakota Ridge star running back/linebacker Landon Kalsbeck. “And it was a season that was a preview of what we were able to do last year by making the semifinals, and can do this one, too, with our goal being the program’s first title (winner).
“… You can be really good at freshman football, then when you start playing against 18-year-olds on varsity, you realize you’re not all that. But we never got complacent after that season. We kept working.”
Last fall, Dakota Ridge lost its opener to Class 5A Chatfield in a game that got away from them in the fourth quarter. The Eagles proceeded to rip off 11 straight wins before their season ended with a disappointing 45-7 shellacking by eventual champion Broomfield in the semifinals.
So in the work leading into Aug. 29’s season opener — again against the Chargers — Chatfield and Broomfield have been the buzzwords to remind the Eagles of the final leaps they need to take to reach their goal.
“In the weight room, if we’re about to do a tough set, or in practice if we’re getting tired or going through a tough drill, we’ll be like, ‘Think about Broomfield, think about Chatfield,’” Kalsbeck said. “Those are our two circle games again this year, if we get to play Broomfield again (in the playoffs).”
Kalsbeck, a Washington State pledge and 2024 Denver Post All-Colorado selection, is one of three Division I commits on the team. Senior running back/safety/returner Jack Offerdahl is headed to Drake, and senior left tackle Jace Winchester will play at CSU.
Dakota Ridge also features a couple of other key seniors in defensive tackle Marcus Weston and quarterback Kellen Behrendsen. The Eagles return seven starters on offense and eight on defense as they aim to get back to the championship for the first time since their debut in the game in 2004 — a 35-29 loss to ThunderRidge.
Dakota Ridge plays a stacked non-league schedule that should mold them for another deep postseason run. After opening against Chatfield, which has beaten the Eagles three years in a row, Dakota Ridge travels to Florida to play Winter Springs, plays at another 4A contender in Mesa Ridge, hosts 3A frontrunner Pomona, and then plays at 5A Cherokee Trail.
“I teased (former head coach Ron Woitalewicz) last year, ‘Man, you didn’t do me any favors when you set this schedule,’” second-year head coach Jeremiah Behrendsen said. “He laughed. But our guys have every intention of winning all 10 games that are on our schedule right now. … We just can’t look at that whole schedule all at once.”
Woitalewicz is now the offensive coordinator under Jay Madden at ThunderRidge, and Behrendsen has settled into his position leading the Eagles following 20 seasons as a Dakota Ridge assistant. He says the off-field tragedies that Dakota Ridge dealt with last season — including the deaths of a coach’s wife, a longtime athletic trainer and 2024 graduate Walker Moench — molded him into the head coach he is now.
“Coming out of that, grieving through all that, and watching the boys compete and come together while managing through those situations … is when I really felt I was doing a different job than just being an assistant,” Behrendsen said. “I knew people were looking to me for different things now than they used to.”
His son Kellen also went through a learning curve in his first season as a starting QB. In part, Kellen leaned on his longtime workouts with trash cans to live up to the pressure of being the head coach’s son.
Since middle school, the younger Behrendsen made a habit of going to the Dakota Ridge field, pulling a bag of balls and a few trash cans out of the equipment shed, and spending hours throwing balls into the cans at various distances. He would throw 200 to 300 passes in those biweekly solitary sessions in hopes of someday taking the reins of the Eagles’ offense.
When he got the chance last year, he was ready. Aided by a strong run game featuring Kalsbeck, he settled into the starting role quickly and finished the season with 2,006 yards passing, a 105.4 QB rating and 12 TDs.
The QB still goes through those trash can sessions to this day.
“I don’t need to overthink it, I don’t need to play better than I have to,” Kellen said. “I’ve got some really good teammates, so as long as I play my game and take care of the ball, we’re going to be just fine.”
The rest of his teammates are just as confident.
“If we play our brand of football, no one in the state can stop us,” Winchester said.
“Starting with Week 1, a lot of people say it’s not a rivalry anymore (against Chatfield), but we’re here to change that narrative. We’ve got to want it to beat our rivals. And we don’t want to just beat them, we want to beat them bad. We want to hang 40 on them and embarrass them.
“… We’re the team to beat this year. If (Broomfield) ends up in our path, and we have anything to do with it, we’re going to make sure that what happened last year doesn’t happen again.”
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