Two years ago, the trophy that Golden earned at the state baseball tournament wasn’t welcome on the bus ride home.
The Demons had just lost a 1-0 heartbreaker in the Class 4A title round to Severance after the would-be tying run was thrown out at the plate to end the game. So the runner-up trophy was sent back to Golden in the car of head coach Jackie McBroom’s wife instead of on the team bus.
“The players did not want that trophy on the bus,” McBroom recalled with a laugh. “We were proud of what we had accomplished, but there was a lot of disappointment that we didn’t win the whole thing.
“So the guys who were there with us, whether they were juniors or seniors this year, they didn’t forget that feeling. It was a driving force for them to get back to that spot and finish what the team from two years ago started.”
The Demons did just that, capturing the Class 4A championship by beating Cheyenne Mountain on May 31 at the Air Force Academy in the winner-take-all game of the double-elimination tournament. It gave the Demons their second title, but first since MLB all-star Mark Melancon headlined their original championship team in 2003. It also resulted in McBroom being tabbed as The Denver Post’s All Colorado Coach of the Year.
Raising the trophy that the Demons really wanted was a fitting capper for Golden, which has been Colorado’s most dominant Class 4A program over the last four years. In that time, they’ve made four state tournaments, three Final Fours and amassed a 97-20 record.
That’s a long way from what McBroom inherited in his first season leading the Demons in 2016. The year before McBroom took the job on 24th Street, Golden was 6-13 and finished tied for last in the Jeffco League. Now, they’ve won the league five years in a row.
“I give a lot of credit to that first group that I had,” said McBroom, who’d previously been a Golden assistant coach and head coach at Abraham Lincoln. “We finished 10-9 and didn’t make the playoffs, but those seniors started to change the culture, and then the talented sophomore class we had that year carried that on. We made the state tournament in my second year. The baseline (for perennial success) was set.”
This spring, the Demons lost only one regular-season game to a 4A opponent — a 3-2 setback to Denver North on April 1. After that, Golden rattled off 20 straight wins before losing to Cheyenne Mountain in eight innings in the championship round, which the Demons entered in the driver’s seat.
In the winner-take-all game that followed, Golden didn’t flinch under pressure in a 5-1 victory to secure the title.
“(McBroom) really didn’t even say much after that loss to Cheyenne Mountain — it was more about the way he was holding himself,” senior first baseman Luca Casali explained. “He didn’t seem stressed, he didn’t seem worried. The players saw that and we believed we were fine. We were ready to go take it.”
Four seniors fueled Golden’s title run: Casali (Western Oklahoma State commit), shortstop Jaydon Stroup (Mesa Community College), right-hander Sawyer Brinkman (Dodge City) and left-hander Taden Svendsen (Trinidad State).
Brinkman was Golden’s ace all season, winning 10 games with a 1.52 ERA, but it was Svendsen who pitched the decisive win over Cheyenne Mountain via 6 1/3 innings of one-run ball.
Casali noted that McBroom, who coaches with tough love, found the right balance of “knowing when to let the seniors take over the leadership in a situation, and when he should step in.”
“That played a big role in having our team mesh,” Casali said. “After that loss to Denver North, he let us hear it after the game. He was hard on us. But he also (empowered) us seniors with taking ownership of the team, and consistently solicited input from us about what we needed to work on, and what to focus on to keep bringing the younger players along.”
Coaching continuity has also been key in Golden’s rise as a 4A force.
Around McBroom, Charlie Stevens is the Demons’ longtime pitching coach. Assistant Chip Glass, the 1994 College World Series MVP with Oklahoma, coaches the outfield. And Chad Sigg, Roy Halladay’s catcher at Arvada West who has now won five state titles as a player and assistant coach, is also a key part of the varsity staff.
And if the last half-decade is any indication, the trophy accumulation in Golden might just be getting going.
“It amazes me every year that we show up in the winter and start hitting, and we’ve got a whole new crop of players who are capable of elevating the program again,” Sigg said. “It’s like Columbine football — you want to go play for programs like that. Jackie doesn’t go out and recruit kids, but they find him and want to play for Golden baseball. Every year’s a reload, not a rebuild, and we expect that to continue.”
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