The Mountain Vista Golden Eagles are planning an encore performance. It’s a big ask. How do they top what they did last fall?
In the first CHSAA-sanctioned Class 5A girls flag football season, the Golden Eagles won the state championship with a thrilling 32-21 victory over Arvada West. Mountain Vista was a perfect 19-0.
“It was so cool because it set the precedent by winning the first state championship, so now it’s like, ‘How many more can we get?’ ” senior center/receiver Braelynn Looney said. “If we put in the work, I think it’s definitely a possibility. We have an excellent coaching staff, and we have talented young girls coming up.”
Most importantly, Vista has Ariana Akey returning at quarterback.
The 5-foot-5 dynamo carries an impressive resume into her senior season. As a junior, she was named CHSAA’s player of the year and one of 32 players nationwide nominated for the Maxwell National Flag Football Player of the Year Award. Sports Illustrated named her its national girls’ athlete of the week after the Golden Eagles won their state title.
In a wide-open sport where the QB is the center of the universe, Akey completed 392 of 571 passes (68.7 completion percentage) for 4,435 yards and 82 touchdowns. She rushed for 1,243 yards and 13 TDs on 130 carries.
In Vista’s win over A-West, she rushed for three scores, threw a pair of touchdowns, and had two interceptions in the fourth quarter to clinch the title.
Akey has played flag football since the first grade, and she grew up watching the game with her father, Todd. But she didn’t play in 2024 when the sport was a high school pilot program. She didn’t win the starting QB job until a couple of weeks before the ’25 season.
She had to convince herself that she was up to the task.
“I was pretty surprised,” she admitted. “I had a lot of confidence in our team, but not in me as a quarterback.”
Her teammates, however, never had any doubts.
“She made such a difference tonight,” Looney said after last year’s championship. “She came through when we needed her. She carried us.”
And make no mistake, Akey loves being QB1.
“I like having the ball in my hands and reading a defense,” she said. “I like the mental aspect of it, reading defense, making split decisions, all of it.”
Akey is a four-sport athlete. In the fall, she runs cross-country and plays flag football. In the winter, she plays basketball. She runs track in the spring. She makes it all work.
“It’s definitely tough,” she said of her double shot of football and running in the same season. “It’s tough on my body, but as long as I communicate with the coaches, it works out. They are great about it.
“They tell me, ‘Hey, if you need a day off today, take it. You know your body. You can make a decision; we trust you, you’re fit. So if you need to take a day off, you’ve got it.’ ”
Mountain Vista lost 12 seniors from its title team, but coach Dana Sroc said, “We have a lot of integral pieces returning.”
Akey is confident that the Golden Eagles will be in the running for a repeat feat, but she also knows that the playing field is shifting.
“This is the second year for flag football, so it’s going to be better across the state,” she said. “We have to be ready for that.”
Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver’s teams.