Sand Creek’s best season in decades is ending with the Scorpions following the Class 4A state playoffs from home.
The Scorpions went 9-1 and finished 12th in the 4A seeding and selection index, which under normal circumstances would’ve been plenty good enough to make the 24-team playoff bracket. But because of a unique CHSAA rule, Sand Creek — as well as two other teams in its league in Cheyenne Mountain (16th in the index) and Centaurus (20th) — is not eligible for the postseason.
In Sand Creek’s 4A I-25 League, only the conference champion can make the playoffs, regardless of RPI seeding. It’s one of two CHSAA leagues set up that way, along with the 5A Metro North. The reason for that is because those leagues were formed as rebuilding leagues, filled with programs that were struggling with both numbers and competitiveness.
CHSAA football commissioner John Sullivan said he feels “awful for those (three) schools.”
“When you look at the 5A Metro North and how that worked out, that was kind of the intent with these leagues, where a school like Westminster goes 8-2, wins the league, and they get in the playoffs with the 24th seed,” Sullivan said. “And then none of the other schools from that league qualify. That was the thought process… that if you’re playing all schools in your league that may be struggling, it could potentially inflate your RPI values.”
But as Cheyenne Mountain football coach Jay Saravis points out, “I don’t think CHSAA (or the football committee) was expecting was the fact that four of us in the I-25 league got pretty darn good.”
Sand Creek, headlined by star junior running back Ethan Mangrum, has gone 16-4 over the past two years under coach Eric Mitchell after not having a winning season (minus the 2021 spring season) since 2013.
Fellow Colorado Springs school Cheyenne Mountain has also turned it around, with a 15-5 mark over the past two falls. Centaurus’ arrow is also trending up, while back-to-back league champion Grand Junction is headed to the playoffs for a second straight season after winning just five total games across the four previous seasons. The Tigers’ rise has been helped by about a 50% increase in football participation since 2021, an influx that can be partly attributed to increased enrollment after Mesa County Valley School District 51 re-drew its high school boundary lines.
Mitchell doesn’t blame CHSAA for his Scorpions coming up short of the playoffs after Sand Creek lost to Grand Junction in the regular season finale, the de facto league title game, 56-13 last week. The Tigers ended up finishing 13th in the index and host Highlands Ranch in a first-round playoff game on Friday.
Prior to this current two-year CHSAA cycle, each participating school in the 5A Metro North and 4A I-25 agreed to join the rebuilding league with the stipulation that only the league champion would make the playoffs. That rule is part of the football bulletin that’s created by the football committee; that bulletin is then approved annually at CHSAA’s Legislative Council, where any member can object to it.
“We knew coming in we had to be the league champs and we didn’t get the job done,” Mitchell said. “It’s just one of those deals where we plan on building off this season.
“So there’s truly no disappointment on my end. We just want to see continued growth in our program, and we saw it this year. We will expect more next year with a lot of key players returning, including Mangrum, who was the classification’s leading rusher (with 2,001 yards).”
Football leagues designed to group similar programs trying to re-find their footing have been happening in CHSAA since 2018, when the Class 5A Metro 10 debuted.
That 10-team league was allowed one automatic qualifier, the league champion, with the possibility of a second at-large bid deemed by the seeding committee. In 2021, two six-team rebuilding leagues in 4A and 5A debuted, with just the league champion eligible to earn a playoff bid.
Mitchell, Saravis and Grand Junction coach Landon McKee all said that joining the rebuilding league and accepting the playoff limitations that came with it was the right call for their programs. Saravis noted that his approach at Cheyenne Mountain was that “when we got to Week 6, I tell my players, ‘Welcome to the playoffs,’ because it’s basically a survive-and-advance mentality from there.”
“This league was a good opportunity for Sand Creek to get back on track,” Mitchell added.
Going into the next two-year CHSAA cycle that begins in 2026, Sullivan noted there won’t be any more one-bid playoff leagues.
The football committee meets on Wednesday to start working on putting together leagues for that cycle, with an aim at creating leagues that are more competitively balanced, considering Colorado high school football has seen what Sullivan describes as “an inordinate number of blowouts and running clocks” in league play this year.
“For those leagues (without top teams in them), we’re not going to put stipulations on how many teams can make the playoffs,” Sullivan said. “So, that was planned on going away prior to this situation with Sand Creek in 4A this year.”