4A Football: Broomfield Rallies to Win Fifth State Title

FORT COLLINS — Just as it looked like Montrose would score a game-tying touchdown in the final two minutes of the Class 4A state title game, Broomfield senior strong safety Gio Toledo flew through the air at Canvas Stadium to take it all away from the second-seeded Red Hawks.

Two years after making the play to send the fifth-seeded Eagles to the state championship — which they eventually won — he secured their sixth overall state title with a spectacular interception. The steal on the Eagles’ own 14-yard line sealed a 28-point comeback in their thrilling, 35-28, victory over the Red Hawks.

“Gio is that guy, and Gio does that every day in practice,” head coach Robert O’Brien said. “I wasn’t surprised at all to see him make that play in the state championship. He does it every day in practice. No shocker to me at all.”

In 2022, Toledo secured a fumble from Colorado touchdown leader Blake Barnett on the 1-yard line on his home turf. A week later, the Eagles defeated Loveland at Mile High Stadium. He played hero again in his final act with Broomfield.

“I knew the pass was coming,” Toledo explained. “I mean, (Aidan Grijalva) and (Chase Mehan) are the quarterback’s go-to guys. I didn’t see him throw it to anyone else. After halftime, we stopped blowing in the box, go back to our base defense, and have four DBs. So I just picked my guy, I turned back for the ball, the ball’s right there, and I go make a play on it.”

He was far from the only Eagle to save the heroics for the title game. Senior quarterback Darien Jackson was named Most Outstanding Player after he threw for 181 yards and two touchdowns, then ran one in with his own two feet. Senior cornerback Mikhail Benner, who is heading to Air Force next year, contributed 112 yards and his own score on offense when he wasn’t punishing Montrose on defense.

The Red Hawks offense ran circles around Broomfield throughout the first half, scoring every time it touched the ball. The Eagles couldn’t compute against Grijalva, who found the end zone twice with 71 yards on eight carries. Montrose quarterback Cade Saunders rubbed salt in the wound with 63 passing yards and two touchdowns.

The Eagles, when they were allowed to score, relied on Jackson to tick the number up on the scoreboard. He threw for 106 yards in the first half alone, connecting with Elliot Less and Benner in the end zone.

The Red Hawks led by as much as 21 points with 40 seconds left in the first half, but the tides began shifting after that. The Eagles took the ball 81 yards in that short amount of time before Jackson threw a dime to Benner, who took it into the pylon by a hair.

“Everyone’s going to say that catch at the end of the game was the game-winning play, but that score in the end zone with six seconds left to go in the half was the score of the game,” O’Brien said. “We went 81 yards in 40 seconds to cut this to a two-score game, and we got the ball back in the second half.”

Broomfield was a tsunami after its 28-14 halftime deficit.

The biggest swells came from Less, Joe Larsen and Jackson, who scored the last three touchdowns of the game on runs. Broomfield’s defense, meanwhile, stopped the Red Hawks dead in the water.

Benner was the first to drag Montrose’s offense under. Immediately after Less fumbled the ball into the end zone, resulting in a touchback for the Red Hawks, Benner refunded his offense with a fumble recovery — on the very next play, no less.

Toledo drowned the Red Hawks once and for all with the interception with 2:06 remaining. Broomfield’s senior class proved lethal once again.

“You really can’t ask for anything more, right?” O’Brien said. “Like the strip down here, Gio Toledo’s diving interception, Mikhail Benner’s one-handed tip-to-himself catch. Darien Jackson saying with a minute and a half on the clock, ‘Let me throw the ball. I’m going to complete this ball. We’re going to win this football game’. That’s exactly what he did.

“It’s all culture. It doesn’t matter who the coach is. It doesn’t matter who the players are. Broomfield High School does Broomfield High School things. And that’s culture right there. We work on that every day, and hats off to our administration who backs us up with our culture every single day.”