Jazz & Hip Hop: Cherokee Trail, Eaglecrest Come Away With State Championships

DENVER – The Eaglecrest hip-hop team just keeps rolling along.

On Saturday at the Denver Coliseum, the Raptors left the spirit state championships with yet another spirit title in the hip-hop discipline after posting a finals score of 91.5 points. The Raptors have now won the last four hip-hop championships and have taken home five of the past six first-place trophies.

“It’s been a really amazing year,” said Eaglecrest coach Kayla Warneke, who coaches with Mistelle Jimenez. “This team is unique – we don’t have any freshmen this year, which is a first for us. We have all returners, and they’ve all come up through our JV program or have already been on the team. This is our fourth state championship in a row, which feels a little bit unreal. But this team has worked really hard to create its own legacy. They have a lot of trust in each other, and they’ve worked really hard to build those relationships and I think it shows.”

Warneke added that the Raptors’ most recent title defense was the result of equal parts added pressure to win a fourth in a row and confidence from having already won three straight.

“It’s a little bit of both,” Warneke said. “We’ve had to work really hard at being mentally strong and not letting the pressure take hold of us. I think this team has realized that that pressure is really a privilege. And it definitely comes with a level of confidence. We just have to make sure that the pressure makes us better instead of making us freak out.”

Also in the hip-hop competition, Fossil Ridge (90.75) was runner-up, Broomfield (90.625) was third, Horizon (90.075) was fourth and Smoky Hill (89.325) was fifth.
 

JAZZ
In the jazz competition, Cherokee Trail scored 88.75 points in the finals to claim its fourth jazz title since winning back-to-back championships in 2021 and 2022. It was the Cougars’ sixth overall spirit title.

“These girls are super focused,” Cherokee Trail head coach Mia Brown said. “We just wanted to hit a calm and collected performance, which they did both times. We’ve had kind of a slow start to the season, so I feel like we really peaked at the right time.”

Chaparral was runner-up in jazz with a finals score of 88.35.