6A Girls Basketball: Surprising Highlands Ranch Gets Another Championship

DENVER — Caryn Jarocki has had a lot of state championship-winning teams in her long tenure at Highlands Ranch, but her latest might have been one of the bigger surprises.

Abundant with youth, Jarocki’s Falcons went through their growing pains and went on to finish the season as the best team in Class 6A girls basketball, the year before it goes down to the 5A classification.

Seventh-seeded Highlands Ranch held off a spirited rally from fifth-seeded Northfield — a first-time state championship hopeful — for a 54-51 victory that brought Jarocki and the program its eighth all-time title.

“We knew we could do it, but at the beginning of the season, I could not have told you we would be standing here right now,” said Jarocki, the state’s all-time winningest girls coach whose team finished a 25-3 season. “This team kept fighting. We had 63 practices, 28 games and we never took a day off. We just kept grinding to get better and they did it. They believed.”

For a team that hadn’t played on the biggest stage before, Highlands Ranch’s young lineup — which included two sophomore starters plus one freshman, one junior and one senior — looked like they belonged against a Northfield team with some experience, as it had played for the 2024 5A state title.

Sophomore Jayda Rogers helped the Falcons get their legs under them in the opening quarter, as she tallied 10 of her 11 points to stake her team to a four-point lead. The advantage grew to seven by halftime as junior Katie Moon (15 in the game) had four points in the period and sophomore Kimora Banks-Thomas got going.

The Falcons handled the high-pressure, fast-paced style well for the first 16 minutes.

“We have two different styles of play, so boxing out, playing our game and not really playing sped up was really key,” Rogers said.

Northfield — which knocked off top-seeded Cherokee Trail in the semifinals — began to impose itself in the second half, though the Nighthawks found it difficult to make big inroads into the deficit.

That’s because of some big shots hit by the Falcons, which included a pair of 3-pointers in the third quarter from Banks-Thomas, who finished with a game-high 20.

“They are a physical team and they are really athletic, so you know they are going to get into you,” she said. “Pulling out those big shots when you need them is big.”

But nothing could quite put away Northfield, which got 18 points from junior London Taylor, plus 11 from junior Delaney Dennis and nine from junior Paris Taylor.

The Nighthawks would not go away in the fourth quarter and whittled the lead all the way down to one point inside the final minute, which set up a frenetic finish.

Two clutch free throws from Highlands Ranch freshman Na’Ziah Newbins made it a 54-51 lead with just 4.7 seconds left and Northfield tried to feed Dennis in the corner for a 3-pointer that could have sent the game to overtime, but the pass sailed over her head and out of bounds.

Highlands Ranch ran out the final seventh-tenths of a second on the ensuing inbound to secure the title and lift the program into a tie with Mullen for the second-most titles in Colorado history behind Eads, which has nine.

“I wanted this so bad for the kids,” Jarocki said with pride.

The players wanted to win it just as bad for Jarocki, who hadn’t tasted a state championship victory since 2011, which went with others in 2008, 2007, 2006, 2002, 2001 and 2000.

“I feel like we won one for her legacy, but she’s building one for us as well,” Banks-Thomas said. “We bought into her and she bought into us. She adjusted game plans, we listened to her and this is what happens. That’s a great coach and we’re a great team.”