Denver Post staff writer Neil H. Devlin looks at the action ahead in high school sports:
FOOTBALL
Mullen: Join the fun. If you’re a Mullen Mustang, chances are you have touched the ball. Entering Week 7, three Mullen quarterbacks have attempted passes. Fifteen players have taken handoffs. And 13 have caught passes. Usually star-laden, the 2007 Mustangs skill corps is up in numbers and names you’re not used to because of last season’s major losses to graduation. To their credit, the learning-on-the-job ballhandlers have upheld tradition. Mullen is 6-0 overall, 3-0 in the Centennial League, and has won 53 of its past 56 regular-season games, including 10-0 seasons in 2003, 2004 and 2006. The Mustangs, who also seem to have gotten it together across an experienced offensive line, will welcome Fairview on Friday, 7 p.m., in league play.
Glenwood Springs: Demons returning. In 1990, Glenwood Springs finished 6-4 and had made the playoffs in 13 of 14 seasons. However, the bottom quickly fell out for the Demons. They had a string of 13 consecutive seasons without a winning record. They didn’t field a team in 1997. And they didn’t return to the postseason until 2004, when Rocky Whitworth, a longtime figure in Colorado schoolboy football, took over the program. The Demons stumbled from 2005-06 with a combined 7-13 mark, but here they are again in 2007 with a 6-0 overall record, 4-0 in the 3A Western Slope League and ranked No. 1 in The Denver Post/9News 3A poll. With a huge 34-21 victory last weekend over Palisade, the Demons have assured their best mark since 1989, when they went 9-2. Next up: At Eagle Valley, a game off the league pace, on Friday, 7 p.m.
BOYS TENNIS
State tournament: Select net worth. You may have heard of the tournament beginning today in Boulder (5A) and Pueblo (4A). It was first contested in 1927 and is one of the longest running in state annals, although mostly dominated in the latter half of its more than eight decades by the same programs. Cherry Creek has won 33 of the past 35 big-school titles, including 29 in a row from 1972-90, as well as the past six in succession. The lower level, which began in 1990, has had more team champions, but it’s not overtly different. Greeley West (1990) and Regis (1991) provided variety on opening serve for two classes, but it quickly turned more machine-like with Kent Denver winning three and Cheyenne Mountain 13, including a tie between the two schools in 1999.
SOFTBALL
Districts: Ballots due. Elimination time for softballers is here; no more of that two-or-three- games-per-week stuff. In a more customary tournament format, district rounds based on league finishes for the three classifications will be completed by Saturday. The trick in 5A-3A is to be one of the fields’ 16 teams that will advance to next week’s regionals rounds at the Aurora Sports Complex. On Oct. 19, teams need two victories to advance to the final fours Oct. 20, when semifinal rounds will be in the late morning, title games after lunch.
FIELD HOCKEY
Field finale. Mountain Vista, bidding to crack the stranglehold on the game by a small group of traditional private and public powers, will be at one of them, four-time defending champion Kent Denver, on Saturday, 10 a.m.
