Welcome to the busy portion of the high school sports year.
During the next month, in-staters will determine four of the five winter sports titles as well as transition into spring. Girls swimmers and divers decided winter championships in two classifications with rousing individual events and relays Saturday.
The highlight of this week will be Colorado’s wrestling tournament, which began in 1936. The tournament at the Pepsi Center, which starts Thursday, will have 896 wrestlers deciding individual and team championships over three days. The field’s ultimate session, the championship finals, will be preceded by one of the school year’s most watched and most anticipated events, the parade of champions that begins at 6:30 p.m.
Ice hockey will feature preliminaries and quarterfinals Friday and Saturday at four sites. The final rounds — semifinals at 6 and 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 25 and the title game at 6 p.m. on March 3 — will be played for the first time at the Pepsi Center.
Boys and girls skiers, originally scheduled to decide state championships Thursday and Friday, have been moved to Feb. 24-25. Obviously, the site has been upgraded. It’s Aspen.
As for boys and girls basketball, Class 5A and Class 4A will complete the regular season Friday; 3A, 2A and 1A by Saturday.
State brackets will be released Sunday for 5A and 4A; 3A-1A will complete districts by Feb. 26.
The goal is to make the Great 8, from March 9-12 — 5A and 4A will play at the University of Colorado in Boulder (March 4-5), 3A at Colorado State in Fort Collins, 2A at CSU-Pueblo and 1A at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.
In between, it wouldn’t be a high school sports season if one was ending and another began during the most important rounds of another, would it?
In this case, spring sports (baseball, girls golf, boys and girls lacrosse, girls soccer, girls tennis, boys swimming and diving, and boys and girls track and field) will open preseason practice Feb. 28. They will open play March 10.
Neil H. Devlin: 303-954-1714 or ndevlin@denverpost.com
