There’s long been an aura of invincibility surrounding the Cherry Creek football program, and that has been strengthened since Dave Logan took over as coach in 2012. The Bruins won the 2014 Class 5A state title, and last year’s repeat bid was derailed by eventual champion Valor Christian in the semifinals.
But this year, the Bruins looked startlingly mortal in their 19-7 loss to Regis Jesuit in the season opener, and by the time Mount Elbert Conference play rolled around, Cherry Creek was 2-3 and had lost starting quarterback Alex Padilla for the season with a thumb injury.
But the Bruins showed off their depth and adaptability, sliding senior Trey Windham from running back to quarterback and breezing through conference play undefeated.
And Friday evening against Ralston Valley in the first round of the state playoffs at the Stutler Bowl, Windham ran for two scores in Cherry Creek’s 14-0 victory over the Mustangs to put the state on notice that, as per usual, this program is here to compete for a championship.
“That’s a traumatic deal when you lose your starting quarterback, and our backup quarterback has been hurt all year, too,” Dave Logan said. “But Trey continues to do a great job for us. He’s a guy who, before we played Valor (on Sept. 29), had not played any quarterback since the first week of last year in a J.V. game. So he, along with some other guys, has really been the senior leadership that we needed with five starters on offense who are sophomores.”
And now, with a quarterfinal looming next week, the Bruins must deal with more adversity as star senior linebacker Jonathan Van Diest is out for the season with broken arm.
He suffered the injury on the first drive of Friday’s game, and it’s the same arm he broke in the 2015 postseason to end his junior campaign. The University of Colorado commit is the team’s defensive leader and top tackler, so the Bruins now lean on senior linebackers such as Jack Pezdirtz and Yanni Stavropoulos to anchor the defense.
“That’s a killer, and we also lost him last year on the first series of the final four game against Valor,” Logan said of Van Diest’s injury. “He’s our best player, so in that sense the loss is that he’s an irreplaceable guy. That said, we’ve got to come back to work on Monday and there’s going to have to be somebody else that has to step in. We’ll have to change a few things, and we’ll come out and battle.”
Offensively, junior wideout Dimitri Stanley and sophomore fullback Alec Pell also had notable games for Cherry Creek. And as Logan stressed, the beat-up Bruins will get back to work next week knowing full well the challenges ahead.
“This is sort of how playoff football goes. You play good teams, and the days of 80-yard touchdown runs are gone,” Logan said. “It gets down to some dirty, hard-nosed football. And when I say dirty, I’m not talking about playing dirty, I’m talking about what we call ‘dirty yards’ — hard yards to get.”
Going forward, those “dirty yards” — and subsequent wins — will become harder and harder to get, especially without Padilla and Van Diest.
But hey, what better way for the Bruins to add to their aura than to win a 10th title without their most important player on each side of the ball?
