With National Signing Day coming up Wednesday, Colorado’s stake in college athletics keeps getting higher and higher.
The Denver metro area in particular — where recruiters have long dogged the lack of elite Division I players — has seen an increase in talent across the board, with powerhouse athletic schools , and each having more than ten Division I commits in the Class of 2017.
Behind that upward trend are a number of factors. For one, this place is a boomtown. Colorado was the second-fastest growing state between 2014 and 2015, meaning more kids, a bigger pool of athletes and thus more talent. The explosion of the private training business in the last five years hasn’t hurt either, and plenty of athletes and their families are learning to leverage that training — and the college connections that come with it — to advance to the next level.
And amid the conditions ripe for both economic and athletic development, Colorado has taken a stranglehold on a couple sports in particular.
The local girls soccer scene is loaded with top talent, with more than 150 Division I commits in the last three recruiting classes. Top clubs such as Real and Rush continually dominate on a national scale in the Elite Clubs National League, making championship game appearances the norm. That’s not to mention that the future of the United States Women’s National Team, 18-year-old phenom Mallory Pugh, became the youngest American soccer player to score in the Olympic Games last August, just a few months after graduating from High School.
Colorado is an epicenter for lacrosse too. It’s partly why legendary college coach Bill Tierney — who won six titles at Princeton — decided to ditch the East Coast for the University of Denver, where he has used an influx of homegrown players to build the Pioneers into a national powerhouse. That success is mirrored at the high school level, as the 30-plus Division I commits in the Class of 2017 are defined by guys such as Mountain Vista senior attackman Colin Munro, who in addition to earning a scholarship to North Carolina already gained international recognition by leading the Coquitlam Junior Adanacs to the coveted Minto Cup last summer.
And while the state’s two most popular sports, football and boys basketball, are still a long, long way from matching the likes of Texas and California, serious strides have been made in the last decade. On the gridiron, though the majority of Division I talent has become more concentrated within a dozen or so 5A schools, the talent level is increasing nonetheless. The proliferation of the national schedule has helped with that, and Class of 2017 stars such as Valor Christian quarterback Dylan McCaffrey (University of Michigan) and Pomona lineman Jake Moretti (University of Colorado) give promise to more blue-chip recruits in the future.
On the basketball court, the same trend is becoming evident, with out-of-state tournaments, year-round club ball and names such as 2016 Overland graduate De’Ron Davis (now playing at the University of Indiana) driving more local interest in the game and causing more recruiters to stop by The Centennial State.
And as Colorado continues to grow into national prep relevancy — hockey, wrestling, baseball and softball are on the upswing too — all local fans who fill the stands can ask is that the athletes keep the hard work coming. If they do that, Colorado could be in the same recruiting realm as Texas and California before you know it.
