Monday night at Magness, the Goliaths meet again.
No. 1 is the defending state hockey champion and has been atop the rankings all season. And with Friday’s in the semifinal, coach Dan Woodley has now led the Raiders (20-1) to the championship game six times since 2008, with four title victories.
But as the Raiders seek a fifth crown, a worthy opponent stands in their way – again.
Monarch fell 6-1 to Regis Jesuit in the 2016 title after coming into the game undefeated. This season, the roles are reversed. Though the Coyotes booked their fifth consecutive title game appearance via in the semifinal—and though Monarch (15-4-2) handed the Raiders their lone loss in a 3-0 contest on Feb. 17—coach Jimmy Dexter’s team is the decided underdog.
But Monday’s game is more than just a meeting of two of the most dominant teams in Colorado over the last half decade. It’s a meeting of programs that epitomize why hockey at the CHSAA level continues to grow, with the field adding two more teams to expand to 34 overall for the 2017-18 season.
Both Regis Jesuit and Monarch—along with other top programs such as and Cherry Creek—bought into the idea that the club and high school hockey experiences should be combined, and not two separate entities. As a result, their players compete together year-round, building skills and chemistry on the ice to become programs with depth and cohesion.
Credit both Woodley and Dexter for engineering that change within their teams and showing other young, up-and-coming programs—i.e. and —the blueprint for success in a high school hockey landscape that continues to increase not just in size, but in talent, too.
According to Woodley, five years ago high school hockey would have been considered ‘A’, or recreational level. Now, top teams such as Regis Jesuit and Monarch play at a high ‘AA’ level, with the very best of those teams’ players blurring the line between ‘AA’ and ‘AAA’, the top amateur club division.
All those intangibles come to a head on Monday at 7 p.m. when the puck will drop in a perfect venue for such a clash, Magness Arena. There, Regis Jesuit looks to add to its dynasty, while Monarch is eager to put its championship game nightmares to rest with a victory over the favored Raiders.
