The end to Highlands Ranch’s championship drought began with a book club.
Caryn Jarocki, the architect of the Falcons’ girls basketball dynasty that ripped off seven state titles in the first dozen seasons of this century, hadn’t been to the pinnacle
So in the fall, Jarocki assigned her team some reading: “What It Takes to Win Championships” by Jeff Janssen. Once a week at the start of the Falcons’ open gym, players would sit in a circle on the floor to discuss the book and its relevance to Highlands Ranch’s goals for this winter.
“The book talks about how unselfish you have to be to win a championship, and how you have to be a servant leader and look out for the people on the team, not just yourself,” Jarocki said.
“It’s really kind of an interactive book because there’s questions at the end of every chapter that make them reflect upon themselves and their teammates. The cool thing was that they were really honest with each other about themselves and about their teammates, and they were really good at discussing it.”
The book was a launchpad for the Falcons’ season, which culminated in a Class 6A championship victory over Northfield, earning Jarocki the title of All-Colorado girls’ hoops Coach of the Year.
It was Jarocki’s youngest title team, considering the Falcons had just one major senior contributor in Kniyah Dumas. Highlands Ranch saw four freshmen play significant minutes. Its leading scorer was All-Colorado sophomore guard Kimora Banks-Thomas, and its two main veterans, besides Dumas, were junior twin sisters Addie and Katie Moon.
Getting young Falcons to soar
Jarocki molded that talent and got it to gel at the perfect time with decisive wins over Arapahoe in the Great 8 and Denver East in the Final 4 before beating Northfield 54-51 in a back-and-forth championship. That victory left Highlands Ranch as the last team standing in a parity-laden 6A field with as many as 10 teams that could make a run at the title when the playoffs started. The Falcons ended up winning it as the No. 7 seed.
“At the end of the day, our freshmen didn’t see themselves as freshmen,” Banks-Thomas said. “They saw themselves as contenders, and that’s a credit to Coach J continuing to tell us, ‘Even though you’re young, you can do this. You can win the title.’
“She kept instilling that in us and didn’t stop until we were all dousing each other with water in the locker room (after the championship).”
Kniyah Dumas and freshman Na’Ziah Newbins split the point guard duties this season. Freshman guard Kaze Dumas, as well as freshman forwards Kennedi Toliver and Kylah Murdock, also played important roles. Fittingly, for a team that had to grow up as it went, it was Newbins who sank two free throws in the waning seconds of the championship to clinch the trophy.
Prior to Newbins stepping to the line, Jarocki pulled Kniyah Dumas aside and told her to pump up her fellow point guard.
“Coach J told me to go over to Newbins and (breathe some) confidence into her,” Kniyah Dumas said. “Basically, calm her down, make sure she wasn’t worried about the crowd. I told her to knock them down and that this was the moment she’s been waiting for all season. It worked, and I think Coach J knew that message would be more effective coming from a fellow player, and not her.”
The Falcons also overcame key injuries en route to the crown. That included being without sophomore guard Jayda Rogers (ankle) and Addie Moon (knee) for about the first month of the season. Then Katie Moon injured her knee late in the regular season but returned in the playoffs and contributed 15 points off the bench in the championship game.
Katie Moon had played just nine combined minutes across the Great 8 and Final 4, but a side chat with Jarocki following those games enabled the junior to finally find her rhythm when the Falcons needed it most.
“(Katie) was forcing things offensively and making a ton of mistakes, so her and I talked after (the Great 8) about that,” Jarocki. “She recognized she was forcing things. I told her to just let the game come to her.
“She had been out for weeks with her injury and she just wanted to be where she was when she left, which was in a great place. But after we talked, she figured it out. And she had a whale of a game in the championship.”
A softer side of Coach J
While Jarocki was pressing all the right buttons, the Falcons coming into their own before her 64-year-old eyes unveiled a different side of the seasoned, usually serious coach. That was evident when she came into the Highlands Ranch locker room following the team’s Great 8 victory.
“We had the Final 4 plaque in the middle and we were all sitting around it, chanting, ‘Final 4! Final 4!’ and Coach J walked in and started chanting it with us,” Banks-Thomas said. “That was a family moment for this team, because we definitely tapped into a side of Coach J that I’ve never seen before. We tapped into her happy side. We saw so many smiles.”
And tears, too, which was a first for Kniyah Dumas.
“She actually cried when she talked to me and another senior after the championship,” Kniyah Dumas said. “It was sort of a medium cry, but still — I thought was pretty awesome because everybody could see that sometimes she could be pretty tough, but it showed her vulnerability and how she really cared for everyone like we knew all along.”
If the dominance by the Continental League champs this season is any indication, there’s probably more smiles and happy tears in Jarocki’s immediate future.
Because of Highlands Ranch’s ongoing, dwindling enrollment affecting program numbers — the Falcons had only 19 total players this year and no JV team — the Falcons are moving down to Class 5A for the next cycle.
The returners are disappointed about it, even though they’ve known about it for a couple of years now. Jarocki maintains it’s “the appropriate move for us.” With every primary contributor minus Kniyah Dumas coming back, the Falcons are the immediate heavy 5A championship favorite in 2026-27.
Entering her fourth decade as the Falcons’ boss — and with 10 championship games, 19 Final Fours and 27 Great Eights on her blue-and-white resume — Jarocki’s trophy case probably isn’t complete quite yet.
“Our mentality going into next year is just the only person in the way of another championship is ourselves,” Banks-Thomas said. “And I don’t think Coach J is going to let ourselves get in the way.”
