LAKEWOOD — Regis Jesuit baseball got its championship breakthrough a half-decade in the making.
In the Raiders’ fifth-straight state tournament appearance, and after consecutive runner-up finishes, Regis Jesuit finally got back to the top on Saturday at All-Star Park. The Raiders beat Arvada West in the , 5-3, after the Wildcats pushed them to the brink in the double-elimination tournament by topping Regis Jesuit earlier in the day.
The triumph marked Regis Jesuit’s fourth state title, and first since 2019, when the Raiders also won under head coach Matt Darr. In his sixth title game appearance, Darr came away with his third ring. He also won one with Denver Christian in 2013.
“Relief,” Matt Darr said. “It feels good. For some of our players, they’ve been through a lot of this heartbreak (the last few years). You can say the pressure of not winning in years past doesn’t matter, but it does — being here at state, being close, being in this spot two years ago against Cherry Creek when they (beat us twice on the final day) and came back to win.
“… All of (the championships I’ve won) are special, but this one feels a little more special because of the years leading up to it, and the failures, the second places, and thinking, ‘Oh God, if I’m second again, I don’t know if I can handle that.'”
But this season would be different, even after Arvada West put the pressure on with an initial win.
Saturday’s morning game featured a showdown of aces between two of the top players in the state. Regis Jesuit threw senior right-hander , a Vanderbilt commit, while Arvada West rolled out junior right-hander Cooper Vais, a Texas pledge. Both stars threw complete games as Regis Jesuit, in the driver’s seat of the bracket after going 3-0 last weekend and beating Arvada West in the semifinal, failed to clinch the crown on the first try.
“We knew we were still in a good spot, and we were very confident (despite the opening loss),” Hudson Alpert said. “We felt like we had more pitching behind me. … I’ve been through two losses in the finals, and I was tired of seeing other teams happy. I wanted us to be happy for once, and I never lost faith we could get there to that feeling.”
The Wildcats nicked Alpert for two runs in the second inning, then tacked on another in the third via Levi Lueck’s RBI single. Vais held the fort from there, showcasing a plus slider and changeup along with a fastball touching 90. Regis Jesuit plated a couple runs in the top of the seventh, but Vais induced a groundout to end the game and strand the tying runner in a 3-2 Wildcats’ win.
Vais’ stellar performance came after the Wildcats used their other top pitcher, senior right-hander Brayden Reiner, to . With Vais and Reiner unavailable on Saturday afternoon, the Raiders took advantage immediately.
Regis Jesuit plated five runs in the opening inning off senior Cole Eisenreich, using three hits and four walks to take command early. Raiders senior Carter Rathbun had the frame’s big hit, a bases-clearing double that ignited the red-clad fanbase down the first base line.
“We had momentum still, and we jumped on them,” Darr said. “That was key.”
Eisenreich didn’t make it through the first, and freshman Jake Richards came on in relief. The right-hander pitched like a vet, throwing up zeros in the second, third and fourth, but Arvada West couldn’t get to Raiders junior pitcher Mikey Kroll. The 6-foot-4 right-hander shut out Arvada West for four innings before an hour and 20-minute lightning delay, whereupon the Raiders turned the ball over to junior right-hander Cade Filleman.
That’s when the tenor of the game changed. The Wildcats scored three runs in the fifth as Regis Jesuit lost its composure on several plays, allowing Arvada West to gain momentum. Arvada West had three RBI hits, including a two-out double by senior Luke Alonso to cut the deficit to two.
“When we won it in 2019, we had the exact same scenario — an hour-and-a-half delay,” Darr said. “It felt like it was time to get Kroll out of the game. … You could tell the moment was getting to us, all that time thinking about it in the dugout. But we re-grouped.”
Beau Friesen pitched the fifth and sixth for the Wildcats, and the senior right-hander stranded the bases loaded in the former inning and left two men on in the latter. That set up a last chance for Arvada West, but Filleman battled through two soft hits with two outs before getting Lueck to line out to right to end the game with runners on second and third.
Filleman used mixed heavy slider usage with his mid-80s fastball and an occasional changeup to prevent the Wildcats’ comeback from completing.
“They had a couple hits happen to fall (in the seventh), but I knew I just needed to keep throwing strikes to get us over the finish line,” Filleman said.
Regis Jesuit, the Continental League champions, finished 23-7. Arvada West, making its first title appearance since 1995, finished 26-5 and the Jeffco League champions’ lone in-state losses came to the Raiders.
Arvada West head coach Danny Vais — who returned to the dugout Saturday afternoon after serving a two-game suspension for what he says was an unwarranted ejection in last weekend’s semifinal — saw the bright side in the Wildcats’ defeat, even as his players were visibly emotional.
Vais has coached a majority of Arvada West’s current seniors and a few of the Wildcats’ juniors, including his son Cooper, since that group was in elementary school.
“To get back and be able to finish this with them, and fight after going down early, and be in it until the last at-bat — that’s something I’ll remember forever,” Vais said. “Obviously you want to win these games, but it’s so much more than just chasing the elusive goal of winning the state championship. I’ve been on a decade-long journey with these kids in their baseball career. I hope that these are the best baseball memories of their lives.”
