Matt Schubert was petrified at the prospect of the prep football tradition dying.
The Denver Post has awarded the Gold Helmet to the state’s top high school senior football player, scholar and citizen since 1951, but the honor was teetering on extinction a couple years ago. Amid cutbacks, the newspaper decided to no longer fund the award — which consists of a gold-dipped trophy, plus a banquet for the winner — and that’s when , then The Post’s sports editor, knew we needed a preservation plan.
So Schubert and I looked at what we had recently done to start the Roy Halladay Award, which uses the same parameters to honor a baseball player each year. The Roy Halladay Award is backed by a nonprofit, the Colorado High School Baseball Player Award Corporation, so we copied that model to get funding for the Gold Helmet to make the legacy football award sustainable.
That blueprint has since been duplicated twice this year to fund honors for girls sports. In the spring, we launched the April Heinrichs Award for girls soccer. And this weekend, we announced the creation of the Colorado Gold Softball Award to honor a standout in that sport.
You might be wondering why The Denver Post is partnering with nonprofits that honor excellence in four different CHSAA sports. The reason is I believe it’s critically important that these young adults, who are stars on the field, in the classroom and in their community, get their due. The winners of these awards — plus the finalists, whom we also do a story on — are student-athlete standard-setters, and we should hold them up as examples of everything that is right about Colorado high school sports.
Consider the accomplishments of the three most recent winners of the Gold Helmet, Roy Halladay and April Heinrichs Awards, and how these individuals were north stars for others in the hallways of their school in addition to dominating on the field of play:
• Northfield linebacker/safety Elian Oliva had a 5.02 GPA, co-founded the Nighthawks’ UNICEF chapter, was a math tutor for peers, a youth flag football coach and spent four years as a summer-camp counselor. He is currently at the University of Miami, where he’ll do track and field.
• Montezuma-Cortez shortstop Cory Dean Carver had a 4.26 GPA, and volunteered as a youth baseball coach, at a feeder elementary school, and at an assisted living facility where he played piano for residents, did yard work and cleaned the exterior of the building. He just started at the United States Naval Academy, where he’ll play baseball.
• Denver North winger Lea Gentry had a 4.98 GPA and a long list of community service including volunteering at soup-and-sandwich lines for the homeless and helping coordinate a food and shelter relief project for Venezuelan migrants. She is currently playing at Oregon State, where she’s emerged as a starter as a freshman and is already .
I have no doubt that the winner of our inaugural Colorado Gold Softball Award, to be announced in November following the conclusion of the high school season in late October, will have a similarly impressive resume to the above three individuals.
Our ability to honor an elite female student-athlete in soccer and now softball is because of the tenacity of a Colorado girls sports trailblazer, which then led to the primary donor behind the awards in both sports.
After we announced the launch of the Roy Halladay Award last year, Mary Kvamme emailed me asking why we didn’t have any such awards for girls sports. At the advent of Title IX, launched an array of girls sports programs, and was a longtime volleyball coach who led Arvada West to the 1977 state title. Kvamme also helped establish feeder programs in Jefferson County and pushed for statistics to validate the achievements of female athletes.
My response to Kvamme’s initial email explained that it was a matter of cost — these awards average about $6,000 a year to put on — and that we simply didn’t have the funding to support a girls sports award.
Undeterred, Kvamme wrote a letter to the editor about the topic. That letter was read by Arvada resident Adam Stevinson, who wanted to get involved with the effort to honor girls sports. Schubert and I met with him last summer, and early this year, Stevinson contributed a sizable donation to give us many years of runway for the April Heinrichs Award. This August, Stevinson stepped up again, pledging an initial donation to fund the Colorado Gold Softball Award.
His donations, as well as an annual contribution from towards the April Heinrichs Award, enabled us to create much-needed gender equity in our awards. We now have a boys and girls award in the fall, as well as a boys and girls award in the spring. (The Denver Post has also given out Mr. and Ms. Colorado Basketball each winter since 1993, but those awards aren’t currently backed by a nonprofit and thus don’t come with a trophy, banquet or scholarship.)
The last thing I want to do is start one of these awards and have it fizzle out after a few years. With the way the nonprofits are set up, I am confident that we will be giving out these four awards in perpetuity.
The Gold Helmet, a beacon in Colorado high school football for 75 years, has new life largely thanks to the fraternity of successful past winners who have put their money behind the award. The Roy Halladay Award has an array of sponsors, including the Rockies, former Jeffco stadium operations manager Byron Hanson, and the . As for the girls awards, we are just getting off the ground and are looking for additional sponsors to ensure we can properly honor elite girls soccer and softball players for many years to come.
Looking down the road, the bigger picture for all these awards is to increase the amount of impact points on the Colorado high school sports community.
For example, the Colorado High School Baseball Player Award Corporation is starting a Roy Halladay Legacy Program that is giving $1,000 to an in-need CHSAA baseball program each year so that the team can buy necessities such as balls and equipment. And there is already discussion within the board of the Colorado High School Girls Soccer Player Award Corporation to expand the nonprofit’s scholarship program to include its award’s finalists.
As a board member for all four of these awards, I encourage fans of Colorado high school sports to consider donating to these nonprofits. Even a small annual tax-deductible donation can go a long way to expanding each award’s reach and longevity.
As evidenced by the list of past Gold Helmet selections, the winners of these awards are future leaders in our society. Honoring them gives young athletes across Colorado something to aspire to, and you, reader, can help us in continuing to set that standard of excellence.
Colorado high school sports awards at-a-glance
Gold Helmet Award
ǰ:Football
dzܲԻ:1951
Most recent winner: Elian Oliva, Northfield
Winner gets: Feature story, trophy, banquet, recognition at Broncos game
Associated nonprofit: Gold Helmet Award Corporation
Board president: Matt Schubert
How to donate:
Gold Softball Award
Sport: Softball
Founded: 2026
Most recent winner: Inaugural winner TBA
Winner gets: Feature story, trophy, banquet, $1,000 scholarship, recognition at Rockies game
Associated nonprofit: Colorado High School Softball Player Award Corporation
Board president: Kyle Newman
How to donate: Email knewman@denverpost.com
Roy Halladay Award
Sport: Baseball
Founded: 2025
Most recent winner: Cory Dean Carver, Montezuma-Cortez
Winner gets: Feature story, trophy, banquet, $1,000 scholarship, recognition at Rockies game
Associated nonprofit: Colorado High School Baseball Player Award Corporation
Board president: Ed Henderson
How to donate:
April Heinrichs Award
Sport: Girls Soccer
Founded: 2026
Most recent winner: Lea Gentry, Denver North
Winner gets: Feature story, trophy, banquet, $1,000 scholarship, recognition at Summit FC game
Associated nonprofit: Colorado High School Girls Soccer Player Award Corporation
Board president: Kyle Newman
How to donate:
Mr. Colorado Basketball
Sport: Boys Basketball
Founded: 1993
Most recent winner: Eric Fiedler, Regis Jesuit
Winner gets: Feature story
Associated nonprofit: None, but a possibility for the future
Board president: N/A
How to donate: Email knewman@denverpost.com
Ms. Colorado Basketball
ǰ:Girls basketball
dzܲԻ:1993
Most recent winner: Brihanna Crittendon, Riverdale Ridge
Winner gets: Feature story
Associated nonprofit: None, but a possibility for the future
Board president: N/A
How to donate: Email knewman@denverpost.com
