FORT COLLINS — Saturday’s Class 5A championship at Canvas Stadium is the next chapter in a friendly but fierce rivalry between two Colorado football icons that goes back three decades.
Dave Logan’s Cherry Creek Bruins take on Andy Lowry’s Columbine Rebels in the third title bout between the two head coaches with more than six decades of combined experience, and 16 combined championships.
It’s a rivalry rooted in mutual respect for the men who got their starts at humble Jeffco programs in the early 1990s, Logan at Arvada West and Lowry at Lakewood. And it’s a rivalry that’s given both men perspective — to the football-obsessed Logan that there’s more to life than the game, and to the Columbine mainstay Lowry a blueprint to emulate as he’s built the Rebels into a perennial contender.
“We’ve had some great battles over the years,” Logan noted. “When Columbine beat us in the 2006 state championship game (when I was coaching at Mullen), my mom had a heart attack the night before the game and had open heart surgery that morning. (Andy) was so great after the game, and checked in on her in the next few months.
“(We’ve both learned) he’s highly competitive and so am I. But it also gives you perspective when something like that happens (with my mom) that football is great, but football is not the end-all, be-all. We’ve had a great history of competition against each other for a long, long time.”
Logan won the first matchup against Lowry in 1994, when Arvada West beat Lowry’s first-year Rebels. Columbine was gashed for over 300 yards rushing that day, which had Lowry recalling the game as a “nightmare” during Tuesday’s media day in Fort Collins.
Fast-forward a few decades, and it’s Lowry who’s made smash-mouth football a staple of Columbine’s success over 30 years and 300-plus wins with the Rebels.
Logan, meanwhile, earned at least one title at each of his stops at Arvada West, Chatfield, Mullen and now Cherry Creek, which is the four-time defending Class 5A champions. The Bruins’ win over Valor Christian last December gave Logan his 11th ring as Colorado’s most successful coach, with now 16 title appearances in 31 years. Lowry has five rings with Columbine.
The Rebels beat Logan and Mullen that day in 2006, 13-10, but Logan paid Lowry back in Denver in 2019 in the start of the Bruins’ historic four-peat with a convincing 35-10 win.
Now, this year’s matchup is a Venn diagram of similarities and contrasts between the Colorado powerhouses.
Both teams are 13-0. Both have a culture within their program where winning, and deep playoff runs, are expected every fall. Both are as physical and disciplined of teams as you’ll find in Colorado. And both have had remarkable continuity within their coaching staffs that’s almost impossible to match by other top programs in Class 5A.
Across Logan’s four stops, he’s had the same assistants around him in guys like Jim Zajac (an original from his staff at A-West), while O-line coach Det Betti, running backs coach James Walker and tight ends coach Chris Vollmer have all been with him for over 20 years.
Meanwhile, in his time at Columbine, Lowry’s leaned on do-all assistant Ivory Moore and defensive coordinator Tom Tonelli, both of whom have been by his side since his first year on South Pierce Street in 1994.
“It’s important you supplement your staff with some younger coaches as well, but if you can keep the core group of your staff together and they’re willing to dedicate time and energy and get paid about 5 cents an hour to mentor kids, to work with and coach kids and to love them, it’s priceless,” Logan said. “This staff is one of the things I’m most proud about. You can’t put a price on that. Same thing (with Lowry) at Columbine.”
Then, there are the glaring differences between behemoth Cherry Creek and Columbine, which is as small-but-mighty as Class 5A programs come.
Cherry Creek, the state’s largest school, has more than 2,000 more kids walking its halls than Columbine (3,806 to 1,745, according to the latest CHSAA enrollment figures). With a varsity roster of over 100 players, the Bruins have about 35% more football bodies, too. Columbine’s small roster has presented challenges for Lowry this year.
“As far as depth-wise, this is the least amount of kids we’ve ever had as far as juniors and seniors,” Lowry said. “It kind of brings me back to my Lakewood days and coaching with 30 guys on the roster. This year, we had 40-something (upperclassmen), and they’re tough as nails. The challenge for us as coaches was, ‘How do you prepare?’ We’re a team that practices pretty physical, so the biggest challenge was how to keep our guys healthy and still be able to practice with that intensity level.
“We tell our kids that it doesn’t take an army. The amount of kids we have, they all jump in with both feet.”
Add in the obvious disparity in sheer physical size between the programs, plus the fact that favorite Cherry Creek has multiple college pledges while Columbine has no commits, and it’s obvious the Rebels’ “it’s about us” rallying cry will mean more than ever this Saturday.
“That adds another chip to our shoulders,” Columbine senior center Carlos Mendoza said. “We might not look the same in terms of structure or size like the Cherry Creek guys, but we have that heart and dawg built into us from the coaches. No matter what, we want to be the most physical team out there.”
Whoever wins the battle up front will likely be standing with the trophy following Saturday’s 3 p.m. kick at Canvas Stadium. Cherry Creek’s O-line features left tackle AJ Burton, left guard Hayden Treter, center Ned Zilinskas, a right guard combo of Evan Godin/Soren Shinofield, and right tackle Max Parrott.
Burton (Iowa State), Treter (Southern California) and Parrott (Purdue) are all headed to the next level. The Bruins missed Burton for numerous games this fall, including the semifinal win over Ralston Valley after he dislocated his shoulder in the season opener, and dislocated it again multiple times since. But Burton plans on playing through the pain Saturday.
“I’m really proud of AJ, because he could just hang it up and look to the future,” Det Betti said. “But he’s part of the unwritten aspect of football where he’s a kid who is going to show up and sacrifice for the good of the team. That just shows you, Burton, Treter and Parrott, they’re Power 5 guys, but they’re blue-collar. They’re captains for a reason.”
For the Rebels, who rarely pass, they’ll need to get consistent push in the run game from Mendoza, left tackle Andrew Ossola, right guard DJ Ironshell, right tackle Peyton Burcar and their left guard by-committee.
Logan knows that no matter his team’s advantage in size and numbers, the Bruins will have to earn their five-peat.
“When you face Columbine year-in and year-out, you know you’re in for a physical match,” Logan said. “You know you have to be sound in what you do because they have perfected what they do… They have a belief and confidence this year, and you can see it on tape. And I would say they have an edge to them as well that’s apparent.
“We have to know it’s going to be a 48-minute game and there’s going to be nothing that’s easy, and we have to be willing to stand and trade (blows) and hopefully get a couple of breaks.”
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