(Photos by Zachary Spindler-Krage/The Denver Post)

A large crowd gathered in City Park to march through the streets in response to recent Israeli military strikes on Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip, on Saturday, June 1, 2024, in Denver, Colorado.

PUEBLO – Brayden Epperhart’s last prep baseball game was one for the memory books.

The senior fired 5 2/3 innings of one-run ball and had an RBI bunt, powering Denver Christian to a 2-1 win over Limon Saturday for its second-consecutive Class 2A state championship at Colorado State University-Pueblo’s Rawlings Field.

“I didn’t get a lot of sleep (Friday night), I’m going to be honest,” the 6-foot-3, 180-pound righthander said. “I came in with the mindset that we have been here before. This isn’t anything new and just trusting in the Lord and making sure that everybody is working in unison and the only way we can win a baseball game is if we are all working together.

“This feels pretty great. I give all the honor and the glory to the Lord. It’s an awesome legacy to leave at an awesome school. It is great way to go out.”

This is Denver Christian’s fourth state baseball crown in school history to go along with the ones it captured in 1996, 2013 and 2023. DC, which beat Limon 5-3 to win 2A state in 2023, finished the season with a 24-4 record.

Limon (28-2) was playing in its fourth-consecutive 2A title game – it won state in 2021 and 2022.

The Badgers would have had to beat Denver Christian twice to earn the 2A state championship because Limon lost to Lyons 5-1 in the first weekend of the state tourney and came back through the consolation bracket, finishing with a 4-2 record in the double-elimination tourney.

This season Limon edged Denver Christian 8-6 on March 23.

“This year was an absolute battle,” Denver Christian coach Sam Jones said. “The first one is nice, you get the monkey off your back, and this one was a whole different animal. I’m so proud of these guys and I love them so much. I’m so blessed to be their coach and I’m so grateful for the opportunity God has given me to be their coach and lead this school and this program, all the glory to Jesus Christ. It is just a privilege to coach these young men and coach alongside these amazing assistant coaches, they do an outstanding job every single day.”

The game turned into a marvelous pitching battle between Epperhart and Limon star athlete Jordan Rockwell as the game was scoreless through five innings.

That set the table for a drama-filled sixth inning.

With one out in the top of the frame, Mason Reilly registered an infield hit beating the throw by Limon shortstop Cale Bennett to the bag. Asher Hawes then smashed a single up the middle, allowing Reilly to race to third and Hawes to move to second on the throw to third.

Up came Brayden Epperhart and he bunted a slow roller to Rockwell. Rockwell scooped up the ball and threw to catcher Trey Smith, but Reilly slid in safely.

“Our philosophy in this program is to find ways to manufacturer runs and I’m a big believer in small ball,” Jones said. “I think that is the way the game should be played and Brayden Epperhart did an amazing job of executing that well and Mason did an outstanding job getting in there and diving into home. That’s stuff we practice every single day. They get so sick of practicing bunting, but it shows up in the big moments like this and you never know when the little things are going to translate in those big moments right there.”

Patrick Elson then stepped to the plate and the junior, who struck out in his two previous at-bats, was given choices by Coach Jones – bunt of hit away.

Elson selected the second option and responded by cracking a single up middle to score Hawes and give DC a 2-1 advantage.

“This feels amazing,” Elson said. “I was going up there expecting that Coach (Jones) was going to rely on me to bunt and then he gave me that option and put that faith in me and asked me if I wanted to swing the bat. I told him I did and there is just no more rewarding feeling than getting that hit and scoring for the team and having all my brothers behind me cheering me on.”

Limon countered in the bottom of the sixth.

Keon Bandy drew a one-out walk and then Lance Beedy, the next batter, drove a double over left fielder Nolan Epperhart’s head, plating Bandy. Epperhart, a sophomore, and the younger brother of Brayden, however, was able to fire the ball back in and Beedy was tagged out at third.

Holding on a slim 2-1 lead, Brayden walked the next batter Brody Scherrer. That brought Cale Bennett to the plate and Coach Jones summoned for relief pitcher Reilly.

Reilly came through by striking out Bennett.

Limon had one final opportunity in the bottom of the seventh to tie or win the game, but Reilly slammed the door again. The junior struck out the side to secure DC’s title.

BROOMFIELD — Past fields of yellow wildflowers, tall grass and prairie dog burrows, an Adams County geology teacher, four of his students and the Broomfield mayor huddled around the fossilized footprint of a horned dinosaur that roamed this land some 70 million years ago.

“To have this in our own backyard,” Mayor Guyleen Castriotta said. “You can’t beat it.”

The Friday afternoon field trip was the result of Northglenn High School geology teacher Kent Hups stumbling across dinosaur fossils about three years ago while out scouting.

Hups is a researcher with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science who has excavated fossils throughout the West for decades. During the height of the pandemic, he stayed closer to home and took his high school geology students on virtual walks around his community hunting for natural treasures he could share with them over Zoom.

That’s when he first found dinosaur fossils on Broomfield open space, adjacent to a suburban neighborhood. To help preserve the area, Hups doesn’t want to disclose the exact location.

“I’m excited as hell,” Hups said. “You do a lot of whooping and hollering by yourself when you find these things. When you find footprints, you’re looking at something that was left by a living animal. To be able to touch that — it’s like 70 million years ago, this thing was alive and stepped right here. I’m stepping in the same place. It’s an amazing feeling.”

Traversing through thick grasses and shimmying up and down steep hills, Hups led the class to three dinosaur footprints, but said there were surely more in the area. The fossilized footprints looked like garden stepping stones jutting up from the grass, a little larger than a basketball with ridges and indentations that Hups explained were the dinosaurs’ toes.

Based on the toe patterns, Hups said it was a horned dinosaur — possibly a Triceratops.

It took a while working with the city of Broomfield to get the proper permits, but on Friday, Hups was finally able to take some students to investigate the area. He handed out plastic bags to the teens — some who had trekked out in Doc Marten boots and Converse sneakers — and showed them how to crouch low to inspect the dirt for bones.

Alanna Santa Cruz, 15, whipped a magnifying glass out of her back pocket as she squatted on the ground, her knees touching the earth through the ripped holes in her jeans.

Alanna is in Hups’ school paleontology club.

“When I was a kid, I was obsessed with dinosaurs,” she said. “I knew all about them and had a bunch of the toys and watched all the movies. I wanted to see what it would be like to be a paleontologist.”

The area they visited Friday was ripe with small fossils and bones sticking out of the ground among rocks, cacti and dirt. Some were more obvious to the untrained eye — shaped like vertebrae, for example — while others could be confused for stones and debris. The pieces of creatures were small enough to fit in the palm of a hand and scattered everywhere, broken into bits after years of exposure.

Students approached Hups with cupped palms full of objects. Sometimes Hups told them they had just found a mineral, but other times, his eyes lit up as he announced they had found bone.

“If you’re not sure, lick it,” Hups said, bringing an object from the ground to his lips and grazing it with his tongue. “If it sticks to it like ice, that’s a fossil.”

Hups’ students looked at their teacher with disgusted grimaces.

“Try it!” he said with delight.

“No, thanks, mister,” Alanna said.

When Hups turned his back, Alanna marveled at an object in her hand, turning it over and over trying to determine its value. She brought it to her mouth and snuck a quick lick.

“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” she said, declaring it a fossil and popping it into her bag.

The class wrote down the GPS coordinates of their finds so they can bring them back later in the year after they’re done investigating them, so as not to disturb the natural resources, Hups said.

Jonah Rotert, 17, was quiet and reserved at the start of the trek, but he couldn’t help but grin as his bag filled with tiny bones belonging to prehistoric creatures. Hups said he was sure Rotert had found a crocodile bone.

“It’s a really cool feeling,” Rotert said. “I’m the first person to touch these in millions of years.”

Millions of years ago, these massive creatures walked where the class stood, Hups said, pointing toward cars speeding down U.S. 287 in the distance.

“I love seeing the modern on top of ancient life,” Hups said.

Next school year, the students will present their findings to the city of Broomfield and come up with ideas on how to educate the public about the land, the fossils and how important it is to report findings, Hups said.

“What did this environment look like all these years ago?” Hups said. “Until we find fossils, we don’t know. What’s most important about them is the story they tell.”

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