Cheyenne Mountain hockey has always upheld the tradition of excellence and dominated the hockey world, as the high school team with the most state wins across all divisions. This makes the 16th state champion title, and second consecutive win out of three years competing in 4A. March 7 at Denver University, Cheyenne Mountain Boy’s Hockey won a nail-biting game in the third overtime, with a score of 1-0. 

This year our boys went 8-0 in league play, and 18-3-1 overall. The team was led to success by senior captains Wyatt Furda, Matty Kelheper, and Philip Brambell. Matty reflected on the season, “This year we had to work the hardest to get there. At the start of the season, we weren’t the number one team, we weren’t favored at all.”

Wyatt elaborated, “This year we have a majority underclassmen team, who all played great roles in the championship game. Going into this year, everyone thought we were going to be a 500 team. I guess nobody told us that though, because we played like the top team we deserved to be. It was awesome to see how we went from a team that didn’t have any expectations this year to proving everyone wrong.”

Despite the team’s significant challenges this year, the team bond never wavered in the face of the new pressure they confronted this season. Senior Hank Walsh explained this dynamic, “This year we had a lot of underclassmen, so we really wanted to make sure everyone felt like they had a role on the team. The hardest part was taking things a little more seriously. In the regular season you can kind of mess around and have some fun, but when playoffs roll around with a lot of those kids never played in front of a crowd having them take it seriously was a little difficult.”

Wyatt agreed, “Off the ice I’m a friend, not a big bad captain. But then when it comes to living up to the expectations we have for them, I’ll coach them up or give them some guidance about what they could do better in some aspect of the game.” “The most fun part of this season was how we got to be a really close group of friends off the ice.”

Junior goalie Jeremy Renhlom played the game of a lifetime with 26 saves. He served a huge role in keeping CMHS in the game as Greenwood continued to break into their attacking zone. On his gametime mindset, he said “I just tried to give my team the best chance to win, one shot at a time.”

Hank executed and won the game with an assist from Wyatt near the end of the third overtime. On the winning point, Hank explained “I knew I wasn’t the star player on this team, so I just wanted to contribute where I could contribute. The whole game I just kept wondering how we were still tied. I knew we weren’t playing as well as they did and we didn’t have as many shots as them. But I didn’t think once that we were gonna go home and lose. I just kept thinking we were gonna win and eventually it happened”

With as much success as the Hawks had this year, it’s hard to describe the season as anything but great. Matty reflected on his time in the program, “I don’t know how you get much better than that. It was awesome, I had a great time with everyone. That last win was probably the most rewarding moment of the last four years.”

Coach Austin summed the season up best: “It was a good year! We won the last game and went undefeated in the league. Just a good season overall.”