One year ago, high school girls flag football wasn’t a sanctioned sport in Colorado.
Now Mountain View High School has won the 4A flag football state championship — its first in any sport since 2017. The Mountain Lions, led by coach Tim Test, are the only flag football team north of Thornton. On Saturday, Nov. 2, they defeated the No. 1 seed in the playoffs, The Classical Academy Titans, 26-0.
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When the Colorado High School Activities Association sanctioned flag football in April, interested parties that had been hoping for this change for years were excited. One of them, Test, took a position with Mountain View High School as soon as possible.
“I like to call us the ‘Dream Team’ because we’re all seniors, and we’re all going to be gone next year. We got the job done, and to be the first (champions) in the state of Colorado is an amazing feeling.” –Kendal Finley, Mountain View captain
“About this time a year ago, I put on Facebook, ‘Girls flag football is going to come to Colorado. I’m going to do my best to be a part of it,’” Test said following his team’s win. “To be the head coach of the only team up north, … to work with this incredible group of girls, to win one game would have been enough.”
Mountain View won far more than one game. The team, composed of players from seven different schools around Northern Colorado, went 18-1, leaving eight of their 19 opponents scoreless. Despite this, the state championship was the team’s first shutout in almost a month.
Mountain View entered the playoffs with the No. 2 ranking in the 4A classification, only sitting behind their eventual opponent in the Titans.
“We don’t know a ton about TCA, other than what we see on the stat sheet and what we hear about,” Test said following the semifinal win against George Washington High School. “For us, we’re happy to be there, but we’re not going to be satisfied just getting there.”
Mountain View may have been satisfied following the championship, but they waited with bated breath throughout the contest. The Mountain Lions didn’t score until there was only 2:43 left in the first quarter, with a pass from quarterback Mason Premer to utility player Kendal Finley on 4th-and-goal from the 3-yard line. Though the ensuing PAT was just short, Mountain View was still up 6-0.
Mekayla Macias, a junior running back from Thompson Valley High School, was the next to score for Mountain View. With only 22.8 seconds left in the first quarter, Macias took a direct snap and rushed down the left side, scraping the pylon for another touchdown. After that, Premer rushed in the PAT, extending Mountain View’s lead 13-0.
The score remained the same until the 9:49 mark in the fourth quarter, when — on the 5-yard line — Finley flipped the ball to senior center Violet Hidalgo, who caught it in the end zone, making it 20-0 for the Mountain Lions. The final score to seal the deal came from a pick-six by Gwyneth Marks, the team’s third interception in the fourth quarter.
With the Lions up 26-0 with only 1:30 remaining, everyone in the stadium knew the deal was done.
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Mountain View quarterback Premer said that though these playoffs were tough, where teams that they had previously beaten by 50 were suddenly up by a score at halftime, the team locked into focus at just the right time.
“We could not have timed that better,” said Premer, a senior at Berthoud High School. “I wasn’t scared, but we definitely peaked at the right moment for our last game.”
And for many of these seniors, like Finley, the sole player from Longmont, Colorado, on the roster, this 19th game of the season is also the last of their careers.
“We got one chance,” Finley said after the championship game. “This is our one and done. I like to call us the ‘Dream Team’,because we’re all seniors, and we’re all going to be gone next year. We got the job done, and to be the first (champions) in the state of Colorado is an amazing feeling.”
After his team’s 47-8 senior night win over Legacy High School Oct. 1, Test called the Mountain Lions “Team Northern Colorado,” as his players come from seven different schools: Mountain View, Loveland High School, Thompson Valley High School, Berthoud High School, Longmont High School, Roosevelt High School and Resurrection Christian High School.
Reach Gideon Aigner at sports@collegian.com or on Twitter @GideonAigner.
