DENVER | Longtime coach Jeff Mielnicki has seen the bond of his Cherry Creek co-op team strengthen all season long.
He’s witnessed the group — comprised primarily of players from Cherry Creek plus some from Cherokee Trail, Eaglecrest and Smoky Hill — build connection with significant time on the ice, but at various events as well when they chose to gather together on their own.
On March 2, Mielnicki got to see them collectively hoist the Class 5A state championship together in the wake of a thrilling 5-3 victory over top-seeded Poudre School District in front of a packed house at Magness Arena.
“This is one of the closest units I’ve ever coached in 35 years,” Mielnicki said. “I look through some of their Instagrams and every Thursday, they are at a different house with a family meal. They are always together. I see 20 guys going to a movie, 20 guys going to a football game or something else.
“It’s not always like that, but it helped us come through today to beat such a phenomenal team. I couldn’t be more proud of this group.”
Fueled by a three-goal performance by versatile senior Matthew Lopez, plus goals from juniors Brady Sullivan and Liam Corcoran and an outstanding 34-save performance from senior netminder Mason Banks, the Cherry Creek program won its first state championship since 2015 and fifth all-time.
Even with a two-decade hiatus until a return for the 2012-13 season, Cherry Creek is now alone in third place in Colorado history for total state championships behind only Regis Jesuit (7) and Cheyenne Mountain (16).
The championship justified the belief that began when the team first hit the ice together.
“Ever since the season started back in August, we knew we had something special going on here,” said senior captain Owen Kulczewski, formerly of Grandview, now at Cherry Creek.
Added Lopez: “Every game we played, we got better. We raised it more every single shift. That’s what we knew we needed to do to win and we did that.”
Not that there weren’t some hiccups along the way, specifically against the Poudre School District team the Bruins faced in the final.
The Stars — with a whopping 20 seniors and with Fort Collins area schools Colorado Early College, Fort Collins, Fossil Ridge, Loveland, Rocky Mountain, Severance, Timnath and Windsor represented — put the state on notice early in the season and rolled past Cherry Creek 7-1 at NoCo Ice Arena.
“That was just a learning opportunity,” Kulczewski said. “We knew we needed to bounce back and we knew one day we were going to beat these guys when it mattered.”
Mielnicki strategically scheduled two meetings with the PSD team before winter break and the second one went much better, as they played to a 1-1 tie 15 days later. That allowed the Bruins to turn the page on the first contest and enter the second half of the season with a new mindset.
It worked, as Cherry Creek went 9-2 the rest of the way, with both defeats coming to 2025 state champion Valor Christian. Fittingly, it was the Eagles who the Bruins saw in the semifinals.
Cherry Creek posted a 3-1 win Feb. 28 at Ed Robson Arena in Colorado Springs to snap Valor Christian’s streak of six straight finals appearances and earn its own title shot.
“Valor is our No. 1 competitor and to go through them to get here is exactly what we wanted to do,” Lopez said. “It meant so much beating Valor and we knew we were going to take it home today because nothing was going to stop us.”
Indeed, the Bruins came out with obvious jump and took the lead when Lopez attacked the puck that PSD goalie Tucker Lourance tried to play behind the goal and fed it out to Sullivan, who scored into an empty net.
The Stars fought back with two goals in the second period, only to be victimized twice by Lopez in the final two minutes. First, he finished a setup from junior Ari Gelfand to tie the score with 1:23 left in the second period, then tallied a power play goal through traffic 1:02 later.
The hat trick was completed early in the third period when Lopez kept a puck from leaving the zone with the Bruins on a power play and rifled it five-hole on Lourance for what ultimately turned out to be the game-winning goal.
The goals were the flashy part, but Lopez did a little bit of everything to typify the grit that the Cherry Creek team believes is needed to win.
“I will do anything I can to put my body on the line to get a state championship and that’s what I did,” he said. “It really is surreal.”
Mielnicki relished all that went into winning the title and it reaffirmed his love for the game at the high school level.
“High school hockey is the place to be,” he said. “To any player thinking about playing a high level of club and spending a lot of money, you can get everything you want out of it here and more and you’ll never get a crowd like this anywhere else.”
Note: The majority of the team is made up of players from Cherry Creek, but players from Eaglecrest (Solomon Kim), Cherokee Trail (Matthew Parker, Austin Tucker and Gavin Clay) and Smoky Hill (Reilly Gregory) were on the roster. Kim and Parker got minutes during the championship game.
Courtney Oakes is Aurora Sentinel Sports Editor. Reach him at sports@sentinelcolorado.com. Twitter/X: @aurorasports. IG: Sentinel Prep Sports
2026 CLASS 5A STATE ICE HOCKEY CHAMPIONSHIP
March 2 at Magness Arena
(3) CHERRY CREEK 5, (1) POUDRE SCHOOL DISTRICT 3
Score by periods:
Cherry Creek 1 2 2 — 5
PS District 0 2 1 — 3
SCORING
First period
Cherry Creek — Brady Sullivan (Matthew Lopez, Ari Gelfand), 7:39
Second period
Poudre School District — Cavyn Nelson (Kolby Box), 12:37 (power play)
Poudre School District — Hayden Miller, 9:34
Cherry Creek — Lopez (Gelfand), 1:26
Cherry Creek — Lopez (Davis Ritter, Owen Kulczewski), 0:23
Third period
Cherry Creek — Lopez (Ritter), 14:12 (power play)
Poudre School District — London Salmela (Jorgan Bliss, Eli Brackeen), 7:54
Cherry Creek — Liam Corcoran, 4:01
Cherry Creek saves: Mason Banks (37 shots on goal-34 saves). Poudre School District saves: Tucker Lourance (20 shots on goal-15 saves)