Columbine softball a couple of wins away from repeating as 5A Jeffco League champs

ARVADA — It what is normally a hotly contested conference race, Columbine softball in running away from the field in Class 5A Jeffco League this season.

The Rebels (12-7 record, 6-0 in league) ran their winning streak to eight games Monday with an 8-6 road victory at Arvada West. However, it wasn’t as clean of a win for Columbine as the Rebels would have liked.

“Our girls played hard, but we took a few steps back,” Columbine coach Jim Santaniello said after the closest league victory the Rebels have had so far this season. “We have to go back to the drawing board tomorrow to get better.”

Columbine jumped out to a 6-0 lead through the first three innings. Junior AJ Swenby crushed a long 2-run home run in the top of the first inning. The Rebels plated two more runs in the second inning. Senior Shalee Trujillo and junior Ava Kyle had RBI hits in the third inning to push the lead to 6-0.

Trujillo walked with the bases loaded in the top of the fourth inning to make the lead 7-0, but then the Rebels hit a bit of a speed bump on their quest to repeat as conference champs.

“We just need to focus more,” Trujillo said of the message to her teammates. “We got kind of goofy today. We need to lock in more. We just have to keep working hard in practice.”

The Rebels had a few base-running errors that cost Columbine’s offense that stalled in the later innings. A couple of fielding errors allowed A-West (3-14, 1-5) to score a pair of runs in both the fourth and fifth inning to cut Columbine’s lead to 7-4.

“We tell the girls that we are Columbine and we have a target on our back,” Santaniello said. “Every team that plays us is trying to bring their ‘A Game’. Our goals will be short circuited if we don’t do the little things and we don’t stay focused. That is a challenge for us.”

A-West sophomore Lexi Sanchez and junior Lena Guyer got the scoring going for the Wildcats with RBI singles off A-West starting sophomore pitcher Karter Pascavis in the fourth inning. Senior Kate Sanders had a 2-run single in the bottom of the fifth inning to cut the lead to 7-4.

“I think this was the best game we’ve played all season,” said A-West coach Alyssa Carter said, who stepped into the head coaching role a little over three weeks ago. “It has been a challenging year for us. We’ve been fighting hard and the girls have been putting in the work. To see a game like this was good to see and a bit of a boost for us.”

Trujillo doubled to leadoff the seventh inning and scored to give the Rebels a little insurance. A-West junior Isabella McNeil ripped a 2-run double off of Swenby, who took over in the circle in the fifth inning, but that was as close as the Wildcats could get as Swenby finished the game with back-to-back strikeouts.

“With Shalee, she had some clutch hits,” Santaniello said talking about the bright spots in the win. “We had excellent pitching from both of our pitchers.”

Columbine has a 2-game lead over Chatfield (9-10, 4-2) and Ralston Valley (10-8, 4-2) with four league games left. The win Monday makes it possible that the Rebels could clinch the league title as early as this coming Saturday (Oct. 3) at Ralston Valley.

“There is going to be a lot tougher competition coming up the next couple of days,” Trujillo said with Chatfield and Ralston Valley coming up this week. “We just have to work hard and keep pushing.”

Chatfield and Columbine have dominated the status of league champion in 5A Jeffco for nearly a decade. The south-Jeffco rivals have combined to win every 5A Jeffco League softball title over the last eight years.

The Chargers won conference titles in 2020, 2023 and 2024, along with winning the 5A state championship in 2023. The Rebels have won five league titles — 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2025 — over the past eight seasons, including 5A state titles in 2019 and 2022.

Columbine was No. 8 in the CHSAA 5A softball rankings powered by MaxPreps at the start of the week. The Rebels have an a gradual accent up the ranking after a rough 2-6 start to the season.

A-West has road games coming up against Valor Christian (Wednesday), Chatfield (Saturday) and Ralston Valley (Monday, Oct. 5) before finishing up at home against Lakewood (Wednesday, Oct. 7).

“For the rest of our league we want to be competitive and don’t give up,” Carter said.