COMMERCE CITY – Whoever said a Tiger can’t change its stripes hasn’t been paying attention to the Holy Family boys soccer team.
A year ago, the Tigers finished the regular reason with a 3-10-2 record. Forget championship aspirations, they wanted nothing more than to be a competitive program moving forward.
A coaching change triggered a culture change. Now Holy Family isn’t just championship material, it’s a bona fide champion.
Jesus Molina buried a shot from inside of 20 yards out in extra time, hitting the top-left corner to give Holy Family a 1-0 win over Jefferson Academy in the Class 3A state championship game.
“I saw Ollie [Hansen] taking the ball forward and I had no doubt he was going to take the defenders on,” Molina said. “I made eye contact with him. I saw him, and I screamed ‘ball!’ He gave a perfect ball and all I had to do was tap it in.”
In one kick, the pain of last season, the angst of 80-plus scoreless minutes and the stress of having never won a soccer title all went away.
This is a team that has long felt it had the right pieces, something just had to bring it all together.
“We changed our coaching staff and we created a sort of brotherhood,” Molina said. “Our coach is much different, our training habits, everything is different.”
This was just the second time in program history that Holy Family had advanced to the state title game. In 2003, the Tigers lost to Faith Christian (now Forge Christian) 4-3.
The last time the Tigers (16-2-2 overall) made the playoffs was when they reached the 4A bracket in 2021. They lost to eventual state champion Northfield 4-1.
(Dan Mohrmann/ColoradoPreps.com)
In the two years that followed, they won a combined seven games. It was prior to this fall that Ted Hansen took over as coach. He didn’t see an empty cupboard that was going to have to be stocked over the course of a few seasons. He saw a lot of talent that just didn’t know how to work in cohesion.
“We knew we had good players on the team and we just needed to take all those good players and turn them into a good team,” Hansen said. “We had to get everyone on the same page and get them to where we are today. Where everyone believes in each other and everyone is playing for each other.”
That belief was evident was at the victory was officially in hand. Molina had faith that the forwards would take care of their task and get the goal that was badly needed mainly because he knew that the back line wasn’t going to let down at any point through the game.
“I was 100% that the back line wasn’t going to let a goal in,” Molina said. “They’ve been phenomenal all season. Matt [Napierkowski], Achi [Tetenta], Max [Davisson] and Dube [Tetenta] have been clamps this whole season. They’ve kept us alive.”
They were more phenomenal over the course of 82 minutes at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park. Jefferson Academy rarely had scoring looks and the Tigers were masterful in clearing the ball and disrupting pass or shot attempts.
That’s why Molina’s golden goal felt a long time coming. Not just on a sunny Saturday afternoon, but all season long. When thinking about where the Holy Family was a year ago, it turns out these Tigers were able to change their stripes.
(Eric Brown)
