Futures of DPS, Aurora teams bright
By 2007, it became clear to coaches and administrators with Denver Public Schools that the district was on the path to cutting high school football unless a solution was found.
“All the head coaches knew that if we didn’t do something, and something big, we were probably going to lose football in Denver Public,” said John Andrew, the district’s athletic director. “It wasn’t just one school with critically low numbers — there were a lot of schools that were really struggling. Everybody saw the kids getting filtered out to other programs at private schools and in the suburbs.”
Many of the district’s 10 traditional high schools struggled to field a varsity team, much less be competitive.
“I wanted to see DPS not be the worst league in the state — and around 2005 we were kind of getting to that point,” Andrew said. “I used to go to Denver West football games at All City Stadium, and teams from suburban districts would come in with 150 kids. Denver West would have 14 kids, and we’d get mercy-ruled within the first two minutes. I knew we needed to start at the grassroots level with our middle schoolers and somehow attach them to our high school coaches and programs.”
Andrew’s concept became reality in 2009 when Broncos Charities accepted the district’s pitch to fund Futures, a spring tackle football feeder program for seventhand eighth-graders. Futures is in its 10th season, with the playoffs in May. Each Futures team consists of players who live in the boundaries of a district high school and is coached by that school’s varsity coaches, a handson approach that has led to the substantial growth in players coming out for DPS programs over the past decade.
In 2008, before Futures began, the district had a total of 605 football players at its 10 traditional high schools. Compare that with the 2017 season, when DPS had 826 players in those programs — a 37 percent increase despite continued decreasing enrollment at the high schools.
“It gave the coaches a fighting chance to keep kids in district for high school, show them what their high school program is all about and — at the end of the day — it kept a lot of those kids in district,” said Bobby Mestas, the Broncos’ director of youth and high school football. “I think Futures is pretty unique, because we can look back now and say Futures was significant in saving football at Denver Public Schools.”
Rescuing football at South
The effect of Futures was especially prominent at Denver South, where coach Tony Lindsay didn’t waste much time in capitalizing on its benefits. Much of his first Futures team proceeded to start on varsity as freshmen, then marched all the way to the Class 4A state title game in 2012.
It was Denver Public Schools’ first championship game appearance in football since 1990, and the Rebels came up a score short of the district’s first state championship since Thomas Jefferson’s 4A crown in 1989.
“Futures was how we got strong,” said Lindsay, now the head coach at Far Northeast. “At South, there’s no feeder and there’s no (youth) teams around South at all. That was definitely needed by us more than anybody, because a lot of the kids that were coming to us before were actually coming from playing youth in far northeast Denver and in Aurora.”
Having seen the success of Futures in reinvigorating football in Denver Public Schools, the Broncos worked with Aurora Public Schools to start that district’s feeder program in 2015.
This spring’s Futures season features 11 teams in the DPS league and five in the APS league.
And even in the first three seasons, Vista Peak Prep football coach John Sullivan said Futures has been vital in putting his varsity program on the map in an openenrollment landscape.
“Being a newer school, even some of our feeder schools didn’t know what we had to offer,” Sullivan said. “Talk to any coach from Denver, any coach from Aurora — we lose a ton of kids to Cherry Creek, to Mullen, to Valor. It’s that constant battle to keep your own kids and show what you’ve got, and the Futures program has helped us with that.”
Low cost to play helps
Denver and Aurora district officials said the low cost of the program — the registration fee is $40, and players are provided equipment and uniforms — also has played a role in participation growth. Broncos Charities picks up the rest of the tab, which Andrew said comes to about $465 per player annually in addition to coaching and officiating costs.
Plus, the beyond-the-field requirements of Futures — maintaining academic eligibility as well as completion of the Project PAVE course designed to “empower youth to end the cycle of relationship violence” — have a way of stabilizing athletes for their transition into high school.
“Last year, we did a community outreach program with the Broncos called Team Catch, which is all about community advancement through character,” said Mike Krueger, district athletic director for Aurora Public Schools. “And this year, without a doubt, there’s been a lot of positive influence that Project PAVE and Derek Mccoy, who runs that program, have had on our kids. So there’s a lot more to the success of Futures than just the football aspect.”
Other non-denver or Aurora high schools are seeing that, and they want in.
This year, the Broncos considered four teams for expansion, but ultimately selected just one to leave room for future growth that could include adding struggling programs from other district high schools into the current leagues — as was done this spring with Jeffco Public Schools’ Arvada.
“The future would be to expand very slowly — maybe looking at adding a couple teams every few years — because this isn’t just a Band-aid, check-the-box type of program,” Mestas said. “This is a program that involves a lot of resources and time, and it takes several years to show its benefits and value.”
And even if that value isn’t necessarily in the form of 10-win seasons and a state championship game appearance as Denver South enjoyed, Futures, above anything else, gives dying high school football programs a breath of fresh air.
“The biggest success is a program like Denver West, where the year before Futures started we had 14 kids in the entire program and now we have 66 kids,” Andrew said. “The kids don’t go out on the field feeling inadequate — they feel like they’ve actually got a chance at being competitive.”