Thirty years ago, Highlands Ranch girls basketball put Colorado on notice about a dynasty in the making.
It was Caryn Jarocki’s first season as the Falcons’ head coach in 1996-97, following an 11-year stint at Class 2A Colorado Academy. That Highlands Ranch team didn’t have any hoops superstars, but they were gritty enough to flip their record from 8-13 the year prior to 13-8, and lost a close game to state champion Montbello in the second round of the playoffs.
“We get to that game, and our kids don’t know what they’re doing — I had a bunch of soccer players on the team, with a few freshman who were true basketball players,” Jarocki said. “But we played our butts off, they bought into my coaching, and the score was tight in the second half. Montbello was getting angry, getting a little physical.
“My kids were not that physical. We had a couple kids go down (due to injury), and I think we lost by around 10 points, but it was one of those, ‘Holy cow, how are (the Falcons) staying with us?’ games from the Montbello perspective. We gave the champs a scare, and that showed me the potential of what could happen with our own program.”
Three decades later, the Falcons emerged from those humble beginnings as an all-time Colorado high school girls basketball powerhouse. Jarocki is the state’s winningest girls coach, with 774 wins and counting, and the Highlands Ranch dynasty reached its zenith with seven Class 5A titles in the first dozen seasons of this century.
In the 15 years since the Falcons’ last championship in 2011, Highlands Ranch has been a perennial contender in the final stages of the state tournament. But the program, which has never had a losing season under Jarocki nor missed the playoffs, has been unable to raise another trophy.
That title drought could be ending soon. The Falcons are young this season, but stacked with college prospects and have the talent to make a run for the crown in Class 6A (the state’s largest classification since Colorado added an additional class in 2023) at the Denver Coliseum. After that, Highlands Ranch will be moving down to Class 5A due to the school’s declining enrollment.
In 5A, Jarocki’s Falcons will be one of the championship favorites, even as shrinking numbers have forced her to not field a JV team over the past couple of years.
“We’re still going to play in the Continental League in the 6A division (when the league splits into two divisions in 2026-27),” Jarocki said. “We’re still going to go to Phoenix (to the Nike Tournament of Champions) and play high-level games there. And most of our non-league games will be against 6A schools or top 5A programs. But I really do think it is a good time to move down.”
Highlands Ranch’s current enrollment is 1,261, according to Colorado Department of Education data, which is about 1,000 fewer students than when Jarocki first took the job. The Falcons’ current enrollment would put the school in the midrange of the CHSAA girls basketball Class 5A enrollment split for the next cycle.
Ann Abromaitis (nee Strother), a Colorado girls basketball great who won two titles playing for Jarocki in 2001 and ’02 before going on to a decorated career at UConn, believes the move to 5A could rejolt the Falcons’ dynasty.
“There’s maybe a couple of teams here and there that will be able to play with them,” said Abromaitis, who coaches at Kent Denver. “But they will absolutely dominate 5A.”
The Falcons’ talent pipeline
Before Jarocki transformed Highlands Ranch into a girls basketball juggernaut, the Chicago native played at the University of Denver.
A pair of ACL injuries, one to each knee, derailed her time with the Pioneers. But the second injury led her into coaching, as she helmed a seventh-grade girls team her senior year at DU. Jarocki also student taught at Colorado Academy while coaching a freshman boys team, then got a full-time job at the school and became the JV girls coach. The next year, in 1985-86, she became the varsity girls coach.
That was the genesis of a Hall of Fame coaching career defined by intensity, basketball I.Q. and an expectation that the Falcons met the bar that she set. But she’s also had a longstanding personal touch with her players.
That was evident even in Jarocki’s first season on Cresthill Lane. After senior Adrianne Sikora got hurt in the playoff defeat to CU-bound Nikke Weddle and Montbello, Jarocki conducted the team’s end-of-season meeting at Sikora’s house, which she couldn’t leave due to her injury.
“She was tough, absolutely,” Sikora recalled. “She had great expectations for the program and it was clear that if you didn’t meet them, you’d be watching from the bench. But she didn’t rule with a heavy fist. She understood how to connect with players of all skill levels, even in that first season when we didn’t have many true basketball players.”
Of course, it wasn’t long before the Falcons started to stack premier talent on the roster.
After winning the program’s first title in 2000, Abromaitis transferred to Highlands Ranch from Heritage, where the dynamic guard/forward spent her first two seasons. She was coming off an ACL tear that sidelined her for her sophomore season.
A Castle Rock resident at the time, Abromaitis says the chance to play for Jarocki was one factor in her transfer, which was met with some controversy. Abromaitis is the most notable of a long list of Falcons players who came to the program from outside of Highlands Ranch’s attendance area.
In the case of Abromaitis, free transfers were allowed then. More recently, the Falcons remain a destination program for open enrollment, which is how many of the current Highlands Ranch ballers ended up at the school.
But Rick Harris — Jarocki’s longtime assistant when the Falcons were winning titles with regularity — says that people forget that when Jarocki arrived at Highlands Ranch, the school was losing a lot of players within its boundary because the program wasn’t competitive.
“People forget all about that chapter,” Harris said. “I think her intentions were, ‘I’d like to keep my kids here, the kids that I know should be going here that are going to other schools.’ It started with that mindset, and then it snowballed into what you see now.”
Now, many of Jarocki’s top players are pipelined into the program from the club basketball program that she founded in 2010, Colorado Basketball Club. That connection has become all the more important considering Highlands Ranch’s drastic enrollment decline over the last decade.
Critics may think that approach is unfair, but the reality is that since club basketball became the norm for elite players over the last couple of decades, that model is employed by many other coaches of top girls and boys programs across the state. It is also within the current CHSAA bylaws on recruiting, which do not specifically address the trend of high school basketball coaches doubling as club coaches.
In an era of stricter transfer rules, the blueprint is to form connections with players and their families through club basketball before they get to high school.
“It’s about being out there and working with the kids, and then they get to know you,” Jarocki said. “And they know the success of the program, and they either feel like they fit in or they don’t. But through club, they can find that out pretty early. And then it’s up to families (to make the decision on open enrollment).”
Falcons’ chances at Coliseum run
While Highlands Ranch’s hoard of Division I talent over the decades has been undeniable, Harris says Jarocki’s sustained success is because she “has an unbelievable mind for the game.”
“From Day 1, she had a plan to make it a winning program,” Harris said. “And at the end of the day, no matter how much talent you have, you have to be able to coach it.”
This year, the Falcons are headlined by sophomore guard Kimora Banks-Thomas, who paces the team with 16.7 points per game. Plus, Highlands Ranch has a pair of impact sisters in junior twins Addie Moon and Katie Moon, and the senior/freshman guard combo of Kniyah Dumas and Kaze Dumas.
Add in the play of sophomore Jayda Rogers as well as freshman Kennedi Toliver’s presence in the paint, and Highlands Ranch (17-3, ranked eighth in the latest CHSAA Selection & Seeding Index) is among the teams capable of making a run at the title in a wide-open Class 6A field.
Cherokee Trail, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Valor Christian and Northfield are the top five teams in the index, while ’24 state runner-up Legend is sixth and Denver East — the lone in-state team to beat the Falcons this season — is seventh. Outside of that, No. 9 Columbine, No. 12 Pine Creek, No. 14 Eaglecrest and No. 15 Riverdale Ridge, which features the top player in the state in Texas commit Brihanna Crittendon, have also looked strong.
But Kniyah Dumas says Jarocki’s experience can be the X-factor to tilt the scales in youthful Highlands Ranch’s favor come crunch time.
“We’re really grown and put in a lot of work this year as young team, and it’s starting to show,” said Kniyah Dumas, a Fort Hayes Northwest Tech commit. “In the playoffs, we have to play smarter, get out of our heads and believe we’re the best in the state. (Our youth) has been a challenge this year… Coach J has reminded us it’s going to be a hard season, but that we’ve got it and we’re capable of winning the games when it counts.”
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