Friends of Haley Clarke, who died Sunday in the Cascade Creek waterfalls, recalled her as a fun-loving person filled with zest for life.
“It literally took my breath away when I heard,” Clarke’s varsity basketball coach, Briana Simbeck, said Wednesday morning. “I didn’t know what to say. I’d just seen her, like, a week ago. And Caitlin (Simbeck’s younger sister) is a head coach now – a high-school volleyball coach – and I was telling her about Haley. It was like, ‘I was just bragging about her.’”
Clarke, 19, graduated from Bayfield High School in 2014 and was attending the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.
“I think the thing that struck me about Haley when we were having the coach-player relationship was that when you earned Haley’s respect, she’d give everything that she had,” said Ronnie Posey, Briana Simbeck’s predecessor at BHS.
Clarke was on a summertime adventure when she drowned in the waterfalls, a popular site for jumping near Purgatory Resort.
“That was totally the type of person she was,” said Simbeck, who now lives in Greeley. “She was constantly enjoying all the beauty and adventure that Colorado has to offer – just living life to the fullest.”
A fellow teammate and 2014 graduate, Jaida Ross, recalled her close friend.
“It was always just ‘me and her’ in the same grade and on the same team,” Ross said from her Lakewood home. “We were always so close ... always together. She was always super-sweet and supportive. She was a good friend. Honestly, I’m just in shock. I still don’t know the whole story or anything.”
The San Juan County Sheriff’s Department reported the fatality Sunday on its Facebook page, and in a Monday update, Clarke was identified as the victim.
Ron Corkish, La Plata Search and Rescue president, confirmed two people who had accompanied Clarke to the falls had been rescued.
Haley’s death came after her father, Simon, unexpectedly died at the age of 61 on May 28. Haley is survived by a sister, Denvir; a brother, Ben; and her mother, Tica.
“I had Ben ... in class,” said Simbeck, who taught mathematics at Bayfield. “And my heart is hurting for the family and what they’ve had to go through these last couple months – with the loss of their father, and now losing a sister.
A celebration of life for Clarke will be held from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday at Serious Texas Bar-B-Q, 650 South Camino del Rio in Durango. A Facebook page called A Celebration of Life for Haley Clarke has been set up to help plan for the gathering.
This story has been changed to correct the time of the celebration of life.
