The fatigue was still evident on players’ faces Wednesday as the Durango High School hockey team rolled into town to a hero’s welcome, which included a police escort and adoring fans waving from Main Avenue.

Durango was coming off a historic 4-2 victory over Summit on Tuesday night in Denver to win the first 4A state championship in program history.

Team members had to wake up early Wednesday to get back home, but it was all worth it when players and coaches saw their friends and family members waiting to greet them.

“It's just really nice to get to have that police escort and then get to the school and the pep band was playing and parents and students were outside,” said head coach Brian Ensign. “It was just a really nice welcoming and we were all pretty, pretty tired and exhausted from just all the emotions. That was a great way to top it off and we will definitely have a celebration here in the next week or two.”

The state championship wasn’t normal for the school or for CHSAA hockey. It is the school’s first state championship in any sport since 2020, and it is only the season that the Demons have competed in CHSAA hockey.

Before CHSAA, Durango hockey was in the Rio Grande High School Hockey League, which is a league with teams from Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. Ensign, who has been the head coach of Durango hockey for the past six years, said Durango has been trying to get into CHSAA hockey for the past eight to 10 years.

When the Demons first joined the Rio Grande league, Ensign said the competition was good but the competition level fizzled toward the end of Durango’s tenure.

“In the last five years, we won, two Rio Grande tri-state titles, and I believe we would have won the third one, but it was canceled due to COVID,” Ensign said. “Then last year was our first year of kind of introduction to CHSAA and I think we competed well and we played well. The accumulation of all of that hard work and resilience and sticking to it was success this year.”

Ensign also credited Durango Athletic Director Ryan Knorr with allowing the players to letter while playing as a club team in the Rio Grande league.

During this time, the development of the players and the depth of the team helped the Demons get ready to compete in CHSAA hockey as the competitiveness of the Rio Grande league declined.

Before Durango joined CHSAA, the team was 100% from Durango. But this year, the team was almost evenly split between Durango and Telluride.

“We had great support from Telluride with their youth program and ice time,” Ensign said. “So we have four days of ice through their hockey director in Telluride and then we have four days ice here. So really, we had opportunities to practice together occasionally, but it wasn't as frequent as I'd like at the beginning of the year.”

Ensign said the coaches in Telluride and the coaches in Durango coordinated to complete similar drills that would keep players from both mountain communities on the same page. Toward the end of the season, the whole team was able to get together to practice more.

The parents were great on both sides, Ensign said. All the kids got along well and had grown up playing against each other in local youth hockey so there was already some camaraderie. Kids from Telluride would come down to Durango and stay with kids on the team.

Durango started the season 2-5 before winning 13 of its last 14 games. Ensign said a small part of the slow start was the separation between the kids in Durango and Telluride.

But Ensign attributed most of the poor start to other teams playing more preseason games than the Demons. Ensign likes that there are a lot of Durango hockey players that are multi-sport athletes and therefore don’t have the time to compete in preseason tournaments.

The Demons lost to Steamboat Springs twice to open the season. Ensign said at that time, Steamboat Springs had already played over a dozen games before CHSAA hockey was underway.

“Every game you're getting better,” Ensign said. “You're developing and the season isn't a yearlong season. It's three or four months of really working hard to accomplish what we accomplished. Otherwise, you're wearing kids out.

“I don't mind starting slow and... knowing you have to work hard to get to where we are to get to the championship.”

bkelly@durangoherald.com