One of the tasks for the 25th anniversary of Northridge High School was to connect current Grizzlies with the ones from the 2003, 2004 and other classes.
A significant connection between former and current Grizzlies was established at the end of last February when the first inductees into the Northridge Hall of Fame were honored during halftime of the boys basketball game against Severance.
Five individuals and the 2008 Class 4A wrestling state champion team were inducted. The wrestling team was led by head coach Juan Vallejos and assistants Jon Nider, Justin Garcia and Tony Schunke.
“Man, I’m ecstatic about it,” said Easton Ramirez, a senior on the 2008 wrestling team, the Grizzlies’ current head wrestling coach and a physical education teacher at the school.
Ramirez, who also won the 4A 140-pound championship that year, said it’s great that the athletes he played with and watched play during his days are getting recognized for what they did while wearing a Grizzlies jersey.
“It’s awesome,” he said. “I know in our 25 years, we’ve had some amazing athletes and some amazing accomplishments here.”
Jeff Collins, the school’s athletic director, said Ryan Burkholder, a physical education teacher at Northridge, had been suggesting a school hall of fame for a while. With this year being the school’s 25th anniversary, what better time than now?
There is a 25th-anniversary committee comprised of the most tenured teachers at the school which includes Jeff Fulton, Jay Shaeffer, Jo Pranke, Kate Stockert (England), Jenise Davis and Brianna Ellis. Ellis, Collins said, graduated from the school in 2003.
Once the creation of the Hall of Fame was given the green light, the committee and a few long-time coaches worked together in the fall of 2024 to create an eight-person Hall of Fame committee. Collins thanked the Hall of Fame committee for all its work but didn’t reveal who the eight members are. He said those eight people have been a part of the Northridge community for years.
A long list of names was curated for it, but Collins said the goal was to make sure the list wasn’t “watering down” the honor by inducting a large class. He wanted to ensure whoever was inducted left no doubts as to why.
“We’ve had some really good athletes go through there over the last 25 years,” Collins said. “The Hall of Fame class we’ve inducted is a no-doubter group of student-athletes.”
The five individuals were Brittany Cervantes, Erik Hegstad, Tim Saucedo, Justin Gonzales and Kaylyn Garza (Smith).
Cervantes graduated in 2003. She was named to the 2001 All-Weld softball team and was that year’s softball offensive MVP. She was named to the 2002 All-State Rocky Mountain Softball team and was on the 4A softball final four team in 2002. Cervantes died in December 2015.
Hegstad graduated in 2004. He was named the Northridge Athlete of the Year in 2001 and 2004. He was named to the All-Weld County baseball team from 2001-2004. He was an all-conference selection in basketball in 2004.
Saucedo graduated in 2008. In 2007, he became the first Northridge athlete to win a state championship when he won the 4A heavyweight wrestling championship. He repeated the feat in 2008 with his teammates including Ramirez, his cousin.
Gonzales graduated in 2009. He was the 4A 145-pound state champion in 2008 and the 4A 152-pound state champion in 2009. After graduating, he wrestled at the University of Northern Colorado. After college, he started his professional mixed-martial arts career. According to his fighter page on the website, Tapology, his record is 14-5. His last fight was in June 2024 in the Professional Fighters League.
Garza graduated in 2012. She holds the records for most steals in a game, 10, and most points in a game, 31. Both of the records were set in her senior year. She was a 2011-2012 all-state basketball honorable mention and was named to the All-Weld senior team in 2012.
The day after the boys game, a catered award ceremony took place in the high school. All the inductees and their families got to reminisce with friends and teammates they hadn’t seen in years. Ben Fusco, an assistant football coach, catered the ceremony. Cervantes’ family was there to honor her memory.
For Garza, the honor was big for not only her, but her family, especially her children.
“I think that just knowing that I have little ones who were able to be a part of (the ceremony) and to see that ‘Hey, mom was cool in her high school days and was good at a sport,'” she said. “Just being able to have my kids there and see I got trophy is what they were excited about. It’s really cool.”
Her children’s eyes are not the only ones looking up to her, though. The eyes of current and future Grizzlies girls’ basketball players see Garza’s name up on the school’s record board.
The current members of the team finally got to meet Garza in person when she spoke to the team before their first game in the state tournament at the beginning of March.
It was a thrill for a few on the team, according to Collins, to see the person whose name is attached to so many girls basketball records.
Garza said she told the team about the impact they’re having on future players, even if they don’t know it yet. Reflecting on her playing days, Garza said she told the team “that impact and those eyes watching you” is huge. She also told the team that their coaches know what they’re doing and they’re there to help. She told them even though teenagers think they know every little thing, she told the team to listen and take in what their coaches have to say.
The reality of Garza’s words about eyes on you and leaving an impact came true when one of the current Grizzlies players came up to introduce herself to Garza during the Hall of Fame ceremony.
That interaction left Garza speechless. She never imagined leaving an impact or being looked up to.
“Honestly, that was really different for me,” said Garza about being looked up to by current girls basketball players. “I did not expect it. I don’t know why. Thinking of my high school basketball career was just something that I did. It was something I was good at. I didn’t realize the impact it would make down the line.”
Collins said most of the inductees were able to attend the ceremony, and seeing all those former Northridge athletes together in the gym was a neat sight for him to take in.
Ramirez said seeing most of his former teammates for the first time since graduating was a great feeling. It served as a reminder of the fun they had together that year, yet a melancholy reminder that time goes by too fast.
“Honestly, man, to see those guys it was like not a day has passed,” Ramirez said. “That was kind of the feeling we got from it. We linked back up and it was like ‘Man, it’s hard to believe that 18 years have passed.'”
Not only is the Hall of Fame a great honor for those who were inducted this year, and for those who will be inducted in coming years, but it’s also a way to show current Northridge students that their school has a decorated history — a history that needs to start being preserved.
“I think now we’ve accumulated enough time to where we had to do something, otherwise those things go away,” Collins said. “I think that there have been some pretty cool things that have happened at Northridge and need to be celebrated. I think that it’s great, too, for our kids to be involved with that so they can see there were students who came before them who were successful. I think that stuff is important.”
Collins said talks about future Hall of Fame classes will be discussed yearly so that it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle of life. However, that doesn’t mean the committee will induct anyone every year. He said there could be years where no one gets in or there could be years where one or two are inducted.
Being it was the first time doing this type of event, the committee and others who helped establish it were “flying the plane as we were building it” Collins said. He said the committee “borrowed” criteria ideas from surrounding schools that have an established Hall of Fame, as well as looking online to see what other schools do for theirs.
Collins said the committee will refine the Hall of Fame requirements moving forward. There is one established requirement that won’t be refined and that is any potential inductee must be five years removed from graduating from Northridge.
The Hall of Fame committee is scheduled to meet at the end of March to go over how everything turned out for the first class. Collins said they will potentially discuss the idea of having former non-athletes and facility members being eligible for induction.
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