High School Baseball: Thursday, Sept. 21

Peyton Manning and Bo Nix go back a while. Nix, the Broncos rookie quarterback, was still at Auburn in 2021 when he went to the Manning Passing Academy in Louisiana, a popular destination for college quarterbacks. The two kept in touch from there, including when Nix considered transferring from Auburn, where his dad, Pat, also played quarterback.

Deion Sanders figured he’d just bagged the second coming of himself. Cormani McClain figured he’d landed an instant starting spot and a seat at the table with the rest of Coach Prime’s Chosen Ones. Both guessed wrong. “Just knowing Coach Prime and (assistant) coach (Kevin) Mathis and knowing Cormani and the expectations, it was going to be rough in the beginning,” Samari Rolle, the former NFL defensive back and one of McClain’s old 7-on-7 coaches with the South Florida Express, told me recently. Coach Prime’s recruiting might have been changed by The Cormani McClain Saga.

On the heels of receiving his third career league MVP trophy, Nuggets center Nikola Jokic was unsurprisingly named First Team All-NBA for the 2023-24 season on Wednesday. Jokic has received All-NBA honors in six consecutive years, including four first-team appearances. He was on the second team last season despite finishing second in MVP voting — making him the last in a long tradition of awkward awards contradictions before the league’s new collective bargaining agreement established positionless All-NBA ballots. This is the first year that zero or multiple centers can appear on the First Team, Second Team or Third Team.

Last weekend, Abbey Glynn attended the prep state track and field meet at Jefferson County Stadium, and it became a trip down memory lane. The Colorado Buffaloes’ star wound up watching a few videos of herself from her time at Mead High School. “It’s crazy how far I’ve come,” she said. Now a fifth-year senior at CU, Glynn will compete in the NCAA West regional preliminaries in Fayetteville, Ark., on Thursday and Saturday.

Police and other first responders will be in and around Coors Field on Wednesday as the baseball stadium conducts an emergency exercise in conjunction with the city of Denver and the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Colorado Rockies officials said. The Denver Post reported earlier this year that Wednesday’s exercise will simulate “an attack on Coors Field,” according to an email sent to a Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management mailing list in February. The practice scenario involves a simulated explosion followed by an active shooter during a regular season Rockies game at Coors Field, the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency wrote in an intake form seeking volunteer actors in February. Related Articles Crime and Public Safety | Missing Milliken man’s body found in Weld County lake Crime and Public Safety | Former Aurora school resource officer accused of texting 16-year-old about “panties” faces criminal charges Crime and Public Safety | Eastbound I-70 reopens near Lookout Mountain after dump truck crash Crime and Public Safety | DU building vandalized after false emergency call claimed someone had been shot Crime and Public Safety | 41 pounds of meth, 33K fentanyl pills seized in Centennial drug bust; 1 arrested “Be advised that there will be some local road closures and the presence of law enforcement and emergency response personnel in and around the ballpark during business hours May 22,” Rockies officials said in a Tuesday statement.

Marc Johnson knows there’s no crying in baseball. Not quite yet, anyway. In his 52nd and final season as the Cherry Creek head coach, Johnson leads the Bruins into the Class 5A state tournament this weekend. With Cherry Creek again a favorite, he’s not letting the finality of his run as Colorado’s all-time winningest coach sink in as he goes for his ninth championship in his 23rd state tournament appearance. “I haven’t allowed that emotion to enter my mind, and the reason is because we have a job at hand,” Johnson said.