If Randy Stratton hadn’t been delivering the mail, his daughter Jessika Caldwell wouldn’t have gotten the chance to build a girls basketball dynasty at Valor Christian.
It was the summer of 2014, and Stratton was on his route when he ran into another girls basketball coach, Frank Haist, who told the longtime mail carrier that he just applied for the Valor Christian vacancy. Stratton immediately picked up the phone and called his daughter, then an assistant at Colorado Christian University, about the job.
“My dad said, ‘I think you should apply,’” Caldwell recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t know. I think I just want to see what a winter is like without basketball for the first time in my life.’ But I ended up applying, and was a finalist for the position with Frank. It was late in the (application) process, but it ended up working out.”
While Caldwell got the Valor Christian job, Haist was hired at Sand Creek, and the coaches met that next March in the Class 4A state title game. The Eagles won, 73-47, the first of four championships Caldwell’s claimed at Valor Christian.
The latest came this season, a Class 6A crown that earned Caldwell the distinction of The Denver Post’s All-Colorado girls basketball Coach of the Year.
“At the beginning of the year I didn’t know what our ceiling was, but I knew we had some really great pieces and some good leadership, so I knew the potential was there,” Caldwell said. “It was just about putting it together at the right time.”
Valor Christian High School’s head coach Jessika Caldwell yells to her team from the sidelines during the class 6A Colorado High School girls state championship game at the Denver Coliseum in Denver on Saturday, March 9, 2024. Valor Christian High School played Regis Jesuit High School for the state title. (Rebecca Slezak/Special to The Denver Post)
The Eagles did just that.
Behind a balanced cast headlined by All-Colorado point guard Quinn VanSickle, Valor Christian (23-4, Jeffco League champions) won all five tournament games by double digits, including a 71-59 triumph over Cherokee Trail in the Final Four followed by a 58-44 win over Regis Jesuit in the title.
Along the way, Valor Christian found the consistent defensive intensity the Eagles lacked at times earlier in the season. That hole in their game showed up in losses to Conway (Arkansas) in the She Got Game Classic in Dallas at the beginning of the December, plus regular-season losses to 6A contenders Regis Jesuit, Grandview and Cherry Creek.
But once Valor Christian tightened up its defense, the Eagles became impossible to stop. The junior VanSickle, who has an array of Division I offers, led the way with 18.9 points per game, including 31 against in the Final Four and then 22 in the championship.
Senior Emma Lytle, an Air Force commit who shared point guard duties with VanSickle, was also instrumental as one of just two seniors on the roster.
“From the core we have back, we definitely want to continue to build on what these girls did this year,” Caldwell said.
Caldwell, a former Coronado standout who went on to star at Baylor before playing professionally in the Czech Republic, might just be finding her stride on the bench. The 2004 Big 12 Sportswoman of the Year began her career as the head coach at UCCS for four years before serving as the lead assistant at CCU for five years.
The 42-year-old coached this winter without her father in the stands. Randy Stratton passed away last summer, but he was never far from Caldwell’s mind en route to the title.
“Especially when I turn over my shoulder and kind of expect to see him in the stands, or after a tough game, and I have that desire to call him or ask for his opinion or critique,” Caldwell said. “Those are the things I miss the most, so the emotion (after winning the title) was obviously very high, because I know he would’ve loved it.”
Her dad and her late grandfather, Donald Stratton, remain two of her primary motivators. While Randy was a renowned club coach, helming the Colorado Springs Hoopsters for 16 years, Donald was a USS Arizona survivor.
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Donald suffered burns on over 70% of his body in the attack on Pearl Harbor. After being taken to California to recover, he hitchhiked back to his hometown of Red Cloud, Neb., and decided to reenlist in the Navy. He then served in the Battle of Iwo Jima, making him one of the few sailors to have been at the start and the end of the American involvement in World War II. He eventually authored a New York Times bestseller, “All the Gallant Men”, about his ordeal.
“The thing I think about with both my dad and my grandpa is the power of legacy,” Caldwell said. “Both my dad and my grandpa are really beautiful examples of what it looks like to choose to follow God’s path, and the impact they had on people (is clear). I think about my grandpa’s impact on future sailors, and reenlisting, and saying yes to jump back in the fight after such a traumatic experience.
“And in the same way, but different, my dad continuing to say yes to serve young women across Colorado Springs to help them achieve their dreams and goals. I just hope that I can walk out that same legacy in my own life and my own story.”
Valor Christian High School’s head coach Jessika Caldwell talks to the team during a break in play during the class 6A Colorado High School girls state championship game at the Denver Coliseum in Denver on Saturday, March 9, 2024. Valor Christian High School played Regis Jesuit High School for the state title. (Rebecca Slezak/Special to The Denver Post)
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