VOLUME 35 | ISSUE 51
WEEK OF DECEMBER 21, 2023
$2
Parade lights up the holidays
Brighton’s Cisneros a Mines rugby all-star College sophomore to join 2024 Pac West Collegiate Grizzlies in January
• Vestas to lay off 200 employees •27J Schools moves online-only Dec. 1
• Page 9
BUSINESS LOCAL
BY JOHN RENFROW JRENFROW@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
The Barnbrats and Purple Circle 4-H clubs rode the completed Nightmare Before Christmas float. BY BELEN WARD BWARD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
• Page 3
3 5 8 11
LOCAL OBITUARIES LEGALS CLASSIFIED
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
For their fourth year fronting a float for Brighton’s annual Parade of Lights, two local 4-H clubs decided to join forces. The BarnBrats 4-H club and Adams County Purple Circle 4-H combined their efforts to build a Nightmare Before Christmasthemed float for the Dec. 9 parade. Christina Seeley, a leader with BarnBrats 4-H, said it’s their fourth year doing this parade. “Every year, it’s fun. We always try to open it up to some of the other clubs that maybe don’t have the people to do a float of their own, “ Seeley said. The parade of lights gleamed
with glittering floats that had been decorated by many businesses as they sparkled and cruised down Bridge Street. School bands marched, playing Christmas as crowds of families oohed, aahed at the sights and cheeried Merry Christmas. The 4-H kids float was preceded along the parade route by a goat dressed as Zero, Jack’s ghost dog from the movie. “We always welcome other people, even those from other 4-H clubs, to join us. I love the community. The kids love it waving, saying hello to the community as they go by, and it’s just a really great event.” Emma Cruickshank, 14, with Purple Circle 4-H helped with the lights alongside twin brother Daw-
PHOTO BY BELEN WARD
son Cruickshank “I like 4-H. I’m working a tractor project restoring a 1944 Farmall tractor, but I like it the way it is,” Cruickshank said. The 4-H club is very involved in learning agriculture, participating in making crafts, and entering competitions. The kids raise and sell meat goats, pigs, steers, and poultry. Kids also participate in horse competitions. They are crafty, making model aircraft, rockets, leather goods, sewing, cake decorating, heritage arts, restoration, and woodworking. They are active in shooting sports, archery, and muzzleloading.
BRIEFS: PAGE 2 | OBITUARIES: PAGE 4 | CLASSIFIEDS: PAGE 8 | LEGAL: PAGE 10
SEE LIGHTS, P5
Brighton just might be a hub for local rugby phenoms. One rising star came up through the Brighton Youth Rugby Association to sharpen his football skills but quickly found a knack for rugby’s more rugged, scrappier version of the game. The now sophomore scrumhalf (keep reading to learn what that is) for the Colorado School of Mines’s club men’s rugby team recently was named to the National Collegiate Rugby Western Region All-Star Team. He’ll compete against the best players in the country for the 2024 Pac West Collegiate Grizzlies in Austin, Texas, Jan. 6-8. “I got introduced to it here in Brighton when my older brother Josh played rugby,” Cisneros said. “We played baseball all our lives and we were starting to kind of turn away from that. We were starting to look for other sports, and we saw rugby was available here. I watched him play and that’s how I discovered the scene here.” For the first few years Cisneros was involved, he said generally only football players played rugby (mainly just to get better at football). When his youth club in Brighton got disbanded for one reason or another, Cisneros pivoted to high school rugby clubs in Aurora so he could keep playing. But he still attended Brighton High School and was a letterman in football and track for the Bulldogs. Now at the School of Mines, Cisneros isn’t a scholarship player. Unlike football or basketball, rugby isn’t a varsity sport for the university. National Collegiate Rugby, or NCR, isn’t an NCAA-sanctioned sport, so the athletes aren’t separated by NCAA divisions. SEE ALL-STAR, P11
COMMERCECITYSENTINEL.COM • A PUBLICATION OF COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA
CITY WARNS OF WATER SCAM Brighton insists water is safe P3