Three weeks after undergoing a bone marrow transplant, Crystal Gabriel sat in a car behind the end zone at Holy Family, armed with a cowbell and ready to cheer with all the energy she had.
Crystal, the wife of Tigers head coach Mike D. Gabriel and the mom of star senior tailback/safety Dominic Gabriel, had been battling leukemia since the spring. But nothing was going to keep her from her Tigers — even if that meant watching every home game from a car with her window slightly cracked to emphatically ring her cowbell.
“Just being there at the game, and being able to watch from wherever I could, was such a blessing because I didn’t know if I would be well enough to even attend the games,” Crystal recalled.
“That first game was emotional. There were tears in my eyes as the players walked into the stadium holding hands and with a bagpiper playing Amazing Grace. I was crying almost the whole game, just because I was so happy to be there.”
Crystal couldn’t miss a moment of this season — not one that’s culminating with Holy Family’s appearance in the Class 3A championship on Saturday in Pueblo. After all, it’s been a magical fall over 100 years in the making, and one highlighted by Holy Family’s first family — her own.
In addition to her husband and son, Mike G. Gabriel — the family grandpa and namesake of the school’s stadium — is the team’s O-line coach. Mike D.’s brother Mark Gabriel is also an assistant, and the head coach’s nephews Nick Gabriel and Andrew Berens are sophomores on the team.
The family’s roots at Holy Family date back to the school’s inception in 1922, when the fourth-generation Holy Family players’ great-great-grandparents helped break ground on the Tigers’ original building in North Denver. A steady line of Gabriel descendants have graduated from the school since, starting with their great-grandma in 1939.
“I grew up in the gym and at the school in North Denver, running around at football games we played at the old Regis Jesuit stadium,” Mike D. Gabriel recalled. “As an adult, I felt called to stay involved in the football program, and I followed in my dad’s footsteps as an administrator, as a football coach. So then my kids grew up in the gym, on the field, in the stands, running around on game nights on our current campus (in Broomfield), and playing at the school.
“It’s a second home for us. We are a family that bleeds purple and gold.”
That’s just one of the reasons why Saturday’s title game, the school’s first since Mike G. led the Tigers to the Class 2A title in 2005, means so much to the family. In addition to Crystal’s battle with leukemia, the Gabriels also recently dealt with the loss of their family matriarch. Patty Gabriel, wife of Mike G. and a pillar in the Holy Family community, died from oral cancer in 2020.
The family might have lost Crystal this year, too, had Dominic’s older brother Rocco not stepped up as a perfect match for her bone marrow transplant. Because of that Crystal, who hasn’t missed a game, is now cancer-free. While Rocco, Crystal’s sister and Crystal’s friend took turns keeping her company in the car for home games, for road games, she sat masked and isolated in the stands to protect her recovering immune system.
“We’ve been fighting Crystal’s leukemia all season, but (Mike D.’s) been staying the course, and Crystal’s been staying the course, too,” explained Mike G. Gabriel, a 1970 Holy Family graduate who has coached the Tigers since 1975, including 1995-2005 as the head boss. “Now she’s on the mend. So this is kind of like an early Christmas present for the family.
“I’m really proud of my son. He’s done a great job keeping his family together, and at the same time, he treats the football team as a family, too. You can see the strain on his face, but he’s a tough bird. He’ll be okay. We all will.”
The Gabriels’ 2023 tumult began last spring, when Mike D. was hospitalized for five days with pneumonia. He was released on April 11, but just eight days later, the family received a stunning diagnosis: Crystal had acute myeloid leukemia.
She spent a month in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy, then had her bone marrow transplant on Aug. 4. Doctors told her to be isolated for 100 days, but that order wasn’t going to stop her from getting to the stadium to watch her Tigers.
“It’s been tough, but my faith has really played into this, and the support of my family and the Holy Family community has really given me strength and the courage to battle every day,” Crystal said. “I couldn’t do it without all of them.
“And I don’t know how my husband has done it, because I was in the hospital when football started. That was hard on both of us, but we had to get through it. And with Dom and the team, they want to fight for me… They’re rallying behind us, which means a lot not only to me, but to (my husband) and Dom.”
Dominic, who has 1,681 all-purpose yards this year along with 13 rushing TDs, morphed his hurt into purpose. Turning into the school off the street named for his late grandmother, and practicing at the stadium named for his grandfather, helped fuel him.
“At first it was really hard to balance everything when it all started in the spring because I felt alone a lot,” Dominic said. “But honestly, overnight, I don’t know what it was, but something just hit me. I became super motivated to be the best that I could be no matter the situation facing our family. I knew this adversity was something I had to rise to because this amazing season (was over 100 years coming).
“I realized my family was there for me, my team was there for me. People bringing over dinners all the time, my friends checking in and making sure I wasn’t alone. I found motivation in what was going on and I realized that the best thing I could do for my mom was to try to make her proud. I just started working really hard, and I think that’s why I’ve had the season that I’ve had. I decided to wake up.”
Gwen Berens — Mike D.’s sister, and Dominic’s aunt — said the adversity of the past few years has given the family “a focus on living in the moment because you never know when things are going to change.”
“Crystal’s diagnosis took the wind out of our sails, but I’ve been so awed and so proud of the way Mike, Crystal and Dominic have handled this,” Berens said. “Some 17-year-old kids would crumble, but Dominic has pulled himself up by the bootstraps and he’s had such a purpose through all of this. He gets that from my dad and my brother.”
Mike G. takes pride in Dominic’s evolution from being one of the little kids who played in the Friday night “secondary football game” in a grassy spot beyond the end zone (a Holy Family tradition) into one of the Tigers’ pillars.
“Dominic put his money where his mouth was after growing up wanting to be a Holy Family star,” Mike G. said. “It’s so fun to watch him grow into the young man he’s become. Even with (losing Patty), I always remember I’m blessed to have that.”
Dominic is one of the headliners on this not-your-father’s Tigers team.
Back when Mike D. attended Holy Family in the early 1990s, the school was still located at its North Denver campus. Enrollment was stagnant and football participation declining. At one point, Mike G. had just 30 kids in the program. The Tigers practiced at a nearby public park, had a makeshift weight room that was actually a closet with one squat rack and one universal machine, and rented out other schools’ stadiums for games.
But since moving to the Broomfield campus in 1999, the football team’s ascended along with overall enrollment. That led to the program’s first state title in 2002, then another title game appearance in 2004, and a second crown in ’05.
“We battled through a lot of adversity as a program, and losing seasons,” Mike D. said. “At that point in time (in the ’80s and ’90s), we were probably looked at as more of a basketball school. … And a lot of times we had to move people off our practice field (at Rocky Mountain Lake Park at 46th and Lowell) because they were there having a picnic or doing whatever. If we got new uniforms, or anything new at all, it was like a gift from God.
“All that definitely makes you appreciate where we’re at now, and what we have now.”
Since Mike D. took over as head coach in 2008, the Tigers have made the playoffs all but two years. They reached the semifinals in 2020 before breaking through to the championship this season with emphatic wins in their opening three playoff games.
On Saturday at 1 p.m. at the CSU-Pueblo ThunderBowl, the Tigers take on a Lutheran program that’s also on the rise and making its second straight title game trip after falling to Roosevelt in the 2022 championship. While Holy Family leans on senior QB Rylan Cooney, the Lions have their own potent gunslinger in senior Ryken Daugaard, who like Cooney has passed for more than 2,400 yards.
The teams met in league play on Oct. 6, a narrow 35-28 Tigers win in Broomfield.
“On defense, we have to put pressure on their quarterback because he’s pretty talented and he can make some good throws,” Dominic said. “If we can get (in the pocket), we’ll be okay. … Offensively, the game plan is pretty similar to what it has been. We have to establish the run, and once teams try to stop that, we can throw on them all day.”
Relegated to cheering in the car for most of the year, Crystal will be in the stands with family on Saturday. The Tigers will be wearing orange ribbon stickers for leukemia awareness on their helmets to honor her, as they’ve done all postseason. Dominic will have his orange headband on under his helmet, as he’s worn all fall.
And Crystal will be prepared to laugh, cry, scream and feel “absolutely overjoyed.”
“Our family has worked so hard to get to this point,” Crystal said. “Dom told his dad that since his freshman year, that this is the team that will go to state. I was pregnant with Dom the last time we won state. So to see this come full circle, with everything we’ve been through in-between, with how long this family’s been (tied in) with this school … for them to finish off with a win, it would be amazing.”
