Bob Marshall got ahead of the investigation. That isn’t leadership

By Juan J. Candil | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

On October 15, the Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA) placed Lutheran High School’s athletic department on 12-month probation and issued formal notice of potential membership suspension. Its finding: racist and discriminatory language and unacceptable behavior occurred at Lutheran athletic events across multiple sports and seasons, including a basketball game last winter. It is a serious finding with serious consequences, and Lutheran must answer for it.

Bob Marshall posted on October 8 that Lutheran “has shown an unfortunate pattern of this behavior.” CHSAA’s investigation confirmed a pattern. He was early. He was also, on that specific point, correct.

I want to say that plainly, because the rest of what I am going to say requires it.

Marshall was right about the pattern. He was wrong about the method. And the method matters more than people think, not because we owe Lutheran a presumption of innocence that the facts no longer support, but because of what the process actually produced and what his post could never have produced.

CHSAA’s probation has teeth. Lutheran must complete a Corrective Action Plan covering game management, spectator conduct, staff training, and school culture. Lutheran leadership must appear before the CHSAA Board of Directors to demonstrate progress. If those requirements are not met, CHSAA will recommend the board suspend Lutheran’s membership, which can bar the school from any or all CHSAA activities. That is accountability. That is a binding institutional remedy with enforcement mechanisms behind it.

A Facebook post three days after Parker Mayor Joshua Rivero’s statement produced none of that. It latched onto a news cycle already in motion. It produced a campaign talking point 26 days before an election. It did not produce a Corrective Action Plan. It did not put anyone in front of a governing board with their membership on the line.

This is the part that gets lost when we collapse the question of what happened into the question of who was loudest about it first. Process is not a protection for the accused. Process is what gives findings their teeth. CHSAA spent two weeks gathering documentation, official game reports, and firsthand accounts from students and communities. That work is why CHSAA’s finding cannot be dismissed, appealed away, or ignored. Marshall’s post can be scrolled past. CHSAA’s probation cannot.

There is also a narrower point worth making. When Marshall posted, he was not operating on facts that existed yet. The KRDO story that first reported the Sand Creek High School allegations went up October 1. CHSAA did not open its formal review until after that. The firsthand accounts that formed the evidentiary basis for the probation had not been gathered. The basketball incident from last winter had not surfaced publicly. He was not synthesizing a completed record. He was getting ahead of one, and he was doing it in the closing weeks of a general election with his own seat on the ballot.

When I challenged him on the facts in the comments under that post, he doubled down. In the same thread he cited the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office’s handling of what he called the “disruption of Pridefest in 2024,” apparently to suggest that investigations in Douglas County cannot be trusted. Readers can judge the relevance for themselves.

The DougCo GOP stayed quiet. That silence was criticized, including by Marshall. But responsible people in positions of institutional accountability do not declare findings before the institutions with jurisdiction have finished their work. They wait. They let the process run. And when the process runs, it produces something that lasts longer than a post.

Douglas County is a community that takes accountability seriously. The parents and students and families at Sand Creek and Rampart and Air Academy and Coronado deserved a real answer, not a candidate’s hot take. They got the real answer on October 15, from CHSAA, after two weeks of documented institutional work. That answer now carries the weight of a governing body. It will not go away when the news cycle does.

This is why the race between Nate Marsh and Bob Marshall matters. Nate Marsh spent more than a decade as a prosecutor. He knows the difference between a suspicion and a finding. He knows what it takes to build a case that holds. He knows that shortcuts in process do not produce justice. They produce noise. That is not weakness. It is exactly the kind of discipline Douglas County needs in its state representative.

Being right is not the same as being accountable. Getting there the right way is what makes the difference stick.

Proverbs 11:14 says, “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.” The guidance Douglas County needed on this came from an institution that did the work. That is the standard we should hold our elected officials to as well.

Douglas County deserves a representative who knows the difference between a megaphone and a mandate. Nate Marsh does. That is why he has my vote.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.