What’s Next: We loathe acronyms but hope to see TODs over and over in newspaper headlines.

So when Eric Chacon fired off an email with “Stop The Presses…:)” as the heading and described the intro to this story, I was a little apprehensive. Chacon is the general manager for the Broomfield Dawgs, a start-up minor league football team that will begin play in June.

We’d assigned a writer to find a feature about the guys who love the sport so much they’ll pay to play in a semi-pro league long after their careers should have ended.

It will be a great tale, complete with all the bumps and bruises that come with tackle football.

But then the Dawgs signed Rafael Mendoza to be their kicker. By the time our story on football dreams hits stands in June, Mendoza’s tale will be trampled on by every other news agency.

So we picked up the sexy, scandal story, too.

You may recognize the name. Mendoza was the University of Northern Colorado punter who was stabbed in his kicking leg by his backup in the fall of 2006. It made national headlines, and was northern Colorado’s Nancy and Tonya, except Mendoza and Mitch Cozad were friends prior.

“When I first got stabbed, I didn’t believe” it was him, Mendoza, a Thornton native, tells me over coffee a week ago. “The week before, I took him out to dinner.”

Mendoza agreed to talk with Yellow Scene Magazine because he felt it was time to get his side of the story out. For too long, he’s been told by others to clam up.

Mendoza lived in fear following the attack, but he used a new found closeness with his family to get through the tough times. His fiancée, Meghan Gregory, was his rock through it all.

Not wanting Cozad to get the best of him, Mendoza rushed back to the field shortly after the attack.

“I wanted to show him he couldn’t stop me,” he says. It wasn’t until his senior season this past fall—a year after that attack—that he began to find the form that left him thinking about playing well beyond college.

His last punt in a Bears’ uniform skyed 68 yards—he averaged more than 40 yards a kick throughout the 2007 season. The stabbing set him back, though, severely hampering the chance of making the pros (already a tall order before the injury).

It seems Mendoza is content if the NFL never pans out (though his agent has been in contact with the Jacksonville Jaguars). He’ll just go on living the typical life of a 23-year-old whose career was sidetracked by a stabbing. He seems to be on a good track: Mendoza coaches middle school track, works for the family demolition and brick business, and is set to be married to his college sweetheart next summer.

The only unsettled business is a simply question he wishes he could ask Cozad: “Why?”

Other than that, Mendoza’s moved on.

“I try to put everything else behind,” he says.

Yet the getting stabbed by the backup story still has some legs.

The Dawgs’ general manager truly wants the attention. Chacon needs to put butts in the seats—it costs a lot of money to run a team.

The media attention is expected to peak during a scrimmage May 24, when the Dawgs play the Colorado Cobras, who recently signed place kicker Katie Hnida, another player with a leg who made national headlines for all the wrong reasons. Hnida was a University of Colorado football player who became the center of the CU football recruiting and sex scandal when she claimed she was raped by a teammate and mistreated in general.

“It is going to be a big media thing,” Mendoza says of the Hnida vs. Mendoza storylines that will be all the rage of local news following the game. “I’m used to it. It’ll just be an everyday thing.”

That’s kind of the sad part of this story, the fact that this story has become an “everyday” occurrence for Mendoza. Prior to the attack, Mendoza was making the transition from a rugby style kicker to the types pro scouts drool over—majestically arching boots that give the coverage team time to make a tackle.

Then Cozad decided he wanted the job—at all costs. On Sept. 11, 2006, he attacked his teammate in a parking lot, striking a nerve in Mendoza’s leg.

Cozad is serving a seven-year sentence for second-degree assault, and anytime someone contacts Mendoza, he is stuck wondering if he’s getting a call because of that fateful night.

Mendoza has permanent loss in flexibility and cannot sit for too long without feeling discomfort. Behind the physical restraints, it’s going to be tough to erase some of the doubts that every chance he is offered is based on the stabbing and not on merit.

“That was always my goal, try to further my career and make it somewhere…now I’m the punter that got stabbed,” he says.

To be honest, he seems able to deal with it all, so long as he gets to wear shoulder pads and play football—even if it is in the relative obscurity of Broomfield Dawgs minor league football.

“I love football,” he says. “I love playing, and if I never get a shot, I’m still going to find a way to play football.”

That’s because Ballet Nouveau Colorado, perhaps the hippest dance troupe ever (or at least in this area), is behind the show.

Ballet Nouveau’s artistic staff used the ever-so-popular YouTube to pick three finalists from dozens of artists who submitted audition videos via the Internet to compete in a six-performance competition.

The next step for the finalists—Heather Maloy of Asheville, N.C.; Alex Ketley of San Francisco; and Ma Cong of Tulsa, Okla.—are competitions at two metro area locations in the next two weeks. They’ll be performing shows they’ve helped create with Ballet Nouveau since being selected as finalists. Ballet Nouveau will look to various celebrity judges (renowned choreographer Trey McIntyre and Colorado Ballet’s Artistic Director Gill Boggs) and the audience to help pick the winners after the six performances at DL Parsons Theatre in Northglenn and the Lakewood Cultural Center.

Ballet Nouveau’s 21st Century Choreography Competition is 8 p.m., April 4-5 and 4 p.m., April 6 at D.L. Parsons Theatre, Northglenn; 8 p.m. April 11-12 and 2 p.m. April 13 at the Lakewood Cultural Center

Mayor
Erik Hansen over Jeff Kraft, Marty Wisniewski, Richard Reeser and Rebecca Cavanaugh-Miller
If you ask city residents, Thornton officials are doing a fine job providing a quality place to live. In fact, in a recent survey, roughly 70 percent voiced approval with city officials. We get the feeling it won’t stay that way for long with the current level of bickering among elected officials. A strong, even-handed voice is needed to oversee council, and frankly, despite this being a crowded five-person race, it really comes down to two (with apologies to Marty Wisniewski who’s served as mayor since January). Both are current council members, and Erik Hansen gets our approval over Rebecca Cavanaugh-Miller. Hansen won’t leave well enough alone. He doesn’t think increased code enforcement is the way to fix the aging neighborhoods in the southern part of the city—it may be a part, but a small part at that. Hansen is aggressive, cocky perhaps, and has set some lofty goals. He’d like to turn 88th Avenue into a marquee boulevard, using FasTracks service as the vehicle for change. Think trolleys leaving a new station at Welby, heading west to a redeveloped Washington Avenue corridor. He’ll aggressively market the city, especially areas such as East Lake, the only real downtown Thornton offers. His unique solutions such as providing citywide wireless service could help bring more jobs. Hansen is bold, loud and committed to do what’s necessary to achieve the tough goals he has set out.

Ward I
Jon Heikka over Steve Lebsock and Gabe McBride
It’s always tough to knock off an incumbent in these odd-year elections. And Steve Lebsock talks a good game and has plenty to back it up. But Ward I of Thornton is increasingly becoming the eye sore of the city (it doesn’t even have its own grocery store, save for a new Hispanic market that recently opened) and a new voice is needed. Enter long shot Jon Heikka, the chief of police for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He’ll take a no nonsense approach to luring more unique businesses to the oldest part of the city and look to streamline the development approval process so would-be investors won’t be scared away. The next four years are crucial as serious Original Thornton revitalization plans need to be laid out to take full advantage when FasTracks trains start cutting through the city in 2014.

Ward II
Eva Henry over Ron Kuehn
Ron Kuehn was the only candidate to turn down the endorsement interview with The Yellow Scene. While that in itself isn’t a deadly sin, it is indicative of the tired political attitude in the southern part of the city. Eva Henry deserves your vote over the incumbent—she has been so fed up with the city that she started running for office in January, an unusually early beginning. She wants to increase city/school partnerships, bring living-wage paying jobs to Thornton, work with FasTracks to make sure the city gets what it needs out of the massive transportation project and close the gap between the south and north. She’s raised a ton of money, has support from the state legislature and the man who could be the area’s next U.S. Congressman, Jared Polis. It’s all for good reason.

Ward III
Randal Smith over Beth Humenik
Randal Smith gets the edge in this race between two candidates who are trying to rebound from previous losses on Election Day in Thornton. Smith, who works construction by day, emphasizes the need for prioritizing new fire stations in the city’s northern wards (III & IV), something that has lost out on funding in the last few years. He says the northern part of the city is already falling behind the curve in providing emergency and other vital services, something that could spiral out of control as development continues at a furious pace. He also wants to make sure that Thornton stops luring only big boxes and makes a hard push to land unique businesses that will pull people from other markets. He understands that he needs to represent more than just Ward III interests by helping the city’s struggling southern section.

Ward IV
Sheila Powell over Kim Jetton, David Pettit and Eric Tade
If you live in Ward IV, you likely have a combined household income nearing six figures, live in a nice home and drive a relatively expensive car. Yup, north Thornton is a whole lot nicer than south Thornton. That is not lost on Sheila Powell, who has ideas that will help her tony ward and bridge the gap to the poorer, Original Thornton. She will prioritize funding for a fire station in her ward, use partnerships and incentives to lure good business into both southern and northern segments of the city, and market the city tirelessly to potential job centers.�

But we had to pick someone in each of these races, and after spending hours speaking with everyone running, this is who we liked and why in every race from Longmont down to Northglenn.

(Note: Incumbents names are italicized and * denotes candidates who did not return calls seeking to arrange endorsement interviews.�

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