Three Haxtun Seniors Compete at NJC Senior Showcase in Sterling

Chase Goddard, Kanin Koberstein and Jaxsen Schram closed out their Haxtun Bulldogs careers on March 29 by suiting up for the Black team at Northeastern Junior College's Senior Showcase, held at the Bank of Colorado Event Center on NJC's Sterling campus, where college coaches watched area seniors compete with scholarship offers potentially on the line.

The showcase is NJC's opportunity to assemble graduating players from across the region and evaluate them in front of collegiate staff. For Goddard, Koberstein and Schram, all seniors at Haxtun High School in Phillips County, the trip across the county line to Sterling put them directly in front of coaches at an institution that offers athletic scholarships for both its men's and women's basketball programs.

The Bank of Colorado Event Center doubles as home court for NJC's own teams, giving the showcase the feel of a genuine collegiate audition. NJC competes as a member of the National Junior College Athletic Association, the governing body for two-year collegiate athletics organized in 1938. Under NJCAA rules, athletes who compete at the junior-college level can subsequently be recruited by four-year NCAA or NAIA programs, meaning a strong performance at an event like this one can open a two-step path to university athletics for players coming out of small-town Colorado programs.

NJC is Colorado's largest two-year residential college, enrolling approximately 4,000 learners annually across more than 80 programs of study. The college was founded September 8, 1941, when 60 students from 17 northeastern Colorado communities enrolled in its first classes, which operated as an extension of the public school system. Today the campus at 100 College Avenue houses more than 575 residential students across six residence halls, and the college fields teams in baseball, basketball, golf, rodeo, softball, soccer and livestock judging.

NJC also runs a Men's Basketball Kids Camp for 9th-through-12th graders at the Bank of Colorado Event Center for $25, a detail that underscores how the college positions itself as a development pipeline for the entire northeastern Colorado region, not just its own enrolled athletes.