Elian Oliva’s rise to high school football stardom started with getting kicked off the field. It was the summer before his sophomore season, and the Northfield linebacker was at the CSU Pueblo camp with his team. He was playing on a side field in a junior varsity scrimmage — until camp directors quickly quashed that. “His physicality and level of play was so intense that the camp staff actually removed him from the field,” Northfield football head coach Ben Startzer recalled with a laugh. “They said it just wasn’t safe for the other teams for him to be at that level. That moment kind of raised all our coaches’ eyebrows, like, ‘Wow, maybe we’ve got something here.'” Northfield High School linebacker Elian Oliva (15) runs back an interception against Skyline High School during a Colorado State 4A playoff game on Friday, Nov. 7, 2025, at All City Stadium in Denver. (Photo by Timothy Hurst/The Denver Post) What Northfield had was a Gold Helmet Award winner in the making. Oliva is the 2025 winner of the award, presented annually by The Denver Post to the state’s top senior football player, scholar and citizen since 1951. In addition to being the Nighthawks’ nightmare for opposing offenses, the Air Force pledge is exceptional in the classroom (5.02 GPA) and in the community. That package made Oliva the first Gold Helmet Award winner in Northfield’s brief history, and also the first winner from Denver Public Schools since Thomas Jefferson tailback Marcus Houston won in 1999. Since coming into a starting role for Northfield midway through his sophomore year — a couple months after getting banned from the JV field that day at camp — Oliva’s emerged as one of the most dynamic defenders in all of Colorado. The combination of his speed (4.48 40-yard dash), physicality and football I.Q. had Startzer kicking himself that he didn’t put Oliva into the lineup sooner. “It was one of those things where once he started playing consistently, we as coaches looked at each other and said, ‘Are we the dumb ones? Because this probably should’ve happened a while ago,'” Startzer said. “Since that moment, on every play it’s like he’s two steps ahead of everyone.” Oliva had 114 tackles, including 14 for loss, six sacks, two forced fumbles, three interceptions, a rushing TD and a defensive TD in 2025. In his career, he had 250 tackles (31.5 for loss) and 16.5 sacks. He was selected as the Gold Helmet Award winner by the Gold Helmet Award Corporation voting committee, which consists of past award winners, Denver Post staff and other Colorado media. Of the 16 ballots cast, Oliva was named in voters’ top-five ranking of candidates on 15 of them. While his football and academic prowess stood out among the six finalists, so too did his work outside the lines and the classroom. The 18-year-old co-founded Northfield’s UNICEF chapter, was a math tutor for peers struggling in the subject, is a youth flag football coach and spent the last four years as a summer-camp counselor. As the 6-foot-1, 190-pound brawny brainiac explains, he “finds well-roundedness interesting.” “I’ve never wanted to be too focused on one area of my life, because I think expanding myself and applying myself to multiple things allows for both more personal fulfillment as well as allows me to help other people in other ways,” Oliva said. Oliva’s eye-popping GPA is because he’s spent the majority of high school stacking his schedule with, and acing, weighted Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses. Northfield social studies teacher Dr. Sia Anderson, who had Oliva in her AP Human Geography class, describes the football player as “the kind of student who makes everyone around him better.” “He listens deeply, asks thoughtful questions, and finds the ‘why’ behind whatever we’re studying,” Anderson said. “I still use several of his projects as examples because they weren’t just done well — they showed real insight. When we studied population and migration, he pushed beyond the basics and connected it to public health and medicine, which was the first time I saw how strongly he tied his academic interests to his future goals. “… He has a way of taking big global ideas and making them feel personal and relevant.” Oliva, the son of two doctors, wants to pursue combat medicine in the Air Force. Also a track athlete who placed second at the Class 5A state meet last spring in the 300-meter hurdles, Oliva took a step up in leadership for the Northfield football program as a senior. Northfield High School linebacker Elian Oliva (15) celebrates a fumble recovery against Skyline High School during a Colorado State 4A playoff game on Friday, Nov. 7, 2025, at All City Stadium in Denver. (Photo by Timothy Hurst/The Denver Post) That started at the team’s summer camp, back at CSU Pueblo where he first turned Startzer’s head. This time, Oliva needed to rally the team the night before the camp’s King of the Hill competition after a group of Nighthawks got in trouble, including a couple starters who had to leave camp. “The team was rattled, and our energy was off, because of the players who had gotten sent home,” Oliva said. “At that point, I realized that I have to be a leader and a main voice on this team. “I sent text messages to the team chat just reminding us to come back to a space of level-headedness and reminding the team what we came here to do. I reminded the guys that we have all the tools to win (the camp competition) and have a great season that gets us to the playoffs.” Nighthawks QB Cash Lacy said that was the start of Oliva “setting a new standard across the board” for the program in 2025 as a guy who would help other players do homework in the locker room, but also be a culture enforcer when necessary. Northfield won the King of the Hill competition the day after the internal drama at CSU Pueblo, beating Mullen in the finals, en route to setting a program record with nine wins and making the Class 4A Sweet 16. In the Nighthawks’ playoff opener, Oliva was a tour de force with seven tackles, an interception and a fumble recovery. He also caught a pair of two-point conversions that helped put Northfield on pace to the blowout win over Skyline. After watching that performance in person at All-City Stadium, Pueblo West head coach Clint Buderus knew what his offensive game plan was going to be for the Sweet 16 game: “We’re going to stay away from 15.” It was the same strategy that teams employed throughout the season against Oliva. “We ran away from him the entire game,” said Buderus, whose Cyclones won 16-14. “He was the field outside linebacker and we ran into the boundary about 85% of the game just to stay away from him. When (Northfield) would move him to the boundary (side), we audibled at the line, flipped the play and ran away from him again. “We felt like he was that good. He’s a game-changer and he was going to make a play to beat us at some point if we allowed him to. We saw that happen against Skyline, and also, he just was different on film. He’s almost unblockable at the high school level.” Denver Post 2025 Gold Helmet award winner Elian Oliva, a Northfield High School senior nickleback and wingback, poses for a photo at the Northfield practice field on Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, in Denver. (Photo by Timothy Hurst/The Denver Post) Those physical attributes, in addition to his mental acuity, are why the Northfield coaches believe in his potential to be an impact player at Air Force. He studies the game like he studies global issues with his work through UNICEF — diligently, and through a different lens than most. “I have to make sure I have my act together when we go into study film and do our (game plan install),” Northfield defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Mike Haskins said. “Because he’s going to ask me all the questions, he’s going to go through bit by bit, he’s going to say, ‘What about this, and this?’ He’s going to say, ‘Okay, let’s walk through it backwards.’ “It’s that level of detail and scrutiny that you get from someone that smart. I can’t say it enough: He made us all better. He made me better. He made this program better and beyond football, and he left (an unforgettable) mark on Northfield High School.” Gold Helmet Winners from DPS Northfield’s Elian Oliva became the first Denver Public Schools winner of the award in 26 years. Thomas Jefferson High School football standout, Marcus Houston, in his room with The Denver Post Gold Helmet award, high school jerseys, and his favorite football pictures taped up on the wall in 1999. (Denver Post File) 2025 — Elian Oliva, LB, Northfield 1999 — Marcus Houston, RB, Thomas Jefferson 1998 — Ryan Haywood, OL/DL, Thomas Jefferson 1991 — Greg Jones, DE, Kennedy 1984 — Maurice Frilot, OG, Montbello 1975 — Mike Edwards, DE, Kennedy 1967 — Paul Arendt, RB, Thomas Jefferson 1962 — Jim Blaschke, RB, Denver East 1958 — Kent Hutcheson, RB, Denver South 1955 — Bob Erickson, OG/LB, Denver East 1954 — Charles Inagaki, OG, Denver North 1952 — Ray Carlsen, RB, Denver East ...read more read less