Editor’s note: In the Colorado Classics series, The Denver Post takes a weekly look at individuals who made their marks on this state’s sports landscape and what they are doing now.
Anyone wanting to experience the satisfaction of being a pioneer should step into the shoes of coach Tom Hancock as he prepared his Lakewood High School football team for the 1960 season.
A pioneer opens or prepares for others to follow, and Hancock and his team did just that.
As the Tigers began practice late that summer, the suburbs around Denver were just starting to emerge from the cherry orchards and truck farms that had filled the areas. The year before, Lakewood High School had relocated to a new building on West Eighth Avenue, east of Kipling.
The Denver suburbs had not produced a top-classification football champion since Englewood in 1937. Hancock and the 1960 Tigers changed that.
“We had a group that had played before, and they were all fighters,” Hancock said. “Our leading tacklers were all on the defensive line, and that tells you something.”
While Hancock couldn’t predict his team would go undefeated and win the Class AAA title by beating George Washington in the title game, there had been inklings that the Denver suburban area was looming as a force in high school football.
Three years earlier, in 1957, Hancock’s Lakewood team – led by Joe Romig, who went on to become an All-American and a Rhodes Scholar for the Colorado Buffaloes – was in the Class AA championship game but lost to Grand Junction. And in 1959, coach Lou Rillos and the Golden Demons – led by Manuel Archuleta and Steve and Kirk Osborn – made it to the title game but lost to Greeley.
Hancock’s 1960 Lakewood team was just the beginning. The Tigers made four more appearances in the state championship game in the 1960s, winning with undefeated teams in 1964 and 1968.
Others have followed. Twenty-five of the top-classification titles since 1960 have gone to Denver suburban teams.
“You always remember the first time,” the 77-year-old Hancock said. “But I’ll never forget any of my teams at Lakewood. They all had a bunch of special players.”
Many of the coaches who faced the Tigers in those days also won’t forget those games.
“Tom Hancock was my idol,” said Fred Tesone, who coached Cherry Creek’s football teams in the 1960s and beyond. “He was a pioneer in weight training. He was the best.”
In 15 seasons, Hancock compiled a 137-36-3 record. His credentials led him to induction into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame during ceremonies April 18 at the Denver City Center Marriott Hotel. Coaching runs in his blood. His father, John Hancock, who fostered the high school wrestling program in Colorado, was inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame in 1969.
Tom Hancock retired from coaching in 1969 to join the Jefferson County School district as director of physical education. He retired in 1988 and splits his time between Golden and Tempe, Ariz. He usually sees some high school games in both areas each year and now marvels at the size of today’s high school players.
“I always enjoyed coaching,” Hancock said. “I thought it was time to change and do something else.”
Hancock also coached wrestling and track and field at Lakewood. His 1954 track team won a Class A state title, but football was where he excelled.
Hancock coached in an era that featured such prominent high school coaches as Pat Panek at Denver East, Ed Lesar at Pueblo Central, Gib Funk at Colorado Springs Wasson, Dutch Nogel at Trinidad, Tesone and Rillos.
Hancock’s Lakewood teams had epic battles with Wasson, Pueblo Central and Boulder in nonleague play and with Wheat Ridge, Arvada and Golden in the Jefferson County League.
“It takes six or seven years to really get a handle on how to coach,” Hancock said. “One of the strengths I developed was putting players at a position where they had a chance to be good.”
Hancock says Romig was his toughest player.
“I was never so glad to see anyone graduate as Romig,” Hancock said. “He wrestled heavyweight (and was a tw0-time state champion), and I was his practice partner.”
Hancock remembered that his program had a lot of family members. There were Al and George Lewark; Kirk, Steve and Mike Tracy; Tom and Steve Elliott; Mike and Pat Matson; Mike and Joe Simmons; and Harold and Scott Monson. George Lewark started in nine state playoff games from 1960-62. He, Pat Matson and Mike Schnitker played in the NFL, Matson and Schnitker seeing time with the Broncos.
Hancock said the Lakewood community was supportive of his teams, and he credited assistant coaches such as John Hoskins and Bill Lewis with a major part in his success.
“There’s some luck that enters into it,” Hancock said. “You tend to forget the wins and the losses. But you don’t forget the lifelong friends.”
Irv Moss can be reached at 303-820-1296 or imoss@denverpost.com.
