Dick Rees, a longtime teacher-coach at Douglas County in Castle Rock, died April 30. He was 86.
Rees, who attended school in Kansas, directed the Huskies’ football and boys track teams. He was head football coach from 1967-78 and led the track team until 1986. Rees coached the track team to a state title in 1972, at the time just the second title in Douglas County history. The Huskies later won softball in 1992 and the past season won their first football title.
Rees, a veteran of World War II, taught and coached for 46 years.
His funeral was held last week in Emporia, Kan.
“He was quite a guy,” former Douglas County athletic director Don McCall said. “He wasn’t loud around the school. He just went about his business.”
Rees coached two of McCall’s sons: Mick, the former head coach at Mullen, and Randy, now the athletic director at Cherry Creek in Greenwood Village.
In boys basketball, Mike Leahy has retired with 401 coaching victories.
With 38 years on the job, Leahy coached in Nebraska and at Fairview in Boulder and the past eight at Centaurus in Lafayette. In 2005-06, the Warriors were 19-7.
Leahy coached more than a dozen players who went on to Division I, including Devon Beitzel, a senior who will sign Monday with Northern Colorado.
Also, Gateway in Aurora has hired Betsy Allen as girls basketball coach. Allen won more than 300 games as a coach in Denver and was recently inducted into the Colorado High School Activities Association Hall of Fame.
