Editor’s note: In the Colorado Classics series, The Denver Post takes a weekly look at individuals who made their mark on the Colorado sports landscape and what they are doing now.
An invitation from the Chicago Bulls to a tryout camp is something Tim Wedgeworth keeps high in his memory bank.
He remembers coach Bob Decker at Western State College in Gunnison showing him the letter as the basketball team assembled for a practice session late in the 1970-71 season. It was timely because Wedgeworth was completing his college eligibility, but it arrived too late to wash away a residue that remained from a tumultuous time at the University of Colorado.
“I filled it out and sent it in and was going to try out as a free agent,” Wedgeworth said. “There’s no doubt whatsoever in my mind that I could have played pro basketball. But I didn’t pursue it. I just was tired of ball because of what transpired throughout my career.”
Just four years before, Wedgeworth was well into basketball and on just about everyone’s recruiting list as a top prospect out of Manual High School in Denver. The Thunderbolts and coach Al Oviatt were unbeaten state champions in Wedgeworth’s junior year in 1966. The following year, Wedgeworth left Manual for CU with basketball status of all-city, all-metro and all-state.
But was he ready to cope with the turmoil of the times?
“I had never been away from home,” Wedgeworth said. “When my mother drove me to campus and dropped me off, I cried like a baby.”
He was thrust from his innocence into the racial upheaval of the times. During his first week in Boulder, Wilmer Cooks from the football team came to Wedgeworth’s dorm room and wanted him to sign a petition aimed at preventing football coach Eddie Crowder from switching a black player from quarterback to defensive back.
“I didn’t sign it,” Wedgeworth said. “For a couple of weeks, none of the other black students would speak to me. I wondered what did I get into up here. It was quite a culture shock.”
Castella Wedgeworth, Tim’s mother, still believes that experience contributed to shaping her son’s “bittersweet” experience at CU. She remembered Tim always kept to himself even at family gatherings. The rejection over the petition sent him even further into introversion.
She also believes a desire to be accepted led him to try smoking marijuana before an ill-fated junior season because “everyone was doing it.”
In Wedgeworth’s sophomore season in 1968-69, the Buffs went 21-7 overall and 10-4 on the way to winning the Big Eight Conference title. However, there was another problem.
“I took a Hispanic girl to the movies and the next day Sox (coach Sox Walseth) called me into his office and said we don’t do things like that up here.”
Wedgeworth began his junior season with his best performance in the classroom, however, his cumulative academic record was in danger of being below CU standards.
“We went on a road trip to Iowa State and Nebraska, and Sox told me that I’d be OK,” Wedgeworth said. “When we got back to Denver he said that he was sorry, but I was ineligible.”
Wedgeworth’s CU career ended 14 games into the 1969-70 season. The Buffs also lost 7-foot center Ron Smith out of Pueblo to academics, and finished 14-12, 7-7 in the conference.
The word on the street indicated that the Manual community was upset at Wedgeworth’s demise and there would be no additional players going from Manual to CU.
Bob Hofman, basketball coach at Fort Lewis College in Durango and a former CU player, believes his alma mater got a bum rap and that Walseth helped Wedgeworth get to Western State.
Wedgeworth supports Hofman’s claim. “There was help for me at CU, but I didn’t take advantage,” Wedgeworth said. “I have nobody to blame but myself.”
Dudley Mitchell, who played at Thomas Jefferson and was a teammate at CU, remembered Boulder in the late 1960s as being a “mess.”
“None of us knew what to do to help,” Mitchell said. “I just remember that when we lost ‘Wedge’ and Ron Smith, it gutted our team. It broke everybody’s heart.”
Terry Jameson, a CU teammate out of Regis High School, remembered the turmoil.
“It was the black-white time in our history,” Jameson said. “We had a team meeting and the black players told us they were going to look out for themselves. I think Tim was being pulled both ways.”
Horace Kearney, a teammate at Manual and later a prominent player at the University of Denver, remembered Wedgeworth as a promising underclassman on Manual’s 1966 state championship team.
After Western State, Wedgeworth raised a daughter as a single parent, working 19 years at a heavy machinery company.
But there were other bumps in the road. “I’ve had a drug problem,” Wedgeworth said. “I was arrested for possession and was in jail once for 60 days for violating parole.”
At 57, he still stays to himself. He avoided a team reunion at CU in 1991. He has his mother, who he calls “my rock.” He keeps a letter with pictures of his granddaughter sent to him on Father’s Day from Florida within reach.
“Every now and then I think back,” Wedgeworth said. “I made a lot of mistakes. I’m content with my life right now.”
Irv Moss can be reached at 303-820-1296 or imoss@denverpost.com.
