If Tom Nicholls gets involved in something, he puts everything he has into the effort.
After a year on the faculty at Arvada High School, he heard from the principal that he would be the head wrestling coach starting in 1950. He also would be an assistant football coach and help out with spring sports, in addition to his classroom teaching duties. He coached the wrestling team for 28 years.
During his tenure at Arvada, he followed the career of Don Henderson, who went from Arvada to the Air Force Academy. Henderson became Air Force’s only NCAA wrestling champion, winning the national title at 145 pounds in 1967. Nicholls also followed the wrestling career of his son, Charles, also on the Air Force wrestling team.
The academy was barely 10 years old when Henderson won a national wrestling title and was just settling into its permanent location outside of Colorado Springs after years at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver. Air Force teams were building a fan base, and Nicholls was introduced to the Falcon Quarterback Club of Denver. He joined and remains a member today. During his many years following AFA, he just might have become the academy’s best fan.
“When you get to know the athletes at the academy, you want to support them,” Nicholls said from his home outside of Colorado Springs. “The quarterback club finances the football banquet, which is a source of pride for us. Our family had Broncos season tickets at the same time in those days, but we found we liked the Air Force games better than sitting in the South Stands at Mile High Stadium.”
Nicholls not only joined the booster club in Denver but was an active member and became the club’s president in 2003. At the meetings, he sat alongside coaches Dick Yates and Frank Rino, both of whom had sons who played for the Falcons.
In some ways, the Denver Falcon club has shown the same determination that Nicholls did in his coaching days, sticking with its support no matter the ups and downs of the program.
While similar Denver support clubs for the University of Colorado, Colorado State and even the Broncos have faded away, the Falcon club keeps on going, meeting weekly during the football season.
“We’re alive and kicking,” Nicholls said. “We continue to get new members, and our membership is up to about 160. We have about 20 graduates of the academy in the club.”
In the early days, the membership attracted many prominent sports figures. Larry Varnell, who played a major role in keeping the Broncos in Denver and working on behalf of getting Major League Baseball to town, was one of the founders. Minetta Miller, a Denver public relations person, provided much of the detail work, and former Air Force football coach Ben Martin rarely missed a quarterback club meeting.
The club’s meeting place traveled from downtown locations from the Denver Playboy Club to the luncheon facilities at Valley Country Club in the southeast suburbs.
“My first Air Force football game actually was in the fall of 1955 when they had a freshman team,” Nicholls recalled. “We went to a game in Dutch Clark Field in Pueblo.”
As for his career in wrestling, Nicholls goes back to the early days. He wrestled for coach B.O. Moles at Denver North High School at a time when Moles and the Vikings were one of the top teams in the state.
“I wasn’t much of a wrestler myself,” Nicholls said. “But I learned a lot from Coach Moles and Joe Klune, who followed Moles at North. I went to school with Jack Hancock and was a volunteer coach for him at Colorado School of Mines.”
Nicholls, who also turned out national champion Leonard Lordino at Colorado State College, filled his time as a wrestling official in the old Amateur Athletic Union of the United States and in the administration of a cultural exchange program with Japan for high school wrestlers.
He has followed Air Force’s football team to games at Yale, West Point and Annapolis. One of the most memorable was Sept. 25, 1982, in Provo, Utah, when Air Force defeated BYU in a dedication game for its new stadium.
Where will Nicholls and his wife, Betty, be Dec. 27? They’ll be in Shreveport, La., to watch the Falcons play Georgia Tech in the Independence Bowl.
Nicholls bio
Born: July 29, 1926, in Denver
High school: Denver North
Colleges: University of Denver, Colorado State College in Greeley
Family: Wife Betty; sons Thomas, Charles; daughters Kathy, Judy
Hobby: Golf
Interest: Genealogy
