THORNTON — A quarter of a century has come and gone for Dave Lawrence. Where did it go, he wonders.
Anyway, it’s enough . . . for now.
“It’s just time, you know?” said Lawrence, who has had a most interesting and uniquely successful run in the north metropolitan area. “I’ve just got a feeling that it’s time to do it. At least for now, it’s time to take a break.”
By Feb. 18, when the Horizon boys basketball team ends its season against nearby and newer Mountain Range, Lawrence won’t be worrying about what to do in order to get better for the 2011-12 season.
He turns 51 in June, and a wife and four children don’t have an offseason.
As the only coach to oversee championships in both in-state boys and girls basketball, Lawrence has dabbled in different eras, been associated with an array of high- end coaches and players, sprouted his own coaching tree that should remain for years and displayed a quiet dignity among the highs and lows that are high school sports.
In the 1980s, a professor of his at Colorado State helped him land a job at Northglenn, shortly after he had assisted coaching at Fort Collins, which included eventual University of Colorado star Tracy Tripp on its roster. He began as Northglenn’s sophomore boys coach, then, at 25, was asked to take over the Norse girls. The first season the Norse went 7-11, then won it all a year later in 1986-87.
Truthfully, Lawrence said, “I was really lucky. I had no clue, but had a lot of good players.”
One was Jody Welch, who headed Legacy’s girls.
Lawrence led another finals appearance before taking over the boys at the new Horizon, in 1989-90, the school’s second year.
It’s not the area you see today with the surrounding multilane roads and massive developments. Most of what was around 136th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard was open field and dirt roads.
In their debut season, which included only sophomores and half a junior class, about 700 students total, the Hawks went 0-19 under Art Drotar, more renowned for his soccer prowess.
Having switched to Horizon while still coaching at Northglenn the previous year, Lawrence was selected to take over the Hawks and led the team to a 10-9 mark.
What followed were multiple league titles, the 1998 championship and a list of high-end players, including Joe Cronin, Dean and Keith Grable, Brian and James Greene, and Ryan Goral. In the 1994 title game against George Washington and Chauncey Billups, who was a junior at the time, the Hawks led 14-2 before falling 71-67. Brian Greene, who starred at CSU and was The Denver Post’s Mr. Colorado Basketball in 1998, still plays in Europe. Dean Grable is head coach of the Eaton boys.
“Those guys made it a lot of fun,” said Lawrence, who was honored recently at his final home game and had past players return in droves.
The Hawks, 3-16 this season, haven’t won more than seven games in a season since 2005-06.
Lawrence is convinced the opening of Mountain Range has something to do with that, cutting his program’s talent base in half. But he isn’t kidding himself. He says he may be getting too old to do it and dealing with today’s players may not be his strong point.
“We just haven’t recovered from (Mountain Range opening), I don’t think, and I may be at the point that what I want out of the players is not what I’m seeing,” he said.
If he returns, it will probably be as an assistant. If not, his memory banks are full.
“You don’t look back and realize how special it was while it was happening,” Lawrence said. “But it has been nice.”
Neil H. Devlin: 303-954-1714 or ndevlin@denverpost.com
