As strange as it might seem knowing the migration habits of Texans to the pleasant, rural areas of southern Colorado, twins Jerry and Gerry Nickell cried when they were told the family was moving from their home in Canyon, Texas, near Amarillo, to Branson, barely a wide spot in the road near the Colorado-New Mexico border.
The brothers had built a reputation as promising athletes and were looking forward to making their mark in the renowned high school sports programs in Texas. They were setting their sights on entering high school when their father, W.M. Nickell, was hired to be the superintendent of schools in the Branson district.
“My brother and I weren’t going,” Jerry Nickell said last week as he looked back almost 50 years. “We decided we were going to stay in Texas. Our grandparents were there and we had started classes for our sophomore year.”
But with two younger sisters, family ties prevailed, and the twins reluctantly made the move sight unseen. It was more than a culture shock for the 15-year-olds. Jerry Nickell was proficient in football, basketball and baseball, while Gerry concentrated on basketball and baseball after a knee injury soured him on football.
“Our class in Texas was about 200 students,” Jerry Nickell said. “When we got to Branson, we were in a class of seven. They didn’t have a football program and when I looked in the gym, I wasn’t sure it was a basketball court. We felt as if we had dropped off the end of the world. We got homesick very quickly.”
The town itself would fit inside a Texan’s 10-gallon hat. There was a general store, a post office and a lumber yard. The nearest gas station was 50 miles away in Trinidad, making some storage containers or a close watch on the gas gauge essential. The town had been hit by a fire in the 1930s, leaving the concrete foundations of buildings destroyed as a stark reminder.
The Nickell family’s initial view of its new home didn’t signal much of a beginning. But from there, the Nickells and how they fit into some unusual circumstances became one of the great stories in Colorado high school sports history.
In 1967, the Branson Bearcats won the Class A state basketball championship, beating Walsh 59-57 in overtime. Historians have ranked the game among the five best in Colorado high school sports history. The lead changed hands 11 times and the teams were never separated by more than five points. The story was so compelling that a national sports magazine assigned a reporter and photographer to follow the Bearcats.
“We lost our first game of the season to a team from New Mexico,” Jerry Nickell said. “We rebounded by winning 24 games in a row.”
There are a large number of schools listed on the basketball championship pages of the Colorado High School Activities Association’s handbook. But none have a more unusual story than the Branson team of 1967.
W.M. Nickell had taken on the duties of basketball coach the year before in addition to his office of superintendent. His roster was like a big family. Along with his twin sons, Jerry and Gerry, there were twins John and Ben Doherty and brothers Bob and Fred Buhr. The roster was filled out by Mack Louden, Ron Gomez, Jim Chacon and Gary Hudson. The Doherty brothers lived 3 miles into New Mexico, but their only access to a school was Branson.
“Bob Buhr was the center and the only player we had who was more than 6-foot tall,” Jerry Nickell said. “There were 17 boys in the junior- senior classes and 15 played basketball.”
With most of the same players, the Bearcats won a Class A state baseball championship for western Colorado later in the spring.
Jerry Nickell now is superintendent of schools in Las Animas. His memories of Branson have softened since he first arrived.
“The people were really friendly and were genuinely glad to see us,” he said. “We found some really good athletes already were there.”
He also found that students and faculty find ways to work things out in small schools. The script for the junior-senior class play called for five girls, but there only were three girls in the two classes.
“My brother and I each had to step into a girl’s role in the play,” Jerry Nickell said. “We got through it. It was a comedy. We had fun.”
Today, Branson doesn’t have enough students to field athletic teams.
“I still think of my initial disappointment,” Jerry Nickell said. “But what happened outweighed that. Looking back, it was the best thing that happened to us.”
Irv Moss: 303-954-1296 or imoss@denverpost.com
Jerry nickell bio
Born: Sept. 5, 1949, in Amarillo, Texas
High school: Branson, in Colorado
College: Northern Colorado
Family: Wife Patti, sons Kelly, Cory and Casey
Hobby: Guiding big-game hunters
Wish: Do radio play-by-play of high school basketball games
