BROOMFIELD — In the early mornings, under a stifling June sun, the basketball player would throw touchdown passes. Hours later, inside a stuffy gym in some corner of Colorado, the football player would switch his cleats for sneakers and bury jump shots.
This was Chris Helbig’s summer of blurred lines — and he couldn’t have loved it more.
“During the week, I’d usually go from football to basketball in the same day,” said Helbig, Holy Family’s dual-sport standout. “On the weekend, it just depended whether we had a basketball team camp or a football team camp I was going to, or a 7-on-7 passing camp. There was not time for much summer, but it was a lot of fun.”
In an age of specialization, with its year-round, sport-specific training and personal coaches, Helbig is a throwback. He’s a millennial gamer who has embraced the notion that the best way to prove yourself is to take the ball and go play — not prim and pose for a ranking.
As a quarterback for Holy Family, he is on a record-shattering pace to begin his senior season, having thrown for 1,432 yards and 17 touchdowns — in three games. And he already broke the all-time Colorado record for a single game with 607 yards passing against Mountain View in the first game of the season. Few in Colorado are playing the position better.
Helbig also helped Holy Family win a state championship in basketball as sophomore, then averaged 18.1 points per game to lead the team in scoring as a junior last season. He’s arguably one of the top-10 prep hoop standouts in the state.
And to think, neither sport was his first love.
“The scary thing is he was probably a better baseball player,” said Helbig’s father, Rich. “After his eighth-grade year was when he gave up baseball. He just didn’t have time for all of them. He liked it, but there just wasn’t enough time to play at a high level at all three.”
So he settled for two. Helbig’s talent and production, and an undeniable competitive will, have made him a Division I-level prospect in two sports. But while he has received Division II scholarship offers and has had interest from Division I programs in football and basketball, the offers from the highest level have yet to come.
Here’s the rub: Being great at two sports comes with that prodding, never-ending question: Which one are you going to choose?
“A lot of coaches, I’ll get in contact with them and they’ll say, ‘Oh, I thought you were a football guy’ or ‘Oh, I thought you were a basketball guy,’ ” Helbig said. “So that’s a challenge.’ “
Helbig, who is 6-foot-4, 185 pounds, makes one thing clear. He won’t try to play both sports in college. He’s eager to see how much he can grow when he throws his insatiable drive behind one of them.
“He still has a huge ceiling,” Holy Family basketball coach Pete Villeco said.
For their part, Helbig’s high school coaches aren’t pushing him in one direction, not when he has proved to be such a dedicated teammate in both programs.
Holy Family football coach Michael Gabriel said his star player did his best to make every football practice or camp this summer while doing the same for Villeco’s basketball team, traveling on the grassroots circuit with the Colorado Titans club team or playing on a circuit of 7-on-7 passing camps.
Still, Gabriel fears that Helbig, and other players with the drive to compete in multiple arenas, are dinged in today’s age for not making a choice — one that high school athletes weren’t always pressured to make.
“I believe it, no doubt, that he could be a (major-conference) football player,” Gabriel said. “We’ve got to get them to believe it. They base all their recruiting anymore on camps. You have to go to their camp, throw at their camp. If you see him throw at a camp and you see him throw in a game, it’s two different things.”
In other words: A kid who is throwing for almost 500 yards and six touchdowns per game is doing something right.
Helbig is aware that publicly committing himself to one sport now might make him a more attractive recruit for coaches weary about investing time on a guy who may end up playing a different game. But he is also in his final year of high school, excelling in two sports he loves, and he’s not ready to close any doors. Not yet.
“Competing is my main thing, I don’t care if it’s soccer, hockey, anything like that,” Helbig said. “Wherever I get a chance to go out and compete against guys, I just have that nature to want to do that. It’s in the classroom, everywhere. So it’s not really the sport. It’s about where I can go to school and have the opportunity to compete the soonest.”
Nick Kosmider: 303-954-1516, nkosmider@denverpost.com or @nickkosmider
Helbig’s big stats
In just his second season as Holy Family’s starting quarterback, Chris Helbig has already rewritten school records. A closer look at some of the gaudy numbers the senior has compiled:
607
Yards passing in the Tigers’ season-opening game against Mountain View, a single-game state record.
7
Touchdown passes Sept. 11 against Discovery Canyon. Joe Golter caught four of those scores and set a state single-game record with 336 receiving yards.
46
Distance in yards of Helbig’s longest punt this season. Yes, he’s the punter, too.
COACH’S TAKE
“He knows what he has to do with the ball on every down,” Holy Family coach Michael Gabriel said of Helbig. “On every single play, every opportunity he has, he competes. It’s that drive he has.”
