Morgan DzakChris Brown won’t forget his exasperating “welcome to coaching football” moment — a dazzling fourth quarter play that led to a fleeting shot at victory halted by a pull-your-hair-out penalty in his very first high school game.
The year was 1976, and Brown was a young, rookie coach in his first season with 10-time state champion Limon. The opening game was a sloppy one against Bishop Machebeuf, a team led by legendary veteran Pat Panek, who was on the brink of retiring as Colorado’s all-time winningest football coach.
There were less than two minutes in regulation when Machebeuf was up on Limon, 13-7, driving with the ball for one last touchdown and Limon caused a fumble inside the 10-yard-line. When the ball popped up, a Limon safety snatched it and went 95 yards to tie the game.
CLUTCH. Had the touchdown counted.
The pick-six was no good because of a mouth guard penalty: a new rule that went into effect this game. The mouth guard that popped out of a player’s mouth way on the other side of the field called for a five-yard penalty and the TD was called back.
Brown’s Badgers fell to Panek’s Buffaloes.
“As a young coach, I didn’t handle that too well,” Brown said with a sentimental laugh. “The papers called.”
Four state championships and 40 seasons later, Brown’s career has circled back to where it all began: in good company of the great Panek.
In West Grand’s last victory of the 2015 season, Brown, who has been with the 8-man program in Kremmling since 1980, notched his 306th win, tying Panek for Colorado’s career wins record.
“There are probably not too many coaches around who are still coaching that have connections to Pat Panek,” Brown said.
But there is another coach with his own Panek memories — a coach who has also been chasing the state’s career wins record alongside Brown.
“I was a little guy when my dad, Dick Yates, was coaching during the Pat Panek era,” said longtime Kent Denver football coach and athletic director Scott Yates. “My dad spoke so highly of him as one of the best football coaches around.”
Yates, who has 304 career wins, missed the Panek era (1939-77), and started coaching the Class 2A Sun Devils in 1981. Since then, Yates has dedicated himself to developing a quality football program, won three state titles during his 304-74 tenure and is just below only Panek/Brown and Dolores County’s Ken Soper (305) in career wins. They are the only four coaches in state history to reach the 300-victory club.
Both the Kent Denver and West Grand coaches are very successful, yes, but bring up that state record in conversation and they agree: to be mentioned even in the same sentence as Panek is absolutely ridiculous, and also very humbling.
Panek was known for dedicating himself to young people and developing their talents. Much like Panek, both Brown and Yates have longevity and success in their careers and have also used their time coaching to serve as great role models in high school athletes’ lives, striving for players to leave their respective programs as better people than when they first started.
Brown and Yates enter the 2016 season in record-breaking territory, without a question. But it’s really not about the record, it’s about the teams. It’s about what each coach is doing right now to make connections with young people, be positive influences on their players and help provide a quality foundation for athletes’ futures.
They may not put much focus on it — if any at all — but Brown and Yates are chasing a longtime record together that has stood since 1977. Before December, Panek’s mark could very well fall at the hands of these two coaches who have persevered with time and built extremely successful careers based on similar coaching philosophies.
Scott Yates, Kent Denver
304 career wins
(Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)
Yates, who enters his 36th season coaching, started building Kent Denver’s dilapidated program from the ground up as a 24-year-old in 1981.
“When I started at Kent Denver, the school had not won a league game,” Yates said. “By our fifth year, we won our first state championship, and over the course of the following years, we’ve been able to maintain a high-level program.”
He has won three state titles (1986, 1991, 2012) in five trips to the championship, and has been the Gatorade national coach of the year once. The Sun Devils have gone 31-5 since the most recent state championship and produced three Class 2A all-state first-teamers per year the last three seasons.
“When Yates took over that program, it was at the bottom of the old Metro League, probably lower than a doormat,” Brown said. “And he stayed there all these years and he’s just done a great job of building up a terrific program.”
Even though Kent Denver was a struggling program when Yates took over, he stuck with it with a “never give up” and “grass isn’t always greener” mentality. After all these years with new players, teams, games, what really amazes Yates the most is the transformation — of the entire program, from where it was in 1981 to where it is now — and the transformation of individual players.
“I marvel the most at a young, skinny little ninth grader who is slow, and that you engage, encourage and keep in the program,” Yates said. “By the time they’re juniors or seniors, they’re significant contributors to what you’re doing.”
(Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)
Encouragement and understanding are big parts of Yates’ coaching philosophy, which is to use football as a tool to help great guys become great young men. Establishing relationships is the No. 1 goal.
Junior tailbacker/linebacker Josh McDonald said Yates is one of the most influential people in his life, and was also an important mentor to his father, Ross McDonald, who graduated from Kent Denver in 1991.
“My dad to this day says that Coach Yates was his biggest influence growing up,” McDonald said. “He says Yates was one of his biggest father figures, and being able to experience this for myself is extraordinary.
Yates explained the importance of establishing relationships begins with understanding there are hard times and great times, and recognizing when players are dejected or elated and being able to help them climb out of the dark times, and be humble during the good times
This gets very challenging with the way society has evolved over the years. There are new pressures facing high school students now, namely in the social media realm, that didn’t even exist when Yates and Brown were that age.
“There’s a lot more to coaching than it used to be,” Yates said. “Someone who stays in there has a lot of grit.”
He added: “I admire the longevity of Chris Brown’s career, the endurance he’s demonstrated, the dedication he’s shown to young people, and the time, effort and sacrifices I know I’ve made, he’s certainly made as well.”
Chris Brown, West Grand
306 career wins
West Grand football coach Chris Brown. (Photo courtesy of Mike Wilson)
Brown, also West Grand’s athletic director, enters his 41st season of coaching football with a 306-123 mark and four state titles: two with Limon (1976 and 1978), two with West Grand in (1996 and 1998).
On Sept. 3, at West Grand’s first game of the season against Sanford, Brown could pick up his 307th victory, making him Colorado’s winningest football coach.
“I think we’ll win at least one this year,” Brown said.
After taking over for longtime Limon coach Lloyd Gaskill, who won 10 state championships, Brown claimed two more for the school. The ’76 title was with the ‘Comeback Kids,’ who started out with the mouth guard fiasco-loss to Panek’s Machebeuf before continuing on to a 1-3 start.
“At that time and era, it was three too many losses at Limon,” Brown said. “Then we ran the table and won the state title and had a great group of seniors. We came from behind in the fourth quarter in four of the last five games. They just refused to lose.”
One of Brown’s main coaching mottos and philosophies is to never quit, and he’s seen his fair share of perseverance during his coaching tenure, as well as the impact he’s made on young people.
“There was one former player who had a tough time. He was in jail and was contemplating suicide,” Brown said. “Every time he thought of committing suicide, he also thought of what I taught him about, ‘Never give up, never give up.’ Then he came back and told me that years later.”
And “never give up” was also a motto than ran very deep last season. Brown said out of all the games he has ever coached, including seven state final appearances, his last victory in 2015 – No. 306 – was the most important game of his life.
(Jack Eberhard/JacksActionShots.com)
On a Tuesday the week West Grand was playing the league championship against Vail Christian on a Friday, junior starting quarterback JD Guess died in a car crash driving home from practice.
“We wouldn’t have played. We were going to forfeit,” Brown said. “Then JD’s dad, Eric Guess, and brother, Will, who used to play for us, talked to the kids. And we decided to play because of them. I had no clue how we were going to play.”
He added: “It wasn’t the winning. It was going out and playing the best we could in that circumstance.”
They never gave up, and won 34-8.
Former West Grand principle and track coach Joe Shields said in a small school, fall sports coaches have an awful lot of power in the attitude kids have at the beginning of the school year, and since Brown has been at West Grand, students have always responded very well to him.
“Brown was a major factor in West Grand students getting started out very well inside and outside the classroom,” Shields said. “He works very hard at his craft and he’s very fair, loyal, supportive and consistent with his athletes.”
It’s just a number to them — the 300-plus wins, the state record. It’s a major milestone, of course, for Brown and Yates. But the real focus for each coach has been and will always be on the team and players that are here and now, and how they can continue to serve as a positive influence for young people.
Neither coach has plans of retiring at this point, and until then, the two will continue to shimmy up the state record books side by side.