Head Coach Paul Vickers will hang up his whistle after leading the Cowboy football team to a three-game win streak in the final weeks of the regular season. The GHS and Western Colorado University alumnus will step down from the position after four years as the varsity head coach, and 14 years coaching in the Gunnison Valley. Vickers sat down with the Times to reflect on his time at the helm of the varsity program.
(Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from an interview on a current episode of The Game Plan: Gunnison Valley Sports Talk. It has been edited for length and clarity. To listen to the entire conversation, follow the link below.)
Can you reflect on the end of the season?
It's hard to put it into words those three games from a coaching standpoint. We just kept going. We mixed up practice. We changed the mood at practice. And really, we can do all we want as coaches, but it boiled down to the boys believing in themselves. We went back and looked at the film and we just kept progressively getting better over the season. And it all came together against a pretty good Pagosa team. They were ranked ninth at the time, and we really had nothing to lose. But the boys just absolutely came together. All week there was a confidence, that swagger that you're trying to get. I told the coaches after practice, ‘I think we can beat these guys.’ It was because the boys didn't give up on each other. There was just this relentless passion to get over that hump.
Why did you decide to step down after this season?
We had our banquet last night (Nov. 13), and I've been hinting at this for some time. I told my coaches about mid-season that it was time for me to hang up my whistle as the head coach of Gunnison High School. I had debated about it off and on for some time. I needed to focus on saving up enough to retire. So those extra hours in the day that I have devoted to coaching boys, have to go toward paying the bills. At the same time, it feels selfish to say, because coaching young men and making a difference in their lives outweighs any paycheck you'll ever get. When you make a decision like this, especially in a town that you grew up in, it hurts, because people love to see the success that we’ve created for this program in this town.
What makes coaching in Gunnison special?
I took a different approach because I knew my resources were limited. I needed to do something that's out of the box, and completely different. My philosophy has always been to raise men through the game of football, and if we win a few games, that's great. So I decided to do something crazy. I told the guys, ‘We're not going to a scrimmage, we're going to kick the world's highest field goal off the top of Handies Peak.’ There was plenty of time to scrimmage. There's not a time to ever do this. It set the tone. I took a bunch of players, and then they hiked to the top of a mountain together, and all of a sudden we became a team. And that was that chemistry piece that had been missing, and we started out 7-0 that season. I like to be real and authentic with my players, and embrace them like my own. Then the wins come from hard work and the kids believing in themselves. And those are the lessons they're going to carry forever.
To listen to the full conversation visit https://www.gunnisontimes.com/articles/the-game-plan-paul-vickers/ or listen to the Game Plan on Spotify and Apple Music.
(Alex McCrindle can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or alex@gunnisontimes.com.)
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