Hansen's Hundred, No. 57: Roland LaVetter turned Pueblo into a basketball power

Roland LaVetter was 29 when he was hired to be Pueblo High School’s basketball coach. That was 1969, the year Tucson High won its eighth state basketball championship, all in the highest division of Arizona prep basketball.

The Warriors, who had never been a power in boys prep basketball since the school opened 14 years earlier, had little reason to think they could compete with the city’s thriving basketball powers of the 1970s: Rincon, Tucson, Sunnyside and Sahuaro.

But 10 years later, Pueblo became Arizona’s leading boys basketball program, winning back-to-back state championships in 1977 and 1978. Over those 10 years, LaVetter won 158 games with young men who grew up in the neighborhood, most from economically challenged families.

Many suggest the Warriors’ undefeated 1978 team (28-0) was Tucson’s top basketball team of the century.

LaVetter, No. 57 on our list of Tucson’s Top 100 Sports Figures of the last 100 years, is a Tucson High grad who played on the UA’s freshman team in 1959 and went on to become a social studies teacher at Mansfeld Junior High before moving to Pueblo.

LaVetter’s coaching acumen was never tested more than it was in the 1978 state semifinal showdown with longtime power Phoenix East High School. Pueblo’s team bus was delayed about 90 minutes en route to the ASU arena, stuck in a traffic jam due to a rare flood when the Salt River overflowed its banks.

Without time to warm up properly — AIA officials did not move the starting time back — LaVetter ordered his team to play a four corners offense, a delaying tactic (there was no shot clock) that worked.

Pueblo won 29-28 and then rolled to a second consecutive state title a day later, beating Rincon by 17.

“The kids won despite me,’’ the modest LaVetter said after the game, although that was hardly the truth.

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As the Warriors climbed to prominence, blessed by talented players such as Danny Mosley, Tony Mosley, Randall Moore and Jeff Moore, it became clear that LaVetter was a difference-maker for the way he treated his neighborhood ballplayers.

On more than one occasion, Pueblo’s entire roster was made up of minority players.

The state’s best player in '77 and '78 was probably Pueblo point guard Lafayette “Fat’’ Lever, who would go on to become an All-Pac-10 point guard at ASU and a two-time NBA All-Star with the Denver Nuggets. Lever didn’t just get his points and go home.

“Without a doubt, everything I learned — and not just in basketball, but in life — came from Pueblo and what coach taught me,’’ Lever said in 1988. “The things he started there still carry over."

After winning 19 games in 1980, winning another region title, LaVetter chose to transfer within the TUSD and teach/coach at Rincon High, which is within a mile of his home. Rincon was at the start of a rebuilding period.

“The idea of going out on top never occurred to me,’’ LaVetter said that spring. “That’s an ego thing. I’ve never been in coaching for an ego. I’ve been coaching because I love the idea.’’

Indeed, after he left his Rincon job, LaVetter was asked to return to Pueblo and coach the girls basketball team. The Warriors had won two games the previous year. It didn’t stop him. His first Pueblo girls basketball team, 1991-92, went 0-20.

“I probably enjoyed that year as much as most,’’ he told me two years ago, a few days before Pueblo named its basketball facility the Roland LaVetter Gymnasium. “You only are fortunate enough to get a Fat Lever once in a lifetime, if at all. It’s always up to you to make the best of what you’ve got."

Which is what Roland LaVetter did with the best high school coaches in Tucson history.