IT was a team for the ages, the 1939 Alamosa High School Maroons. It was near the end of the Depression in the U.S., when a good meal cost as much as 45 cents and a hamburger and coke 15 cents, and Alamosa High was headed to the Colorado Boys Class B State Basketball Tournament.
Bob Gomez was the star of the 1939 Alamosa High basketball team. At 6 foot, 1 inch, he was deadly from the outside, having perfected a two-handed push shot that teammates swore he could swoosh from half court.
Then there was Claude Petty, the tallest of the Maroons at 6’ 3½” and a phenomenal rebounder, and Carmel Lopez, the shortest player on the court barely stretching to 5′ 4” but whose ball-handling skills and quickness placed him on the Alamosa starting 5.
The other team members were Grant Morgan, Jack Paden, Dominic Nigro, Lance Blair, James “Red” Williamson, Leo Hibler, Buddy Rams and Bill Jones. The team had played in the state tournament the year before, winning one and losing two games; Gomez, a junior, was an honorable mention on the all-tournament team.
But 1939 would be different, the boys told Coach Vernon Hopper at the start of the season. Alamosa High was outfitted with new uniforms to start the year – one white jersey, one maroon – and Coach Hopper promised the team they could keep the uniforms if, indeed, they won the state championship.
“A team that won’t be beat, can’t be beat,” Hopper would tell his team. The 1939 Maroons would break each huddle with the chant, believing in the strength of the team as a whole and that if you played together, you would be unstoppable.
In bed by ten o’clock every night except after a game; one night a week for a date, not necessarily the same night for all the boys; not more than one Hershey bar a week; no popcorn or soda; and Coach will regulate all food just before a game.
HOPPER arrived in Alamosa in 1935, during the Great Depression, and brought with him a figure-eight offense and a man-to-man defense. With the height Alamosa had, five players standing 6 foot or taller, Hopper would implement a “Tall Team” and “Small Team” concept, using all of his players to run the opposition ragged and to gain an edge in rebounding.
Alamosa won its district tournament in 1939 on the strength of Claude Petty’s tenacious rebounding and Gomez’s deft touch from the outside. When the state tournament brackets came out, the Maroons found themselves on the same side as La Junta High, the state tournament favorite, and the road to a state championship in 1939 got that much tougher.
In bed by ten o’clock every night except after a game; one night a week for a date, not necessarily the same night for all the boys; not more than one Hershey bar a week; no popcorn or soda; and Coach will regulate all food just before a game.
If Alamosa truly wanted to win the state title in 1939, then the players would adhere to the training rules that Coach Hopper set down at the start of the year. Practices would be tough, with an emphasis on man-to-man defense.
After winning the district tournament, the trip north meant an eight-hour car ride to get to Denver, through the towns of Blanca, Fort Garland, Walsenburg, Pueblo, Fountain, Colorado Springs, Monument, Castle Rock and into the big city.
The team would stay at the swanky Albany Hotel at 17th and Stout streets in downtown Denver and each player got $1.50 a day for food. The first rounds of the state tournament were played at nearby local high schools, and the final eight teams would shift to play at the Denver City Auditorium.
With a capacity of 12,500, the Denver Auditorium was the second-largest indoor arena at the time, after Madison Square Garden. The idea of playing basketball inside an arena so large would unnerve the Alamosa team at first, players would later say, but the Maroons settled in and history was made.
Alamosa had dispensed with tournament favorite La Junta, 29-25, in the earlier rounds. Now with momentum and under the lights of the big-city auditorium, Alamosa steamrolled Gunnison 43-32, to set up a championship game against Haxtun, the team that eliminated Alamosa from the state tournament the year before.
“A team that won’t be beat, can’t be beat,” Hopper would tell his team. The 1939 Maroons would break each huddle with the chant, believing in the strength of the team as a whole and that if you played together, you would be unstoppable.
WORLD war looked inevitable in March of 1939, and the innocence of their youth and the state basketball title they brought home to Alamosa and the San Luis Valley would soon be replaced with their own years on the battle lines in Europe.
The championship game against Haxtun was tight but Alamosa prevailed, 26-22. Gomez, Petty and Lopez were named First Team All State. “A caravan of about fifty cars met them in Blanca at noon and escorted them to Alamosa where they were met at the city limits by another fifty or so cars and the high school band,” read an account of the newly crowned champs’ arrival back home.
There was a parade down Main Street and a big pep rally with townspeople cheering, and horns honking and sirens blaring. At the school Superintendent George P. Young and Principal E.F. Evans congratulated the team, and Coach Hopper and each of the boys said a word or two about their experience winning the Colorado Class B 1939 State Championship.
Instead of their uniforms, the boys each got a sweater to commemorate the state title. Following graduation, Gomez and Lopez enrolled at Adams State to continue their athletic careers and both eventually enlisted in the U.S. military as WWII gained steam.
“Mr. Gomez joined the Air Force in 1942 and was stationed in England during the remainder of World War II,” read Bob Gomez’ obituary in the Washington Post. “Before retiring from the Air Force in 1962, he served as an Air Force attaché in Havana for about five years and in Buenos Aires for four years.”
Carmel Lopez flew suicide machines known as gliders in WWII, participating in every major European invasion as a glider pilot for the Army Air Corps, including being first in on D-Day on June 6, 1944.
“I only hope this is the end of those spearhead operations for now,” he wrote in letters home to his wife, Margaret. “I now have five battle stars along with two clusters for my air medal and the unit citation from the President. I want no more, Marge, but to be home with you. Let us hope it won’t be long.”
When Alamosa transitioned to a home rule and city manager form of government in 1957, Claude Petty served as a member of the Alamosa Charter Convention. Other members included Ira Richardson, Charles Houser, Martin Husung and Ed Wuckert, all pillars of the Alamosa business community and who would fondly recall the championship team of 1939.
Dominic Nigro’s family owned the grocery store at Eighth Street and State Avenue, where A Cut Above beauty salon now sits. The Nigros would sell the property to Carmel and Margaret Lopez in the early 1950s and move their grocery store across the street to where Atencio’s Market is located.
Lopez in turn used the property to open the first coin-operated car wash and first coin-operated laundromat in Alamosa to go with Lopez Plumbing and Heating and Lopez Apartments. He served as an apprentice to Martin Husung and Husung Plumbing when he returned from the war, and once back in Alamosa he made every contribution he could to the community.
Coach Hopper went to coach football at Adams State and then Denver East High. Members of the team stayed in touch after the golden year of 1939 and would tell the stories of Alamosa High basketball in the post-Depression years.
They were a team for the ages, never to be forgotten, always remembered from a period when the world was calling for their attention but the game of basketball held them in their youth.
Some of the material for this story was taken from the San Luis Valley Historian, Winter 1981 Edition.
TOP PHOTO: The 1939 Alamosa High School Class B state champion team, with diagrams of some of the plays that brought them there.
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