It was the perfect ending for a team that lived up to and then surpassed all expectations.
From the time the 2020 Durango High School senior class of football players were in the third grade, there was a belief that they could become the first group to get the Demons into a high school state championship game since 1988 and could even become the first to be crowned champions since the 1954 team won a share of the title with Lamar in a 7-7 tie.
Belief in the small Southwest Colorado town of 19,000 residents only grew as that class went 40-1 in Young America Football League play and won three elementary school championships before some of those players went undefeated and won two more titles at Miller Middle School.
And when that class reached the halls of DHS, there was a coaching staff and an athletic director who also believed. Though Adam Bright served only three years as the DHS athletic director from 2016 to the end of the 2018-19 school year, his fingerprint also was on the Demons’ 21-14 state championship victory Dec. 5 in Pueblo against top-ranked Roosevelt.
So it was only fitting that Bright’s fingertips were the last to touch the Demons’ Class 3A trophy before seniors Gage Mestas and Tommy Barnes snatched it away to begin Durango’s long-awaited celebration.
“For me, it’s coming full circle,” said Bright, who is in his second year as an assistant commissioner from CHSAA overseeing football and wrestling, which allowed him to be the one to present the CHSAA trophy to DHS. “Being there to see these guys start this run five years ago and then being there to officially be the one to welcome them to the highest pedestal of football in Colorado was special to me. For me and my family, it provided us some closure. We know we left Durango in a good spot. Seeing those kids and their families who we were and still are friends with lift up that trophy, it’s a highlight of my career I won’t soon forget.”
For a town known more for producing cross-country and track and field championships along with some old dusty skiing trophies, it was a historic victory for a contact sports team from DHS.
In a town like Durango, that kind of championship doesn’t come without work and foresight to capitalize on once-in-a-generation talent.
So when Bright, a former football coach from Texas and Middle Park, arrived in Durango and learned of the up-and-coming group, he went to work with the Demons’ coaches to do what he could to prepare the Demons for future success.
“He did a ton to help us hire coaches and get people in the building who were football guys,” said DHS head coach David Vogt, who has led the Demons since 2013. “He really loved football and helped elevate it to where our other sports were, and I appreciated that. It was so refreshing to be able to go in and talk to my AD about Xs and Os. We would draw on the board for 30 or 40 minutes a day sometimes going over stuff together. It definitely helped me in my growth as a football coach.”
For Bright, it started with building belief within the team and creating big-time game atmospheres the Demons were not used to. The team got a new tunnel to run onto the field from, and the players would be led onto their home turf my motorcycles, as Bright made a partnership with the local Harley Davidson dealership.
Before the 2016 home opener on Durango’s new turf field, Bright arranged a flyover with 14 U.S. Army Golden Knight Parachute Team members who landed on the field to deliver the game ball. Before a 2018 first-round state playoff game against Erie, the Demons had a helicopter flyover after the national anthem.
“He really started the buildup of our program again and made football exciting not only for the players but the town,” DHS senior quarterback Jordan Woolverton said. “We are so appreciative of him and everything he did here for us at DHS. Whenever we had a game, he made it special and unique in different ways. It was always fun to play when he was our AD.”
It went beyond optics, too. Bright also got together with Vogt and the coaching staff to build a brutally challenging schedule for the Demons when the current senior class were sophomores and juniors. By scheduling elite Class 3A teams such as Palisade and a Class 4A top-five opponent in Montrose, Bright aimed to harden the Demons, win or lose, by playing elite competition. He knew it would pay off by the time they were seniors.
The proof was in the results. Durango went from a 20-3 loss to Palisade in a Week 2 game in 2018 to a 25-18 loss to the same Bulldogs in Week 2 a year later. The teams would meet one more time in the 2019 state playoffs. This time, Durango had what it took to earn a 23-14 victory. Though DHS would lose one round later in the quarterfinals in a 21-14 game at Pueblo South, DHS knew going into 2020 that it finally had what it took to be a true state contender.
“For me, it is about three words: compete, compete, compete,” Bright said. “I saw a group of kids we had who loved to compete. They didn’t care who they lined up across, they were going to give it all they had. The saying is that iron sharpens iron. So, let’s go out and play the best and hang with them and then figure out how you can eventually beat them. Then you realize that you’ve now become one of the best. So, that’s how we built the schedule.”
Durango had watched as cross-county rival Bayfield had won two Class 2A state championships in 2015 and 2017. And while rivals when on the field, the Demons had supported the Wolverines and been in attendance in 2017 to see BHS lift up its own state championship trophy, only the third in BHS school history.
Football teams in Southwest Colorado don’t get to win trophies very often. Bright and I wanted to change that. So, we reached out to Bayfield High School to see about creating a traveling trophy to be awarded to the winner when Bayfield and Durango played each other.
The Vallecito Bowl was created. It lasted only two years from 2018-19, and the Demons won both times. The DHS players hoisted the silver cup, filled it with pickle juice and celebrated in the locker room each year as if they had won a championship.
What we wanted was for teams in our county to experience moments like that and the camaraderie it helps build between players. We knew it could only help prepare them to win even more meaningful trophies.
And as the Demons held up the most important trophy last week after having it handed to them by Bright, under his blue mask had to be a smile of satisfaction.
His job at Durango had finally been completed.
“The Brights and our family, we’re pretty close and have stayed close since he’s gone to Denver,” Woolverton said. “To have a close family friend like that hand you the trophy after you’ve won the biggest game of your life, it’s a very cool experience. To have him there at the game, to have his family back at their house watching the game and getting to see us win, it was special.”
John Livingston is the Regional Sports Editor of The Durango Herald. He can be reached at jlivingston@durangoherald.com. Follow him on Twitter @jlivi2.
