LIMON — When the author of the current chapter of a century-long dynasty was looking for his calling in life, tradition walked into the coffee shop and told him what to do.
It was 1985. A young Mike O’Dwyer, Limon’s head football coach for the last 24 seasons, had graduated from the high school five years prior before going on to play at Northern Colorado. That mid-August day, he was drinking coffee in the eastern Colorado town with his brother Bart. The two had just bought their father’s construction company.
But little did O’Dwyer know that in that moment, he would be directed to his true purpose in life.
“The (longtime) superintendent walks into the coffee shop, and he says, ‘Well, what’s going on?’ I go, ‘Not too much,’” Mike O’Dwyer recalled. “And he says, ‘Well, just so you know, junior high practice starts on Monday and you need to be there at four.’ Then he walks out.
“I looked at my brother and I said, ‘Do you think he was serious? And should I do it?’ And he says, ‘Well, knowing (the superintendent), yeah, I think he was serious. And why not? Give it a go.’”
O’Dwyer started as an assistant coach for Limon’s junior high team that fall. By the time he took the head varsity job in 2002, no interview was needed. This time, a different superintendent told him that with the old coach stepping down, O’Dwyer “should just plan on being the head coach.”
In the two-and-a-half decades since, O’Dwyer became Limon’s winningest coach while leading the Badgers to eight state titles, part of a 22-championship tally that’s the most in Colorado high school football history.
The unstoppable Limon gridiron machine rolls on this Saturday, when the Badgers take on Buena Vista at the ThunderBowl in Pueblo. The Class 1A championship is the 32nd state title game appearance for Limon, which MaxPreps named the “No. 1 small-town football dynasty of all time” based on a formula that factored in winning percentage, win streaks, state titles, and undefeated seasons.
It’s a gridiron tradition that’s come to define the town of about 2,000, nicknamed the “Hub City” for its location at the intersection of five highways.
“I can remember as a kid going to those trophy rooms and going in the gym and seeing the banners on the wall,” said Jake Stone, a 2002 Limon graduate who won The Denver Post’s Gold Helmet Award. “You felt what you could call a pressure, and there was definitely a feeling of ‘You’re not doing well enough unless you’re winning state championships.’
“A down year in Limon is not winning (a state title). So the kids growing up here, they’re motivated to play for their town, but they also aspire to live up to the tradition. Growing up here in Limon, young boys are always looking up to something much bigger than themselves.”
Roots of a juggernaut
Limon’s historic success has been defined by a pair of Hall of Fame coaches: O’Dwyer in the present, and Lloyd Gaskill in the past.
The Badgers, who began play in 1920, won their first championship in 1933 under Leonard Stensaas. But it was Gaskill who ushered Limon into perennial greatness over his three different tenures as head coach from 1935 to 1975. Gaskill won 10 state titles, a record only recently surpassed by Cherry Creek boss Dave Logan.
Limon was also where the state’s all-time winningest coach, West Grand’s Chris Brown, got his start in 1976. Brown joked that he “was a very young, stupid guy who didn’t know any better” when he decided to follow the legendary Gaskill. Limon won two titles in Brown’s three-year tenure.
“I remember the first year we were playing for the state title and on Thanksgiving morning, we had practice and there were like 60 people there watching,” Brown said. “I thought, ‘These guys don’t have anything to do, do they?’ (Laughs.) But that’s what Gaskill had built: A team everyone in town wanted to follow.”
Limon named its field after Gaskill in 1969, and erected two steel gates with “Gaskill Field” on opposite sides of the stadium. Limon players enter the field under one of those gates. They have rung a victory bell since 1959. The brass bell is a train engine bell, an homage to the town’s railroad roots.
And during the Gaskill Era, which featured a 42-game winning streak — plus a run of six state titles from 1963-68 that still stands tied for a Colorado record — Limon’s burgeoning football folklore was underscored by a couple live, caged badgers on the sideline of every game. That started in the 1950s and continued until about 1990.
All of which is why, when current players enter the field under the southeast Gaskill gate, the weight of the program’s success is palpable.
“There’s always a lot of goosebumps coming out here for a game, through the gate that (bears the name) of a coach who sparked all of this,” Limon senior tailback/linebacker Jacob Jaklich said. “We can sense the expectations because of people like Gaskill who raised them for us.”
Gaskill, who coached every game in a jacket and tie while wearing a signature black fedora, was a disciplinarian. There was no room for rule-breaking on his team, even for star players.
“I can remember one time a player wore a turtleneck with his sport coat on game day at school, instead of a shirt and tie,” said Don Stone, who played for Gaskill in the mid-1960s. “Coach Gaskill came into the lunchroom and announced to everyone that he would not be playing that evening.
“Another time, we went to Brush for a game, and one of our best players forgot his helmet. Most coaches would say, ‘Okay, who is a backup that wears that size?’ But Gaskill told him, ‘Enjoy the game from the sidelines.’ ”
Gaskill owned a series of clothing stores and ran a single-wing, no-huddle offense that garnered national attention. The up-tempo scheme featured a “quarterback” that was in actuality a blocking back. That quarterback would call the plays, not Gaskill, and the ball would always be direct-snapped to either the tailback or the fullback.
Jack Hendricks, who played for Gaskill in the early 1960s and now works on Limon’s sideline chain gang, said a primary reason for the coach’s success over three different stints in Limon was because “he made all players feel like they belonged.” That included Hendricks, who didn’t get to play varsity until his senior year.
“If you weighed 80 pounds and you were on the football team, you were just as important as the guy who was 190 pounds, could blaze that hundred-yard dash and run over people,” Hendricks said. “One road trip, we went out to dinner and he got everyone a steak, even (the back-ups). Eating the same steak as the star players, that got me thinking, ‘Hey, I’m somebody in this program.’”
Padding Limon’s legacy
On Saturday in Pueblo, O’Dwyer will tie Gaskill for the most games coached in Limon history at 281. The former already passed the latter in wins with the Badgers last season, and is 240-40 (.857 winning percentage) in his time as head coach. O’Dwyer’s Badgers also set a state record for consecutive wins early in his tenure, reeling off 50 straight from 2003-06.
Like Gaskill, O’Dwyer is a tough-love coach whom assistant and former Limon QB Tyson Liggett says “demands a level of excellence and commitment that the players understand.”
“He’s very tough on the kids,” said Liggett, a 2006 Limon alum. “But on the other hand, they understand where he comes from. And later on in life, you’re grateful for how he molded you not only as a player but also as a young man.”
Under O’Dwyer, the Badgers have squeezed the most talent and production possible out of an enrollment that’s about 160 kids. The Badgers have been playing up in 1A for nearly a decade now, as they are one of the classification’s smallest schools, and their true classification by CHSAA’s enrollment splits is the eight-man level.
O’Dwyer’s influence starts in junior high, when seventh graders begin participating in Limon’s weight-training program and also pad up for the K-12 school. The middle school Badgers practice on the same field as the high school team, and O’Dwyer is close with the lower-level coaches. O’Dwyer says about 95% of his roster consists of players who have been in the school since kindergarten.
Many of those players are generational Badgers.
“A big part of Limon’s sustained success is that former players, they might leave for college or leave and go have a career, but when they start having families, a lot of them figure out a way to come back to Limon …,” Brown said. “That is the case for a lot of (successful rural programs), but Limon’s has had that going for it since probably the 1930s or ’40s.”
The Stones are one such family.
While Jake Stone and his brother starred for Limon at the turn of the century, their dad, Dale Stone, was the Class 1A player of the year in 1970, while his uncles also won titles for Limon and his grandpa played for Gaskill’s Badgers in the 1930s.
Dale Stone said the one constant his family noticed over the decades is the community’s unwavering support for the Badgers. Heading into Saturday’s title game, there were windows throughout town painted with messages of support and a giant black football helmet display at a park on Main Street, complete with brown footballs bearing the names of each player and coach.
Local fervor tends to reach a peak when the team accomplishes something historic, like when the Badgers beat Sanford at home on Nov. 4, 2006, to break Stratton’s state record of 48 consecutive victories.
“There were probably 3,000 to 4,000 people at the field that night — so around double the population of the town,” Dale Stone said. “The stadium was just overflowing. The stands were jam-packed, people lining all around the field, the field ringed with cars, people standing up to see from the back of their pick-ups. It was an incredible atmosphere.”
Even when Limon isn’t setting records or winning titles, that relentless support remains the same — even if it sometimes comes in the form of criticism.
“It’s an all-the-time thing,” Jake Stone said. “Of course, the send-offs for the state championships are epic, but every fall, all fall, you feel like everybody’s behind you. And you get that for the highs and the lows. If you’re doing well, everybody loves that. And if you’re flailing or doing poorly, there’s still that support — but there’s also the farmers in the coffee shop, talking (trash) about you over their cups in the morning.”
A new chapter looming
While the football team will always be Limon’s claim to fame, the school is also extraordinarily accomplished in other sports.
The school has won 63 titles overall, ranking ninth all-time in Colorado and third among smaller-classification schools, behind North Fork’s 80 and Kent Denver’s 69.
But the gridiron will always be central to the Badgers’ identity.
While Gaskill’s signature single-wing offense is long gone, O’Dwyer’s I-formation, double-set approach continues to lean heavily on the run game. O’Dwyer, a former offensive lineman, sees no need to pass unless he has to. In last week’s 35-21 semifinal victory over Wray, Limon ran the ball 49 times and threw just once, a completed shovel pass on a fake punt.
Expect more smash-mouth football on Saturday as Limon plans to use its physicality in the box to limit Buena Vista’s obvious speed advantage.
“We can’t let their speed get going,” O’Dwyer said. “We’ve got to keep their backs from getting to the edges, and win the line of scrimmage.”
In the first matchup between the teams this season, Buena Vista (12-0) won 13-10 at the Demons’ home field. Limon’s defeat in that Sept. 26 game was punctuated by four turnovers and the Badgers having to play their third-string QB due to injuries.
Afterwards, a Demons fan left the Badgers a note outside the visiting locker room, spelling out “LOSERS” in water on the cement.
It was a message that Limon (11-1) hasn’t soon forgotten. During the week of practice leading into Saturday, a picture of that insult was printed out and taped to every Badgers’ locker and to the locker-room door.
“We wanted to make sure we didn’t forget how that felt,” senior lineman Keagan Mellott said, “and trust me, we won’t on Saturday.”
Whatever the outcome at the ThunderBowl, Saturday might mark the end of another consequential chapter in Limon football.
O’Dwyer, who runs an insurance agency in town and manages a cattle ranch with his wife, acknowledged that retirement is on his mind. Saturday could be the 63-year-old’s last game, with those odds increasing should Limon win.
If O’Dwyer retires, the Badgers have two viable options waiting in the wings to take over the program: Liggett and fellow assistant coach Travis Sandersfeld, a 2007 Limon graduate who was part of the 50-game record win streak and went on to play at CU.
“Whatever (the timeline ends up being), I hope my passion for the game has been projected onto my kids,” O’Dwyer said. “Believe me, retirement’s coming; I just don’t know how quickly. I’ve got four grandkids now, and they live in Hays, Kansas. So it’s getting closer to ‘Coach O’ being just Papa Mike.”
Whether it’s Liggett or Sandersfeld who takes over the helm next, no one expects the culture of Limon football to change. It will always be a north star for the town’s young and old, including 1943 Limon alum Don Morrison.
Morrison, 100, played for the Badgers in the early 1940s before enlisting in the Air Force during World War II and becoming a B-17 bomber gunner. He still goes to work every day at the petroleum company in town that he’s owned for more than a half-century, and also still attends Limon home games as well as many of the away games.
For Morrison, Limon football is the inevitable force that helps keep him and the rest of the townsfolk going. It is an immortal beacon that illuminates the blue-collar hard work and close kinship that the town was founded upon, and continues to this day.
“I have a lot of pride in this team,” Morrison said. “The first time I ever carried the ball for Limon, I ran for a touchdown. I’ll never forget that… like this town will never forget this team. The Badgers are everything Limon stands for and hopes to be.”