Kickin’ around
Highlands record-holder David Lucero back home for a golf tournament
Although a professional football career eluded him — barely — David Lucero still counts several NFL players among his friends.
And that’s saying something for the West Las Vegas alum who didn’t even try out for the Dons until he was a junior.
But Lucero, a 1981 WLV graduate, went on to a noted career at New Mexico Highlands University.
He’s back in New Mexico t his weekend for a golf tournament with the Highlands Club, and is anxious to meet up with fellow Cowboy and former NFL wide receiver Anthony Edwards, who Lucero helped coach at Highlands.
Lucero started his career at Highlands as a running back, but his true calling was as a kicker.
“I was a straight-on kicker,” he said. “I never played soccer before. But trying to keep myself busy as a kid, I kicked all the time. I grew up on the little road going to the World College (in nearby Montezuma, east of Las Vegas). I’d go across the street with my couple of footballs and I made a game of kicking the ball through the electrical lines.”
As a high school junior, he finally went out for the Dons.
“I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I went out and tried,” he said. “I was always punting and kicking. It was part of a routine,. When I got into high school, I kicked off, but I didn’t get to get to kick any field goals. I was in the game the whole 60 minutes. I kicked off, played defensive tackle or linebacker, running back and offensive guard.”
After WLV, he was originally slated to go to New Mexico Military College, but Lucero was messing around with some friends at Highlands and caught the eye of a coach, who encouraged him to walk on there as a running back.
In the second game of his freshman season, the Cowboys’ kicker got hurt and Lucero won the ensuing competition for the position.
In his first game, he kicked a 48-yard field goal just before half. He added several game-winning kicks for Highlands throughout that magical first season when the Cowboys won the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference championship. He ended up earning RMAC first-team all-league honors and was an honorable mention small-school AllAmerican. Lucero closed the season with four field goals against Southern Colorado, a mark that still stands in the Cowboys record book.
Then came an odyssey of professional tryouts with the Denver Gold and Phoenix Outlaws of the upstart and short-lived USFL, then with the Washington Redskins and Kansas City Chiefs.
“I went head to head with Mark Moseley with the Redskins and Nick Lowery of the Chiefs, and I beat them both,” Lucero said. “But it was a different age than it is today; back then, they had guaranteed contracts and didn’t want to cut them.”
In 1986, after knee surgery and rehab, Lucero had one last shot, this time with the Dallas Cowboys and legendary coach Tom Landry.
“I ended up going to Dallas and I got a tryout with the Cowboys,” he said. “Rafael Septien was there. At least they were honest with me. Coach Landry was there and he said, ‘We’ll bring you in, but the likelihood of you staying is not good.’ But I was a Dallas Cowboy fan, so it was something.”
That was Lucero’s final try at the NFL, but he returned to Highlands as a special teams coach for three years, becoming friends with Edwards.
Lucero later moved to Denver, running his own company for a decade before selling it and returning to Las Vegas as director of The Holy Warrior Football Camp in Montezuma before heading back out to Texas, living in both Austin and El Paso, where he is now a business consultant.
There’s been talk of reviving the camp, Lucero said, something he would not be adverse to doing.
“I think it’s important for kids to have dreams and goals, and to know they can come from a small town and still go on to have success,” he said. “That’s what kept me going because people would tell me, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ And that’s always something that drove me to succeed.”