Bullock built high school powerhouse
Rocky Mountain coach influenced by quadriplegic brother
EDITOR’S NOTE: First in a five-part series profiling Colorado baseball icons.
The seeds of Scott Bullock’s modern baseball powerhouse at Rocky Mountain High School are north of the Colorado border, at an American Legion field in tiny Torrington, Wyo. (pop. 6,691).
There, in the coach’s hometown, stands Dean Bullock Field, a diamond named for Scott’s older brother. When Scott was 6, 14-year-old Dean became a quadriplegic as a result of a diving accident, but that didn’t stop him from being a major force in the life of the Lobos’ coach.
“He is the toughest human being I’ve ever been around — he spent 34 years in a wheelchair paralyzed from the neck down, and he complained very little,” Bullock said. “He had just enough movement in his shoulder, wrist and elbow to operate a joystick and drive an electric wheelchair. (The accident) never affected his love for sports, and he coached me in Little League baseball and Base Ruth baseball, and did playby-play on the radio.”
Decades later, Bullock, 49, is still molded by the grit and optimism displayed by Dean, who passed away in 2011. Dean’s influence on his younger brother’s outlook is bookended by the influence that raising a special-needs child has had on the coach: Tagg, now a 15year-old freshman at Rocky Mountain, has a dual diagnosis with Down syndrome and autism.
Between those two primary forces, Bullock has learned patience, perseverance and a knack for getting the most out of his players.
“One of our mottos at Rocky Mountain is ‘every day’s a holiday,’ and Tagg is definitely the epitome of that. He always brings me perspective,” Bullock said. “And with my brother, he was a student of the game, but he was also unbelievable at developing relationships with the kids. That’s the biggest thing I took from him for my program.”
In 16 seasons at Rocky Mountain, Bullock is 298-92 with six Class 5A titles and
“He’s demanding, there’s no doubt about that. But the way he looks at the game, and the way he instills belief in his players — it’s a year-long process for him, he pours his heart into it, and every kid in the program sees that.” Former Rocky Mountain AD Wayne Moddelmog on coach Scott Bullock
two more championship game appearances.
Individual success has underscored the team’s dominance: Rocky Mountain has produced 29 Division I college players, 10 professional players and two majorleaguers under Bullock.
“In terms of getting elite talent here, I’ve always said the program recruits itself,” Bullock said. “We definitely had a lot of interest after those first two or three years within the Fort Collins community, and it became a program that people were excited about.”
Former Rocky Mountain athletic director Wayne Moddelmog, who originally hired Bullock as an assistant in 2003, said the coach’s success is built upon the attribute of Dean’s coaching that the younger brother most wished to emulate.
“He’s demanding, there’s no doubt about that,” Moddelmog said. “But the way he looks at the game, and the way he instills belief in his players — it’s a yearlong process for him, he pours his heart into it, and every kid in the program sees that.”
Before becoming Colorado’s most successful big-school prep baseball coach since the turn of the century, Bullock played at Pratt (Kan.) Community College, the University of Wyoming and Peru (Neb.) State College.
That final stop, an NAIA school in southeast Nebraska, is where Bullock got his coaching start before moving on to Kingman, Ariz.
In six years at Kingman High School, Bullock made his mark as a head baseball coach and an assistant football coach.
“I remember when Rocky Mountain called me (for a reference) and asked me what I had here in Scott,” said Ray Smith, the former Kingman head football coach who hired Bullock there. “I said, ‘I’ve got a special coach who is going to do big things.’ Him leaving was a big loss for our staff and our school, because I knew six months into working with him that he was going to be a great coach.”
Smith emphasized that Bullock isn’t afraid to give players “a pat on the back when necessary, and a boot in the (rear end)” when that was also applicable.
And as Andy Burns explained, that standard applied to every player in the program, from the junior varsity bench-warmers to the future Division I stars.
“There was a couple of times where he pulled me to the side because he thought I wasn’t playing the game right, or he expected more out of me,” said Burns, who spent this spring as a nonroster invitee in the Toronto Blue Jays’ camp. “When that focus wasn’t there, he wasn’t afraid to let me know. If anything, he was tougher on the guys like (current Seattle Mariners pitcher) Marco Gonzales and me, because he knew other players would look and respond to them as much as they did the head coach.”
Bullock, who teaches health and physical education at Rocky Mountain, said retirement from the bench isn’t anywhere in sight.
In the meantime — and as this spring’s season will probably be canceled entirely due to the coronavirus pandemic — he’s got plenty of memories to keep him content.
“Looking back, 2007 was really special because that was Rocky Mountain’s first boys team title in school history,” Bullock recalled. “In ’08, ’09 and 2010, we were just so talented, so we were really the heavy favorite all three of those years. And I think ’14 and ’17 were special too, because all of the Marco Gonzaleses and those past studs were long gone. We really had to build to get to both of those championships, because we lost in the title game the year before eachone.”