“I always tell people around here that one of the greatest assets Tad had was he allowed me to coach him. “Tad didn’t look at himself as being special,” said Hicks, whose team won the 1981 Class 3A state title in Boulder. To his credit, Boyle never let all the attention get to his head. At home, Boyle had to place a restriction on answering phone calls because they got in the way of his homework. Hicks, now retired and still residing in Greeley, said he had a special mailbox put in his office to hold all the recruiting material Boyle received. The 6-foot-4 guard was averaging almost 29 points per game in the days before 3-pointers. The top recruiters in college ball began making the trek to Greeley during Boyle’s junior season.
Then he’d say, ‘Let’s do it again.’ “īoyle’s coach at Greeley Central, Larry Hicks, recalled looking up from his desk one day and seeing Kentucky coach Joe B. After Tad lost, he’d grab and shake me to get out all his frustrations. “When we were a little older, we’d play one-on-one in the driveway. “Tad still kids me that I never let him win,” Hugh said. The small plastic ball did not bounce well, so dribbling became optional. Their basketball battles began at a young age when a cottage cheese container taped to the bedroom door would serve as the basket. Their sibling rivalry, both believe, accelerated Tad’s basketball development. Hugh Boyle, five years Tad’s senior, was a talented player himself at Greeley Central and later at the South Dakota School of Mines. He would draw the defenders toward him and then pass the ball to somebody for an open shot. “I’ll tell you what, Tad had no problem holding his own,” said David Freemyer, who would later become a prep teammate of Boyle’s. The competition often included UNC players, as well as the area’s high school stars. “That’s great in the business world, and it’s perfect for coaching.”įolks in Greeley learned of Boyle’s prowess as a basketball player long before he earned Converse All-America honors at Greeley Central in 1981.īoyle was 12 when his older brother, Hugh, would take him to the Northern Colorado campus for pick-up games.
“When he told me he was going to follow his passion, I wasn’t surprised. “Tad was doing great with us,” Carlson said. It was a leap of faith.”īoyle called his branch manager, Butch Carlson, who still holds that position at what is now called RBS Wealth Management, located just off Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t married at the time and had put some money away. And the bad news is, it’s a restricted-earnings position that the NCAA had in those days, and it paid $16,000 a year,” Boyle recalled. “Mark said the good news is, there is an opening on their staff. Later that year, Boyle received a phone call from his former University of Kansas teammate, Mark Turgeon, the current Texas A&M coach, then an assistant at Oregon.
I decided I wanted to be a college basketball coach.”Īt that point, Boyle was earning six figures as a stockbroker and considered his “other” job, as head coach at Longmont High, to be little more than a hobby. I decided then I’d better pursue my passion.
“With an experience like that, you start to realize it could be over in an instant. If my car had been a few feet farther into that intersection, I wouldn’t be around today. “But really, that accident got me thinking. “I tell people to remember that I once had a head injury, and if I forget to call a timeout I have an excuse,” Boyle said with a chuckle. He was knocked unconscious, but the air bag likely saved his life. The collision crushed the front of Boyle’s car. Then in his eighth year as a Boulder-based stockbroker, Boyle was heading to work one morning when somebody ran a red light and plowed into his vehicle at the intersection of McCaslin Boulevard and South Boulder Road in Louisville. “Except the part about waking up in a hospital bed,” he said. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close MenuīOULDER - Tad Boyle jokes now that he survived a horrific car accident 16 years ago because “I’m so hard-headed.” But, frankly, the new Colorado men’s basketball coach remembers little about the collision.
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