A Sit Down with Head Coach, Scott Bullock, about Baseball and Family at Rocky Mountain High School.
Whether it is the main source of support that he comes home to or the team that he meets on the mound after school, Scott Bullock, head baseball coach of Rocky Mountain High School, talks through the different correlations between baseball and the idea of family on and off the field.
Alli: Jumping right in, what sparked your love for baseball in general?
Coach Bullock: My older brother, Dean, just loved sports. He was fourteen, I was six, and he broke his neck diving into a swimming hole. He was quadriplegic and had to be in a wheel chair. Unfortunately, he passed in 2011. He was just an awesome mentor for me. After he broke his neck, he got right into coaching because he loved sports so much. He coached all my teams, my little league team, my flag football team, everything as a little kid growing into high school. And I think just his passion for it rubbed off on me and I really had that passion for all sports as a kid, not just baseball. I just loved being on a team. I loved competing. I loved being coached by my brother. Um, baseball was the sport that I got a chance to play in college. That’s kinda how I went in the direction of playing baseball in college and coaching baseball, teaching P.E., all of those things just kinda fell into place. It was really more just about sports in general, and being active and competitive, and being part of a team that I love mostly.
Alli: I love that. You kind of touched on this a little bit but what made you want to start coaching baseball?
Coach Bullock: Yeah, you know, Alli, I honestly can’t remember a time where I was like ‘okay, I wanna become a P.E. teacher and a baseball coach’. I think that it was just such a natural progression from where I was because it’s just who I was. I was always the team captain, the try-hard, and the kid that cared the most. My dad was an electrical contractor, so he made me work from the time I was ten until I was in high school as an electrician and I knew that I did not want to do that. That was way too hard. I was not nearly smart enough to pull that off.
Alli: In your opinion, what makes an all around great baseball player by any standard?
Coach Bullock: Obviously, talent is important, but I think there is a lot of talented kids out there. The thing that separates a great baseball player from a good baseball player is their toughness. Not toughness like in football like ‘Raww, I’m gonna hit you and knock you down’ kind of toughness. Baseball is such an emotional grind because, as you’ve heard before, if you get three hits out of ten, you are doing good so there is seven times that you fail. There is just so much failure in the sport. Those people that can handle that emotionally I think makes them a difference maker. I always tell players that baseball is chess, not checkers. The people that are really willing to dig in and learn all of the ins and outs that help you be successful are also a difference maker. You really have to be a sponge or you really have to have a passion for it. My goal as a coach for our team is that I want us to be the toughest team and I want to be the smartest team on the field. If we have that on the field we have a chance that day, regardless of how much talent that team has and how much talent we have. If we are the smartest and the toughest, we have a shot.
Alli: For sure. Going off of that and talking about being the toughest and sort of how it is a very emotional sport, do you view baseball more as a way of life rather than just a game?
Coach Bullock: Oh my gosh, yes. I talk to our kids all the time about baseball being just a perfect example of life. Sometimes it’s boring. Sometimes it’s super exciting. Sometimes it’s super hard. My son, Tag, is in high school now. He has been having a heck of a time. He doesn't want to go to class. He just wants to hang out here in my office all day. So I just fought Tag all the way to class to the point where I am almost in tears. Its just such a tough time, and that is baseball too. I learn so much from what I learned in baseball and how to raise a kid with special needs because baseball is just such a good example of life.
Alli: Going back to the the player itself and how you view them, during try-outs, what would you say are the top three traits you look for in a player?
Coach Bullock: Everybody says it, but attitude and effort are really important; just what kind of attitude that kid has and how hard they work at it. Honestly, the third one is probably talent and their skill set, but I try to go so much deeper than that with our kids. We say ‘it’s about the Jimmy’s and Joe’s not the x’s and o’s. We try to focus on the person first and the player second, and it doesn’t always mean that it’s the best kid in the game.
Alli: How has the prominence of baseball in your life bled into your personal/family life?
Coach Bullock: I think I’ve learned so much from baseball on just how life is, like we talked about. You can say this about all sports, but that baseball field is a great place to raise a family. Not a lot of careers have that. Some families go golfing, or they go to football games, but my family goes to the ballpark, and I think that’s healthy. The ball field is a good place to raise a family.
Alli: Yes, I completely agree. I loved spending my childhood at the ballpark, and it definitely instilled my love for baseball.
Coach Bullock: And on the other side, I think that’s so important for us to have that family culture in our program. That’s been our word ever since ’07, and that has not changed. It was actually that ’07 crew that half way through the season, I think it was after we got creamed by Fort Collins High School that year. They just beat the snot out of us, and the Seniors got together and said that ‘when we bring our hands together and break we are going to say: Family’. We still do it to this day. We even put it on t-shirts. The ’07 championship ring says ‘family’ on it too. We’ve just kind of taken that and ran with it. We work hard on this with the parents; it’s so much more than just the coaches and the kids. It’s about the whole community. It’s really cool to watch it develop. You will see the senior parents model for the freshmen parents as far as the whole community goes. We get so many compliments about the environment and how the parents are such a class act. These are the state championship moments for me beyond the actual games.
Alli: Building off this idea of family, its evident that Rocky Mountain Baseball has left a legacy on not just Fort Collins baseball but has even bled into the big leagues with Andy Burns and Marco Gonzales. Did you have any idea that you would be building this sort of legacy when you first started here?
Coach Bullock: It was definitely my dream. That’s what I wanted to do for a living. I wanted to build a high school program that had that type of impact on people and had that type of success. Hopefully, someday, you’ll get to see some of them end up as big leaguers. That’s what we were all shooting for as a coaching staff back then. Our coaching staff now is Ian Wells (2007 grad from RMHS), Jake Stewart (2007 grad from RMHS), and Cole Anderson (2015 grad from RMHS). They are all guys that have been here and done that.
Alli: About how long have you been working here at Rocky Mountain High?
Coach Bullock: This is my twentieth year at Rocky. It will be my nineteenth year as a head coach. My first year, I was a varsity assistant coach. This will be my twenty-sixth year as a teacher and a coach.
Alli: You’ve seen the Lobos through six 5A state championships. How does that make you feel?
Coach Bullock: I love it, but, honestly, there is a couple other stats that I am every bit as proud of. We’ve played in eight total state championships. We have made it to the final eight sixteen of my nineteen years as a head coach. I’m very proud of that longevity. You have a lot of talent when you can go win a state championship. I think its the stability of being in the mix year in and year out is probably what I am most proud of, but yeah, six state championships is pretty cool. The last one we won was in 2017, and I’m definitely ready for another one.
Alli: The clock is ticking!
Coach Bullock: There has been enough years since we won those four in a row that we haven’t won it for me to understand how hard it is to win and just how special those kids were. The four senior classes in those years were really the difference makers in Rocky Mountain baseball. Those guys and those families did so much to cement the culture here.
Alli: Talking about the culture within those four years, lets rewind back to 2007 when you won that first state championship. Walk me through what you remember from that day.
Coach Bullock: I feel like I remember everything. We had such a good team that summer and I knew Wheat Ridge High was really good too. They were one of the few teams that beat us that summer. They were really scrappy and tough. I remember our crew designing the champ rings before everything was said and done. They were pretty confident going into it because of how good we had been playing, but knowing baseball that can switch at the flick of a dime. You can go from all the momentum in the world to not being able to find it. That was my worry that day. I remember that I was just such a beautiful day: warm, sunny, eighty degrees, everyone wearing tank tops. I remember my brother and my dad being there in the first base dugout at All City Stadium. I could almost go back and tell you inning for inning what happened that game. I think that day may be more vivid than the 2017 championship that we won because ’07 was the first one. Whether they are great memories or bad memories they are just stuck in your mind. That’s the best way to explain it.
Alli: Moving forward, in 2015, you had your first ever alumni baseball game. What sprung that idea?
Coach Bullock: Jake Stewart and Ian Wells did. They were coaching with me that summer and we were driving around going from place to place and they were like ‘we gotta have an alumni game’ and I was like ‘I’m so busy. If you guys want to have it, I’ll fully support it.’ However, I ended up organizing most of it, as you do as the head coach, but it was really cool. Unfortunately, we are not going to do it this fall due to COVID-19. Also, believe it or not, those guys from ’07 who wanted to get out there and play again are getting older, but we’ll get back to it eventually, just not this year.
Alli: I’m not sure if you are allowed to answer this question, but just a guesstimate, how much longer do you plan on being a part of this organization?
Coach Bullock: That’s a great question. ‘I don’t know’ is the actual answer to that. Jesse, my youngest, he’s almost ten years old and he plays baseball competively. It’s becoming harder for me to do it the way that I want to do it because I also want to be there for him. It’s probably more difficult to answer that question now than ever before. However, I also tell my son ‘if you want me to coach you and you want to go to Rocky we gotta make this work’. The other side of that is that Ian Wells teaches here, and I always tell him before he goes elsewhere he needs to check with me to see if he can have this one. I don’t want to lose those good, young assistants, and it’s the same way with Jake Stewart and Cole Anderson. Back on point, I’m kinda set to retire in eight years when my young one graduates from high school. A lot of coaches will sometimes retire from teaching but continue coaching. I don’t know if that’s me to be honest, but like I said, I really don’t know. I will say this, coaching takes a lot of time. My wife has made unbelievable sacrifices for me to coach. Especially, with the two of us raising kids, one with special needs. I’ll get choked up talking about this, but it is really a team decision between me and her. I always tell her that if it ever gets to the point where she wants me to hang it up, I’ll do it just like that because family comes first.
Alli: That being said with your little one playing now and will hopefully play in high school, do you think baseball will always be a constant in your life?
Coach Bullock: Oh yes, for sure. I could even see myself after I retire from here as maybe a part of a community where I could be an assistant college coach. I joke all the time, you know how much I love to take care of the field and getting our kids to take care of the field. I joke and say that I’m gonna go push a rake over at Coors Field, so yes, one hundred percent, baseball will always be a part of my life.
Alli: That’s awesome. Is there anything that we didn’t touch on yet that you want to address about your time here at this organization?
Coach Bullock: I touched on it a little bit but I think that the reason why we are successful is because we have really been able to build on that culture of feeling like you are being a part of a family, and our kids care because they understand how important this program is, not just to them but all of the players that come through here and build it to this point. I also think we do a good job of getting them to understand that it really is a family. They aren’t all angels, but they need to know that if they are not here to be the best versions of themselves and do their part, they are probably not going to survive here; we really want them to try to do all the good things and make this baseball program important to them and be a part of this family.
