Tough shoes to fill: One-man sports department covered 14 districts, hundreds of miles

A sportswriter even the coaches will miss

Anybody who loves sports should keep Lloyd Engen in their wishes for the next couple of weeks. Just about everybody in Colorado’s San Luis Valley already has him there. They wouldn’t mind some help.

The 68-year-old sports editor and only employee in that department at the Valley Courier newspaper in Alamosa (pop. 8,216) was in stable condition Thursday following surgery. Doctors at St. Anthony’s Hospital in Denver spent several hours trying to repair the shattered pelvis and three cracked vertebrae Engen sustained after being hit on the sideline during a game at Sangre de Cristo High last Saturday. He told friends earlier in the week there was a chance he might never walk again.

“Lloyd IS sports in the Valley, and right now, everybody is just praying for the best,” Sangre de Cristo High coach Buddy Anderson said during a telephone conversation. “It’s hard to find the words to tell you what he means to the community.”

Engen has been a fixture on the sidelines at hundreds of sporting events in the southern corner of Colorado for the past dozen years. He was there when Anderson played football at Sangre de Cristo more than a decade ago, and at road games when the Thunderbirds trekked to the other side of the state. Football, basketball, volleyball, golf, gymnastics — name a sport and Engen was there, writing about it and shooting his own pictures.

“His dedication was something else,” said Larry Zaragoza, cross-country coach at Alamosa High and a friend for 20 years. “It didn’t matter to him which team or where they were in the standings.

“On top of that, some schools play in three different classes in the state tournaments. … but whenever you looked over, it seems like Lloyd was there. He was like the Energizer Bunny,” Zaragoza added, “never slowing down.”

No one knows how many miles Engen logged on his old Pontiac before unloading the clunker in May, but his turf stretched across 14 high school districts and a handful of area colleges. For the time being, though, the shiny Chrysler PT Cruiser that Engen replaced it with is collecting dust in front of Eric Flores’ house.

Flores, a full-time student at Adams State College, has been Engen’s part-time photo stringer for the last four years. He’s been so busy trying to cover for his boss that finding time to check the odometer seemed like too much to ask.

“The day before he was injured, Lloyd covered four games. He made it a point to get to 10 or 15 every week. He worked 14 hours most days, 19 on some and all seven days plenty of weeks. Right now,” Flores said, exhaling, “I’m trying to figure out how I can do half of what Lloyd did.”

Ruth Heide, editor of the Valley Courier, knows the feeling. The newspaper asked coaches to contribute scores and highlights while Engen is hospitalized. But he also wrote a weekly column titled “Saturday’s Soap Box” and occasional tributes titled “All the Heroes I Need” that moved readers across the valley and beyond.

“He must not have slept much,” Heide said, “because he was here all night more than once. He saw his role as a way to make sure kids’ names got in the paper. But really, he never said ‘no’ to anyone. If you needed someone to put on a Santa outfit at Christmas time, well, he was the first one you thought of. …

“He’s kind of like the grandfather everybody wants to adopt. His family is in other places, but lots of people around here consider him part of theirs. He’s in everybody’s thoughts and prayers. I can’t tell you,” she added. “how much we hope to get him back.”

Meantime, people around Alamosa have been asked to hold onto their cards and letters. But they’ve already set up a fund in Engen’s name at the SLV Bank. Zaragoza’s team has plans to drop in on Engen on its way back from a road trip next week. Anderson’s football team took a photo, signed it and the coach plans to deliver it when the time is right.

But he already misses running into Engen at the local movie theater — his other passion — to talk about the local sports scene, and he can’t imagine the postseason All-Valley football banquet without him.

“I’m pretty sure the whole valley feels that way,” Anderson said.

Engen’s sister Karen was awaiting an update from a friend at the hospital. But she said she can’t picture him as being anything but embarrassed by the fuss.

“Knowing Lloyd,” she said, “he’s probably more worried about the kids who ran into him feeling bad about the whole thing.”

“That sounds about right,” Zaragoza concurred. “Lloyd loves his job. What made him good at it was how much that showed through.”

Something tells me that as soon as Engen gets around to thinking about his next column, coming up with a topic will be the easy part.

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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org