LONGMONT >> As the sun shined through clouds, during one of the first beautiful days of spring, Centaurus and Longmont baseball converged at LHS on Saturday, not only to play the sport they love but to celebrate those who came 50 years before them.

In front of the 1973 state championship team — which was headed by legendary head coach Joe Brooks and featured a legend in his own right, Jeff Kloster — the Trojans rode an early offensive wave and stopped a late surge from the Warriors to hang onto a 5-3 victory.

Longmont senior shortstop Ryan Bruckner made one final out at second base to send the Warriors packing once and for all, to stanch the offensive bleeding that Centaurus senior first baseman Zeke Hirsh began with a two-run home run over the right field wall in the top of the seventh.

“It was a good team win with everybody making plays,” Bruckner said. “We were just on them all game and look to do that every game. I hope it continues. We’ve been playing well together. Everybody wants to make that play for everybody else.”

Bruckner provided the first of the five runs for the Trojans with a sacrifice bunt in the second inning. Senior pitcher Jacob Moats, senior third baseman Angel Mejia, senior second baseman Deeter Kamden and senior left fielder Landy Mathias got in on the action by knocking in runs themselves, all of which came during the third through the fifth innings.

Moats remained lethal on the mound until the sixth inning, when his arm started to tire out and his command wavered a bit, but his defense had his back when it mattered most. Hirsh took advantage with that moonshot to ignite the comeback, but it never fully materialized. Will Pauletto added the final Centaurus run with a base hit.

The loss ended a three-game winning streak for the Warriors, who have made a massive leap from their 6-17 record in 2022. Just 11 games in, they’ve already surpassed the tally in the win column with a 7-4 record.

“We’ve had some good senior leadership,” Centaurus head coach Douglas Kinney said. “We’ve had some wins against quality programs. These guys have been together for three years and they’re finally maturing and learning how to play together.”

Hirsh chalked that improvement up to camaraderie and pure love for the game.

“It felt good to get the energy up in the dugout. We were kind of slow the whole game and it’s good to get the team going on a nice hit like that, get us going and give us a chance to win the game,” he said. “The more close games we play, the better we’ll be under pressure. It just gives us more experience and our team’s kind of young, so giving the young guys experience, too, when games are close, it will just help them so we don’t bend, don’t break and just stay strong the whole game.”

The Trojans, still flawless, improved to 10-0 with the victory as they teeter just on the edge of CHSAANow.com’s Class 4A rankings at No. 11. Head coach Tom Fobes is hoping that his boys can continue to ride the sizable wave they’ve built up through the first 10 contests and barrel through the tougher part of their schedule.

They’ve already more than proven their stock among the early competition with an incredible jump from the year before, when they finished the season with a 12-11 record. They’ll hit the road to Centaurus on Monday.

“Centaurus is good, and we’ve been saying this for like two or three weeks,” Fobes said. “We beat some teams that we were supposed to beat, and this is a good team. From here on out, it’s going to be a lot tougher than what we’ve seen so far, so we’ve been challenging them to stay focused and (not) take it for granted that we’re just going to come out here and 10-run everybody.”

Making history, past and present

While the current group of Trojans continues to make its undefeated push through the regular season, the boys hope they can achieve what the 1973 team did. That squad, which provided LHS with its one and only state championship, was honored before the game for its 50-year reunion.

It warmed Joe Brooks’ heart to see his players all reconvene one more time.

“It makes me emotionally choked. I see them, they’ve aged and I’ve aged, but memories come back,” Brooks said. “We played some close games. We won most of them. (Our ace) Rick Thoren was a treasure. We played 19 regular season games and he won 12. Usually, you’d win half of them. … He was a rare find.”

The Trojans of old played five consecutive days that year to win the eight-team Class 3A state tournament in Fort Morgan, and they had the chance to relive it in between each inning, as the announcer recounted how each inning of that state title game played out.

Current Longmont head basketball coach and physical education teacher of over 20 years, Jeff Kloster, pitched for that team and played first base during his sophomore season. He relished the opportunity to reconnect and celebrate with the brothers he made half a century earlier.

The 1973 team featured Kloster, Thoren, Duane Bennett, Dave Fobes, Larry Gockley, Brad Graham, Bill Grant, Tim Green, Lane Hardy, Kirk Harris, Kris Harris, Mike Nachtrieb, Rich Singleton, Jeff Finn, John Lepisto, Mark Aberle, Eddie Schumacher and Marty Staab.

Jason Fobes stepped in to be honored for his father and Jim Gockley presented himself for his brother. Kloster gave his old teammates a tour of the athletic wing of the school after the game as they all walked down memory lane together.

“This is a great group of guys that I was honored to slide up for,” he said. “I was a sophomore that year and was added onto the roster. You start looking at some of these icons of Longmont High School history, led by a legendary coach, Joe Brooks, and it doesn’t get any better. When you get a chance to reconnect, it brings back a lot of great memories. That’s what it means to me.”