The last time Lance LaVetter represented Rincon/University High School athletics was almost 40 years ago when he concluded his baseball career under Gary Grabosch as an all-city second baseman.
He is back home now as the Rangers’ athletic director, part of his long and prosperous journey with many stops along the way as a coach, director of basketball operations and administrator.
The Class of 1986 standout also flourished at Rincon/University as a point guard with a remarkable basketball IQ, the product of not only a coach’s son but a son of one of the best coaches in the state’s history — the late Roland LaVetter.
Lance’s uncle, Chuck LaVetter, was also the men’s basketball coach at Eastern Arizona College for 35 years, 32 as a head coach, before retiring in 2002.
Roland LaVetter moved from Pueblo to Rincon/University in 1980 and coached there for a decade, including when Lance was a standout there from 1982-83 to 1985-86. The elder LaVetter ended his coaching career leading the Pueblo girls basketball program in the early 1990’s.
Lance’s dad, who passed away at age 82 in 2022, guided Lafayette Lever and the Pueblo Warriors to back-to-back state titles in 1977 and 1978, going 53-5 in those years, 28-0 in 1978. The unbeated team that included Lever, Jeff Moore, Tony Mosley and Pat Adams — part of the best senior class in boys hoops history in Tucson — will be inducted into the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame this fall.
“That’s a special group,” Lance said. “You would think, over time, something like that would be matched or beaten. But I don’t know … and I’ve been gone for a minute to chase to my college basketball dreams … I don’t know if anyone’s gone undefeated like that.”
In the latest All Sports Tucson Talk podcast, Lance talks about those college basketball dreams that took him from playing at Pima College and NAU to coaching at New Mexico State, Portland, St. Louis, Washington, Seattle and San Diego before becoming the athletic director at Wenatchee Valley (Wash.) Community College in 2021.
After his father passed away, leaving his mom Beverly widowed after more than 60 years of marriage, Lance and his wife Michelle decided to return to Tucson to provide Beverly support.
It so happened that the Rincon/University athletic director position opened after Kellin Lovegren retired after more than 30 years as a teacher, coach and administrator.
“I came back to Tucson, and interviewed, and now here we are today,” Lance said. “I look forward to serving our kids and our coaches over there. I’m excited about that.”
One of those coaches is legendary boys basketball coach Rich Utter, who earned his 500th career victory in January in his 35th season as the Rangers’ head coach.
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Utter served as an assistant under Roland LaVetter for eight seasons before he was hired as the head coach in 1989-90 when the elder LaVetter became the school’s athletic director. Now, Utter is coaching at the school with Lance LaVetter as the athletic director.
“When I was offered the job, the first person that I called was Coach Utter,” Lance said. “He’d already known, so he said, ‘Hi, boss.’ I just said that sounds so wrong on so many levels. I played for coach when he was on my dad’s coaching staff … now look at (Utter’s) career. I mean, he’s got to be a Hall of Famer. He has won 500 games. He is a legend. I am so proud for him. That’s family to me.”
Lance also talks in the podcast about how former longtime Arizona men’s basketball assistant Jim Rosborough helped him get his coaching start at New Mexico State as a restricted-earnings coach in 1995.
He comments about the Arizona-Washington basketball rivalry when Lorenzo Romar was the Huskies’ coach and he was the director of basketball operations for 12 seasons. He followed Romar to Washington after serving on Romar’s staff at St. Louis from 1999 to 2002.
“The friends that I had here, when we were really good and Arizona was really good, people would trip because they’re fans and they’re cheering hard for their team and they should,” Lance said. “But our staffs had such a mutual respect. It was such a healthy rivalry. It was special, especially for a kid from Tucson that grew up right here and had watched Lute (Olson) develop the program and the tradition that it is. It was a lot of fun. I loved that rivalry.”
Romar, who later served on Sean Miller’s staff at Arizona, is a close family friend of the LaVetters.
Lance is reuniting in Tucson with many of his family friends, and he is doing that representing the school where he graduated almost four decades ago.
“To be able to go back to your alma mater, because you’re passionate about that, and be right back in the neighborhood is special,” he said.
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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