All fall, while following the example of their resolute coach, the Columbine Rebels knew exactly who they were.

Andy Lowry, the 2023 Denver Post All-Colorado Coach of the Year, led Columbine to an undefeated season while winning his sixth state championship in 30 years at the Rebels’ helm. He did so by upsetting four-time defending champ Cherry Creek in the title game, with a roster featuring zero FBS scholarship offers that embraced a “junkyard dawg” mentality.

“So many teams, just naturally, will walk onto the field against Cherry Creek and a lot of them are beat right away just by the Creek Mystique — their size, their college offers, all of that,” Lowry said. “We sold our kids on the toughness piece and the junkyard dawg mentality. Our guys ate that up. They came out, played physical, won the battle of the trenches.”

Along the way, as the Rebels’ offense ran its full-house formation to near-perfection and the defense muscled the opposition, few knew the full extent of the emotional turmoil that the steely Lowry was going through.

In the spring, Lowry grieved the death of his niece, Katee Pearce, who died at 36 after she was hit by a vehicle while walking out of the gym. Lowry said her tragic loss “rocked” his family.

Add in the ongoing battle with bone cancer that Lowry’s wife, Janet, is going through, and the coach admits he was experiencing “a lot of fear” that he did his best to quell at practice and while pacing the sidelines on Friday nights.

Janet, who was originally diagnosed with breast cancer over six years ago and beat that before cancer spread to her bones, spent a week in the hospital in June and then another five days there in September. At one point, she went into sepsis and lost 30 pounds.

Lowry leaned on his tight-knit coaching staff for support, and made lots of trips to pray at the chapel at St. Anthony’s Hospital near his house in Lakewood.

“It was really scary this summer, and at the start of the season,” Lowry said. “I had a lot of anxiety. I’m somebody who wants to fix things, and when you don’t have that control, it’s hard.”

Through it all, Lowry found strength in his faith and his football team. A man who lived through the 1999 shooting at the school, and led the Rebels to their first state title six months after that, gained even more perspective on life.

“Everything (my family went through this year) makes you more aware of that the fact that a lot of our kids are hurting, and their families are too — illness, divorce, sickness with their loved ones, whatever life brings,” Lowry said. “It makes you more aware that you’re not the only one in the world that’s hurting. … There’s some healthy lessons out of it all. Cancer especially strikes a lot of people and a lot of students have families who are struggling through it.”

The casual observer wouldn’t have known about Lowry’s adversity as the Rebels ran the table to 14-0.

Columbine’s only true scare on the schedule came Sept. 15 against Arapahoe, when the Warriors had the Rebels on the ropes before Julian Ruiz’s 38-yard field goal with two seconds left lifted Columbine to a 31-29 comeback victory.

It marked career win No. 300 for Lowry, and the Rebels did it in uncharacteristic fashion as QB Reeve Holliday aired it out on 17-of-20 passing for 240 yards and three touchdowns.

“That was a game-changing game,” Columbine athletic director and longtime football assistant Derek Holliday said. “To drive the field (in the final minute) and win, and to do it like that — we knew what it meant for the rest of the season. We knew every other coach had to look at that game and say, ‘Shoot, they can throw the stupid ball.’ And we showed that again in the state game, too, on third-and-18, when Reeve was able to pass for a key first down.”

Holliday was Lowry’s first QB at Columbine in his first two seasons there in 1994 and ’95, when the Rebels passed much more than they do now with their run-oriented, double tight-end offense.

“It might all look the same (to the untrained eye), but the blocking scheme, the direction of the running backs, the exact steps of everyone and the timing that goes into this offense is unexplainable to anybody who doesn’t run it,” Holliday said. “Andy’s spent infinite hours over 30 years straight to make sure this thing is a well-oiled machine. It showed again this year.”

One of Lowry’s secrets to his full-house formation is an annual summer trip to Alaska, which he’s been doing for nearly a decade to pick up tips to refine an offense that still runs some of the same plays he called in 1994.

There at Soldotna High School, Lowry works with Soldotna head coach Galen Brantley Jr., who’s won 13 Alaska state titles, including one this year. Soldotna runs the same offense as Columbine, and just like on his occasional visits to Colorado Springs to meet with the Air Force coaching staff, Lowry uses the trip up north to pick up wrinkles for his own offense.

It’s that sort of investment that’s made Columbine perennially competitive, and Lowry, 59, doesn’t see himself hanging up the whistle anytime soon. The Rebels will graduate 23 seniors, but Lowry is ready to rebuild for 2024.

“I’ve learned over the years, coaching is much more of a vocation for me than a job,” Lowry said. “I’m not really a hang-around-the-house kind of guy. I don’t know if I’m built for retirement. … God’s kept me in this position, and kept me going. I feel very blessed. As long as I have my family and their support, and things are going well, I’m going to keep going.”

Coach of the Year Finalists

Mike D. Gabriel, Holy Family

The Tigers’ boss since 2008 led his program to the Class 3A championship, and like Lowry, his family also dealt with cancer amid his wife Crystal’s fight against leukemia.

Jared Yannacito, Ralston Valley

The Mustangs were on the doorstep of the Class 5A title game once again before falling in a nail-biter to Cherry Creek in the semifinals. Yannacito’s made RV a big-school heavyweight.

Jeff Giger, Erie

Behind the play of All-Colorado QB Blake Barnett, Giger guided the Tigers to their first state title since 1997 with a 20-6 throttling of Palmer Ridge in the Class 4A championship.

Jesse German, Green Mountain

German’s led the Rams’ revival in Lakewood, as Green Mountain’s been steadily ascending in Class 3A and again made the semifinals this year before falling to Lutheran.