BRATTLEBORO — If any name in Brattleboro is synonymous with football, it's Andy Natowich.
While he was also a successful varsity baseball coach for nearly 25 years, with championships in 1951, 1956, and 1961, and teams that reached the finals in 1957, 1958, and 1960, it was football that was Natowich's passion.
In his 20-year career as football coach, from 1945 to 1965, Natowich led the Colonels to state championships in 1950, 1957, and 1965 and finished with a 113-53 record.
He supervised the renovation of the football field that would be named after him in 1982.
But Natowich was a football legend even before he arrived in Brattleboro in 1945.
Natowich, who died last Thursday at 95, was one of the greatest high school football players in Connecticut history. He was a standout baseball and basketball player too, both for Ansonia High in Connecticut and at Holy Cross as a college athlete.
In the mid-1930s, when Natowich started playing football in Ansonia, offenses pretty much consisted of “three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust” runs up the middle. But Natowich's run, throw, and kick the ball was elusive in the open field, and created all sorts of nightmares for defenses.
The numbers that “Bubby” (his mother gave him that nickname) Natowich compiled as a 5-foot-10, 165-pound schoolboy quarterback and defensive back were astounding.
As a junior at Ansonia High, he ran for 451 yards against Naugatuck in a 79-0 win on Thanksgiving Day in 1936, a state record that stood for 66 years. He ran for seven touchdowns in that game, another record that stood for 63 years.
In 1937, he ran for six touchdowns and threw three touchdown passes as Ansonia ripped Sheldon, 80-0. The nine TDs and 58 total points in that game was yet another state record that stood until 2010. He played every minute of every game as a senior.
Natowich was Connecticut's leading scorer with 105 points in 1936 and 128 in 1937 as Ansonia went 15-1-1 over those two seasons. He was captain of the 1937 All-State team.
He wasn't as prolific a scorer at Holy Cross, but Natowich was an important contributor to the Crusaders when they were a football power.
Natowich played three seasons at halfback at Holy Cross. Perhaps his most memorable game at Holy Cross was the final one he played in, on Nov. 28, 1942. He scored on a 7-yard touchdown run as the Crusaders upset No. 1 Boston College, 55-12, at Fenway Park.
The loss denied previously undefeated BC a chance to go to the Sugar Bowl, but it also saved the lives of those BC players. They had scheduled a victory party that night at the Coconut Grove nightclub in Boston, which they canceled. Later that evening, a fire swept through the nightclub that killed 492 people and injured thousands more.
After graduating from Holy Cross in 1943, he served briefly as a corporal in the Army during World War II but was discharged after he was injured while on active duty.
He married Alice Regan, a former Shelton High cheerleader, on Oct. 12, 1943. They celebrated their 71st anniversary last month.
Natowich ended up playing professional football for a season for the Washington Redskins in 1944 as the backup quarterback to Hall-of-Famer Sammy Baugh.
But pro football in the mid-1940s wasn't as big a deal as it is now, and Natowich wanted to teach and coach high school sports more than he wanted to be in the NFL.
Despite being asked to return to the Redskins for the 1945 season, Natowich turned down the offer and instead went to Brattleboro to teach physical education and social studies and coach football and baseball. At the time of his death, Natowich was the seventh-oldest-living former NFL player.
However, he still kept his hand in playing the game, as a quarterback for the semipro Holyoke (Mass.) Purple Knights in the late 1940s with several of his former teammates from Holy Cross.
After his coaching career ended in Brattleboro, his legacy earned him a spot in the halls of fame of both Holy Cross and the Vermont Principals Association. But his greatest legacy was the hundreds of young men who played for him on the gridiron and the diamond.
Natowich was known as a tough and stern taskmaster of a coach, but the affection many of his former players felt for him was genuine.
One of those former players, longtime football coach Bill Holiday, a 1968 BUHS graduate, will be joined by Dennis Robinson (BUHS, '66) in leading a radio tribute for Natowich on Saturday, Nov. 8, from 9 to 10 a.m. on WTSA-FM 96.7.