Bill Hanzlik.

AuthorBRONIKOWSKI, LYNN
PositionBrief Article

FORMER NUGGET, COACH RUNS NONPROFIT

Bill Hanzlik played in college basketball's Final Four, made the U.S. Olympic team (the boycotted 1980 Games), and enjoyed 11 NBA seasons as a player, several more as an assistant coach, and one as head coach of the Denver Nuggets. So he's had his share of athletic excitement.

But he says he gets just as much of a charge out of giving a kid a chance to play sports through the nonprofit Gold Crown Foundation as he did playing or coaching -- maybe even more.

"I'll never forget this one inner-city kid -- a seventh grader -- who came to one of my basketball camps, dressed in blue jeans and a ratty T-shirt. It took two bus transfers for him to get across town," Hanzlik said. "He came because he just wanted to play basketball. I gave him shorts, a T-shirt, and then a ride home. I'm a big believer in just treating someone with kindness and caring about them. Then maybe they can pass that caring on to another child."

Hanzlik and Denver businessman Ray Baker founded the nonprofit Gold Crown Foundation 15 years ago, and that seventh-grader is just one of the many young lives they've touched.

The first year, Gold Crown programs drew 150 girls to basketball camps. Today the program has grown to serve 20,000 kids annually, not only in the sport of basketball, but golf, volleyball and baseball -- the latter at the Coors Field-inspired Coca-Cola All Star Park in Lakewood.

Hanzlik's not stopping there, either. He expects to break ground this fall on a fieldhouse at All Star Park that would include six basketball courts and give his Gold Crown programs a...

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