Mary SheaA three-sport athlete at Thornton High School, Mary Shea played volleyball, basketball and tennis for the Trojans. And, she may be one of the state’s most gifted athletes from Colorado’s early female participants’ history.
Shea was such a gifted athlete that she started in all three sports and earned all-conference honors from the beginning.
In fact, her high school basketball coach, Dan Koenig, likens her abilities to that of Larry Bird. She was a gifted athlete who worked hard to get all that she could from her abilities and she made sure that the balance of the team existed and in doing so, she made other players better. Shea earned the Ruby Miller Sports Award as a senior.
So significant were the teams that Shea led, Koenig writes, “Mary’s teams at THS probably had more to do with the rise and success of the school than they’ll ever know.”
As a sophomore, Shea earned #2 tennis singles position despite having never played competitive tennis before and made the state tournament. She was the #1 player the next two years but bowed out in regionals each time.
In volleyball, she led her team to the final 8 in state as a junior and the final 4 as a senior.
She was all-state as a senior. In basketball, she was all conference and all-state, leading Thornton to a final 4 appearance as junior and to the 1980 state title as a senior.
After high school, Shea was one of the top volleyball players in the High Country Athletic Conference/Western Athletic Conference for the University of Wyoming. The 1984, Wyoming Athlete of the Year, Shea became the first female elected to the Wyoming Hall of Fame.
She also coached the Thornton volleyball team in 1996 and 1997.
