Former BG coach/athlete Mike Lozeau, left, and former BG football/baseball standout Don Laliberte flank Nashua Lions Club president Erin Freda duirng their induction into the Holman Sports Legends Hall of Fame Wednesday night, along with former Nashua High football great Don Grandmaisson. (Courtesy photo by Martha Ackerman/Nashua Lions)

NASHUA – They are now officially legendary.

Former longtime Bishop Guertin High School baseball coach, assistant football coach and athlete Mike Lozeau, former Bishop Guertin football and baseball standout Don Laliberte and Nashua High football hero Don Grandmaison were officially inducted Wednesday night into the Nashua Lions Club Sports Legends of Holman Hall of Fame.

Their names will be on a plaque that is just inside the Holman main gate on the concourse. All three are Nashua natives.

Grandmaison was known as one of the fastest running backs in Nashua High history, teamming with the late and now fellow Holman HOF member Carl Tamulevich in the late 1950s, early’60s, known as “Grammy and Tammy.”

Lozeau was BG’s Athlete of the Year in 1970, and began coaching at his alma mater as a football assistant under coaching legend Dick Piwowarski in 1976. He coached football from 1976-1995, was the head track coach from 1977-83, and took over the varsity baseball program after Bill Dod left BG for Milford in 1989. He coached through the 2001 season, then took a leave for two seasons to watch his daughter play softball, and returned from 2003-2006. In 2006, his Cardinals topped defending Nashua South in the Division I (then Class L) tournament and went on to play in the state title game, falling to Manchester Memorial in a heartbreaker, 5-4.

Laliberte was a member of the first graduating class at Bishop Guertin (1967) and its first signature athlete, playing basketball, baseball and football, and played in the Cards’ first football win ever, coming against Cardinal Cushing Academy. He was BG’s baseball MVP in 1967 and went on to play football for four years at the University of New Hampshire as a defensive end/linebacker. He was All-Yankee Conference in 1970, an honor he found out about via a phone call from his mother and holds in the highest esteem, along with the email he got from the Lions Club about the Holman induction.

“It was a little bit of a surprise,” Laliberte said of his Holman honor. “I had an odd way of getting to UNH, different than a student athlete would today.”

Laliberte of course was considered a pioneer, and he and Bob Robichaud were one of the first athletes from BG to make the UNH freshmen team. “Coming from a school that didn’t have many wins and didn’t have much history,” Laliberte said, noting that UNH would recruit mainly out of state and even rarely looked at the Manchester schools and Nashua High School.

“You didn’t get a look,” Laliberte said, “unless you earned it. Both Bob and I knew what we had to do.”

Laliberte played defensive end, and the freshmen basically were scout team players.

“You’re wanting to impress, but you didn’t want to be a jerk about it,”Laliberte said, noting that obviously on defense weren’t allowed to hit the QB, just tag him. “I said to myself, ‘I’m going to tag the quarterback. I had the tight end blocking, two times in a row I got around him and tagged the quarterback.

“The yelling and screaming from the coaches, they were bound and determined it wasn’t going to happen a third time. So the ball was snapped, and I’m trying to make my way around the tight end again, and I also see an offensive tackle get in my way and I got flattened. … I paid the price at the end, but you know what, I got noticed.”

And was a member of UNH’s Yankee Conference title team his sophomore year.

Laliberte doesn’t remember his first game at Holman but his last football game was in 1966. It was a Thanksgiving game but before the Nashua rivalry, and BG played Bishop Brady that year.

He didn’t play organized football until Guertin started the program his sophomore year when BG moved from an orphanage on Main Street to Lund Road. “We had uniforms, straight green, that looked like pickles,” he said. “And leather helmets back then. My leather helmet I could actually fold it and put it back.”

He says the four coaches in the area that influenced him the most were obviously legendary BG football coach Dick Piwowarski, George Tebbetts, Bob Gingras and Joe Sullivan, some who did it on a volunteer basis.

Lozeau’s first memories of Holman were watching his cousins,Art and Dick Lozeau, play at Holman for Nashua High School when he was just six years old.

That’s why this is a special honor for him, because he has lived near Holman for so many years. It was like his own back yard.

“It means quite a bit, being from Nashua, and I remember as a little kid watching my cousins, they were my idols,” Lozeau said, as they all lived in the same apartment building. “They were my heroes, they were 10 years older than me. I remember that really fondly watching them play.

“It was quite an honor, I was tickled.”

Lozeau loved playing and coaching both sports, but football, being emotional, and one game a week, was special for him.

“I loved doing both, I really did,” he said.

Lozeau’s longevity was incredible. After a few years as a sub varsity coach he took over the Cardinal program in 1989. He coached from 1989-2006, but stepped away from the day to day handling of the team for two seasons so he could watch his daughter play softball and returned full time in 2003. The Cards reached the Class L title game in 2006 but lost a tough one to Manchester Memorial in the finals 5-4 in extra innings.

When he was an assistant under Guertin legend Dick Piwowarski, Lozeau treasured the few wins BG had at Holman over the one Nashua High School during their three decade-plus Thanksgiving Day rivalry.

“Back then, that meant more than winning a state championship,” he said, remembering a small plane flying overhead and confetti fell on the field, the pieces saying “Go BG, beat Nashua.”

Lozeau retired from teaching at BG in 2020, but coaching is in the family as his son Todd has been the softball coach at Pelham High School for the last 15 years. And Laliberte’s family, his son Joe played on the Cards first boys lacrosse state title team in 2005 and Laliberte’s wife, Patty, competed in the first ever Olympic Women’s Marathon Trials in 1984.

Grandmaison was simply fast, at 5 foot 7, 165 pounds. “He was the fastest guy I’ve ever seen on a football field, and it never looked like he was running fast, either,” the late Tamulevich told the Gardner News back in 2019 in a story remembering Gardner’s big Thanksgiving Day thriller vs. Nashua in 1960. “He seemed to just glide, just one of the best running backs I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Don was the best high school running back I’ve ever watched in my life,” another member of that 1960 team told the News. “I never saw a better back even when I played in college. He just had this very special God-given ability.”

Grandmaison has repeatedly asked for privacy and does not talk about his high school athletic career. He was unable to attend last night’s induction. Laliberte and Lozeau were honored by Lions Club president Erin Hendrickson Freda and Nashua Mayor James Donchess.