The WHSAA approves 2010 title games in Laramie and struggles with Cheyenne South’s classification.
What you need to know: South will be 3A in football in 2011 and 4A in 2012; other sports will depend on South’s enrollment figures. As for Laramie, the board approved going back to Laramie by a 13-4 vote, but they’ve got some kinks in the system yet to figure out how to keep from making this decision on an annual basis….
–patrick
School: Natrona
Nickname: Mustangs
Colors: black and orange
Stadium: Cheney Alumni Field
State championships: 1975, 1985, 1996, 1999 and 2003
Times worth remembering: Few teams won as consistently for as long as the Mustangs did in the 1970s. For the 11 seasons from 1970-80, NC finished a combined 78-20-1, with the worst record in that span 6-3 marks in 1973 and 1977. Oddly enough, though, the Mustangs only won one state championship in those 11 years.
Times worth forgetting: Losing seasons don’t happen often in west Casper, so what happened in 1990-92 is almost hard to believe. The Mustangs had losing seasons all three of those years, at one point losing 14 consecutive games, as the program transitioned from Mike Ragan to Steve Harshman. Of course, it only took NC two more years to get back into a championship game, and then two more after that to win a title.
Best team: NC has had some great teams, but none were as dominating as the 10-0 state championship team from 1999. The Mustangs outscored opponents by an average of 44-6 and won every regular-season game by at least 35 points. NC had 10 first-team all-state players that season and a record five first-team Casper Star-Tribune Super 25 players.
Biggest win: The Mustangs of the early 1960s were consistent — always solid, always among the top teams in the state, but always an also-ran to Laramie’s rolling dynasty. That all changed on Sept. 13, 1963. Laramie came to Casper with its record 34-game winning streak, but left 28-0 losers to an inspired bunch of Mustangs who let the Plainsmen offense past midfield on only one possession the entire game. NC finished with a 9-0 mark — its first unbeaten season in decades — and its first solo claim on a state championship since 1948.
Heartbreaker: The 1980 Oil Bowl was a clash of unbeatens — 8-0 Natrona vs. 8-0 Kelly Walsh. The winner was the conference champion and earned the right to play in the state championship game; the loser stayed home with an 8-1 record and the nagging question of what might have been. It was NC that stayed home. The Trojans scored on a long touchdown in the first minute and overwhelmed the Mustangs 28-13. KW beat Rock Springs the next week to win the state championship; from there, NC posted three consecutive losing seasons, losing to KW in all three of those seasons, and longtime Mustangs coach Art Hill retired after the last of those in 1983, his last, best chance at a championship denied by that one Oil Bowl loss in ’80.
Got it! The all-state page is now updated with these dudes’ names.
–patrick
WHSAA will vote on return to Laramie (Casper Star-Tribune).
–patrick
A couple small updates I’ve squeezed in between work on term papers:
Coaches Project: I’ve added coaches for Chugwater, Cowley, Guernsey, Manderson and Sunrise.
I knocked three games off the missing games list: Deaver-Frannie’s 29-0 victory over Burlington on Sept. 28, 1956, Midwest’s 12-0 victory over the Natrona JV on Sept. 28, 1956, and Guernsey’s 24-16 victory over Glenrock on Oct. 12, 1951.
I also corrected the score of the Star Valley-Jackson game last season. It was 41-16 Star Valley; I had 41-13. Thanks to Dahl Erickson up at the Star Valley Independent for catching that one!
–patrick
Stumbling through some six-man football research last week, I found something interesting.
It took me a moment to fit the pieces together.
And now that I have, I’ve convinced myself these pieces form some kind of anti-Wyoming conspiracy, somehow tied to the “Wyoming doesn’t exist” craze or the Sacajawea grave debate.
The center of this omission centers on mid-to-late-1950s six-man football in Wyoming (don’t all the greatest debates start here?). More specifically, it has to do with Lingle’s Jerry Hill, and his tie to another NFL great, Jack Pardee.
Numerous sources — Wikipedia, the San Antonio Express-News, TXPrepsFootball, chacha.com and a ton of others — list Pardee as the only former six-man high school player to ever make it to the NFL.
Well, as we in Wyoming know, Pardee isn’t alone.
Hill was, of course, a star at the University of Wyoming (he was voted by fans as the school’s best player of the 20th century) before playing in the NFL with the Baltimore Colts for nearly a decade, including appearances in two Super Bowls. He has long been revered in Wyoming for his gridiron exploits in Laramie and Maryland… but his start in Goshen County has been obscured by the passage of time.
Conversely, Hill doesn’t get much credit for his six-man high school experiences in Lingle. In fact, Googling Jerry Hill’s name in combination with the terms “six-man” or “6-man” turns up nothing about what Hill did for the Lingle Doggers back in the late 1950s.
Why does Pardee get the credit and not Hill? Well, I’m sure that has something to do with tradition. Six-man football is quite the tradition in Texas, where Pardee played in high school and college; in Wyoming, the fall traditions are more closely tied to the brown and gold team in Laramie and to killing things. Hopefully, though, this little blog post keeps Pardee from taking ALL of the credit for six-man success in the NFL.
Not that Pardee would, of course. It’s just that for a long time Hill hasn’t had his due in leading the charge for six-man players’ NFL aspirations.
–patrick
School: Deaver-Frannie
Nickname: Trojans
Colors: blue and white
Stadium: Unknown
State championships: None
Times worth remembering: The span from 1973-75 was the best three-year stretch for the Trojans, as they went 6-3, 9-0 and 8-1 in those years respectively. At one point, D-F won 15 games in a row.
Times worth forgetting: The Trojans had a tough go of it in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, finishing 1959-62 without a winning season. Deaver-Frannie only won seven games in those four seasons.
Best team: It’s a toss-up between the 1971 team and the 1974 team, both of which went 9-0. But the nod goes to the ’74 squad, which didn’t have any games closer than a 38-13 victory over Burlington.
Biggest win: Despite all its success — the Trojans won more than 58 percent of their games from 1947-76 — Deaver-Frannie never made the playoffs. Even so, the biggest game in the school’s history might have been a 26-22 victory over Byron on Oct. 8, 1971. That game basically assured the Trojans the Bighorn Basin championship in a 9-0 season and helped vault the Trojans into third place in the final UPI poll (four Class B-C teams went undefeated that year).
Heartbreaker: The only game that kept the Trojans from back-to-back undefeated seasons in 1974 and ’75 was a 26-18 loss to Cowley on Sept. 26, 1975. Deaver-Frannie later avenged that loss, beating Cowley 58-28 on Oct. 31 that season, but the one loss gave the Trojans their lone blemish on a two-year run as the best eight-man team in the state.
So it’s late Friday night in Laramie, Wyoming. I could be out having fun. Or I could be writing one of my three final papers that are due next week. Or I could be working out, or sleeping, or any one of a hundred other productive things. Instead, I’m posting my favorite Wyoming high school videos from YouTube here.
The first (and possibly coolest, IMHO) video is a film strip of a Green River-Evanston game. I’m guessing it’s from the early 1960s, based on the uniforms, but I can’t be sure. It’s only 30 seconds long but it’s a great 30 seconds… click here to watch it.
Second is a solid pic/sound compilation from the Jackson Hole News & Guide of the 2007 4A championship between Buffalo and Jackson… click here to watch it.
Third is the Gillette Public Access highlights from the 2008 5A title game between Gillette and Green River. Remember that one? Yeah, it was good…. click here to watch it.
Fourth is the Buffalo “rap” video with lots of highlights from the 2005 Bison season… yeah that 22-game streak was pretty amazing. The rap? Well… click here to watch it.
Fifth is a two-for-one, the videos from the “Line of Scrimmage” thing a couple years ago about Big Piney that ran on Monday Night Football. Any time folks from Cali come out to Wyoming for 2A football, I smile…. Click here for the first and click here for the second.
Anyway, if you’ve got a favorite, feel free to post it below.
Oh, and because I can’t resist… one more, even though it’s not Wyoming it’s awesome.
Now I’ve put a dent in your Friday night, too.
–patrick
School: Douglas
Nickname: Bearcats
Colors: red and blue
Stadium: Bearcat Stadium
State championships: 1975, 1978, 2008 and 2009
Times worth remembering: Douglas was a force in the 1950s, and if it hadn’t been for Torrington, the Bearcats could have been a dynasty for the ages. From 1951-60, Douglas went 67-23. Eight of those losses in that time period were to Torrington; seven of the losses kept Douglas from reaching the playoffs.
Times worth forgetting: For as good as the 1950s were, the 1960s were just as bad. The Bearcats didn’t have a winning season in the decade, including four one-win seasons and an 0-8 campaign in 1967.
Best team: Few teams in state history have been as dominating as the Bearcats were during their 12-0 championship season in 2009. Douglas won all but one game by at least 25 points, a 26-10 victory over Belle Fourche, S.D., the lone exception. The offense averaged more than 46 points per game and the defense gave up fewer than eight points per game. Led by running back Pierre Etchemendy, who ran for 2,036 yards, and nine other all-state players, the Bearcats won their second consecutive state championship and helped establish Douglas as one of the best teams in the state regardless of classification.
Biggest win: As important as the first two championships were to the program, the Bearcats’ 2008 championship victory – a 34-21 win over Buffalo for the 4A title – may have been the most special. Not only did Douglas break a 30-year championship drought, it got to do so at home over a team that has had a knack not only for winning championships, but for beating Douglas to get there.
Heartbreaker: Douglas barely scraped together a winning record in the 1986 regular season, but won the ones that counted to win the 3A East Conference’s bid for the championship game. And facing Jackson — a team with the same 5-4 record — at home in the title game, the Bearcats had a great chance to sneak away with a championship. But the Bearcats lost a 16-0 third-quarter lead and sputtered on both sides of the ball on its way to a disheartening 17-16 loss.
In short: Got ’em!
I finally tracked down the 1979 Class AA and Class A all-state teams today. They’re now posted on the all-state page for you to check out. Some familiar names on that list, that’s for sure…
In case you’re wondering, YES, I’m still short a few all-state teams. If you know where I might get my hands on the full list of all-state players for these years, let me know: 1997 Class 2A, 1995 Class 1A-Division II, 1994 Class 1A-9 man; 1984 Class 1A; 1982 Class A; 1973 Class A; 1972 Class A. I’m missing a bunch prior to 1971; check out the all-state page to see what’s missing.
Also, I’m trying to find out the teams for a couple players who didn’t have their schools listed on the original lists:
* Justin Dowler, 1987 Class 4A quarterback (Update: Dowler is from Laramie. Case closed.)
* Cory Doak, 1983 Class 4A defensive end (Update: Doak is from Rock Springs. Case closed.)
* John Easterbrook, 1979 Class AA punter (Update: Easterbrook is from Laramie. Case closed.)
* Smith, first name unavailable, 1972 Class AA defensive back
* Dennis Hankins, 1961 Class A guard.
In addition, I’m missing a first name from 1988, last name McCullough, a tight end for Rawlins. (Update: Brian is his first name. Case closed.)
If you can help, leave a comment below or e-mail me at pschmiedt@yahoo.com.
–patrick