Author Archives: Patrick

Note: This is the fifth in a series of stories about some of Wyoming’s biggest high school sports underdogs.

Former Campbell County soccer coach Lyle Nannemann remembers more than one player coming up to him with the same complaint during the 1994 state tournament: I’ve got nothing clean to wear.

On the verge of a championship that had reverberations across the state, some of the Camels had to make an emergency underwear run.

“Some of them didn’t pack enough clothes for that weekend because they figured they’d be coming home sooner than they did,” Nannemann said this summer, 28 years after the Camels’ unexpected championship that completely changed the expectations of soccer teams in Wyoming. “It was unexpected they were going to carry on into the championship. They figured they’d be going home early.”

With expectations low but momentum high, the Camels won the 1994 state soccer championship, and in doing so became the first school outside Cheyenne to finish a season on top.

The start of state-sanctioned high school soccer in Wyoming in 1987 made clear the difference between the haves and the have-nots.

Cheyenne had what was necessary to win championships. No other community did.

Cheyenne schools had won the first seven state soccer championships, with East winning in 1987, 1988, 1989 and 1992 and Central winning in 1990, 1991 and 1993. In both 1987 and 1992, the two Cheyenne schools faced each other in the championship game.

Rory Williams, who played for Campbell County, also said Cheyenne’s club team, the Steam, helped build that depth and that competitiveness.

“They just had a lot more players, and their depth was always really good,” Williams said. “They just had really high expectations.”

Added Chris McMackin, a senior on the 1994 Gillette team and now the Camels’ head coach, the Cheyenne schools’ proximity to Colorado gave them opportunities no other programs had.

“They just had a head start on the rest of the state,” he said.

Meanwhile, expectations weren’t as high in other programs across the state — as the lack of underwear shows.

Even so, Nannemann said the ability to fuse talent helped make the Camels champions.

“They were a great group of boys,” Nannemann said. “There was a lot of different personalities on the team and they just came together and gelled to win the championship.”

The lead-up to the 1994 state tournament gave no hint to the seismic shift about to take place in soccer in Wyoming. With an expanded eight-team field for just the second year, East and Central were both the prohibitive favorites. Central came into the state tournament with a record of 9-0-1. East, meanwhile, was 8-1-1, its only loss via its crosstown rival.

Lander (8-0-2) was the West Conference champion, but not a true threat as the Tigers hadn’t played Cheyenne schools and, well, weren’t from Cheyenne.

The rest of the field was unremarkable, with Riverton (6-3-1) and Natrona (5-2-3) just above .500, Kelly Walsh (4-4-2) and Campbell County (5-5) right at the midpoint and Buffalo (3-7) sneaking in as the last representative from the much tougher East Conference.

The expected happened in the first round. Cheyenne schools cruised; Central obliterated KW 9-0, while East shut out Riverton 3-0. Lander won, too, but needed overtime to beat an underwhelming Buffalo team. That just left Campbell County and Natrona playing for the right to go up against someone who would likely end their season the next day, as consolation rounds were not yet played at state.

The two teams battled to a 1-1 draw in regulation time, as Jeff Vega scored late in regulation on a penalty kick for the Camels to send it to overtime. Then McMackin scored the game-winner in the first half of overtime, and the Camels were on… seemingly to their doom against Central, a team that hadn’t lost in two years.

But, contrary to expectations and history, the Camels found a way to give the Indians their first loss in a rainy, snowy game in Laramie. Holding Central to just one goal (against a 5.6 goal-per-game average) in the 2-1 victory, McMackin scored again, this time less than two minutes into the game, and Williams added another within the first 10 minutes.

“They hadn’t experienced that in two-plus years,” McMackin said. “They were in shock.”

After the two goals, Williams said, “we just held on for dear life for probably the next 70-some minutes, in the snow and in the rain. … They had a lot of ammo and were able to get quite a few shots off, but our defense did a great job and our goalie, Mike Roe, did a great job (with 11 saves).”

And just like that, the Camels were onto the championship game against another Cheyenne school, East.

McMackin said Campbell County’s confidence was high against the Thunderbirds. Despite losing twice to East in the regular season, both games were competitive.

The Camels’ defense rose to the heights necessary for a state championship game. Freshman Justin Graham’s penalty kick in the first half was all the scoring Campbell County needed, and the Camels beat East 1-0 to win their first state soccer championship and the first for any Wyoming school outside of the confines of the Capital City.

McMackin said the crowd for the 1994 title game was one of the largest he had ever seen for a Wyoming high school game.

“So many teams were there rooting for us just because they wanted someone other than (a) Cheyenne (school) to win,” he said.

Along with the 2016 team from Laramie and the 2017 East team, the ’94 Camels are one of only three 4A boys teams to win state titles by winning three games at state each by a single-goal margin.

The Camels’ title ended the Cheyenne stranglehold, and they understood immediately that they were ushering in a new era of parity across the state in boys soccer.

Although East beat Central in the 1995 title game, six different schools won championships in the next six years, including Natrona, Buffalo, Kelly Walsh and Laramie. East and Central still sit atop the state soccer championship tallies, with East at eight and Central at seven, but Jackson has also won seven titles (including the three most recent in 4A) while Kelly Walsh and Laramie are right behind with six apiece.

McMackin said the change in Gillette’s community soccer programs is evidence of the strides the Camels have made and matches similar programs statewide. Where the teams in the 1980s and 1990s were formed by teams of players whose parents had never played soccer, “now you’re seeing second-, third-generation families who have played the game here.”

However, Campbell County still has only the 1994 title to claim as its own. McMackin, who had such a critical part of the 1994 team, is now the head coach of the Camels and is working to change that.

“It was like we lifted the curse for the rest of the state and then put it on ourselves,” he said.

Meanwhile, 28 years later, Nannemann — who stepped down as head coach in 1998 but still works with Gillette’s club soccer teams alongside some of his former players — said the Camels’ breakthrough “did make the confidence level come up where other teams felt they could do it also.”

And Williams, now the head boys basketball coach for defending Class 4A champion Thunder Basin, said the 1994 title was the one that helped other teams say, “If Campbell County can go in there and compete, why not us?”

–patrick

Note: This is the fourth in a series of stories about some of Wyoming’s biggest high school sports underdogs.

In the fall of 1981, Kelly Walsh senior Diana Jones was on the verge of something unprecedented — a fourth consecutive state cross country championship.

Cross country was still relatively new to girls in Wyoming, having been added as a sport only in 1975. However, Jones took to it quickly and won the individual championship as a freshman, sophomore and junior. No other Wyoming cross country runner, boy or girl, had ever won four, and she had it in sight.

As a senior, though, Jones’ two eventual biggest challengers at the state meet were relative unknowns.

One was a sophomore from Sheridan who finished 40 seconds behind Jones at the finish of the 1980 championship race.

The other was a freshman from Worland who was taking her first steps in one of the greatest high school careers ever seen by an athlete in Wyoming history.

They didn’t know it yet, but the trio of runners were on the verge of turning in what might well be the most exciting finish ever seen at a state cross country meet.

The problem is that 41 years later, the details of that race in the minds of the three runners are all fuzzy.

For all three, however, even though the specific bits and pieces of one race didn’t stay, the lessons of competition remained.

The race, the finish, the records — eventually, they all became secondary to the actual people running the race, the character they built and showed and the lives they led not because they won or lost, but in what they learned from giving their best in the moments when their best was required.

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So who were these runners set to try to dethrone Jones?

The freshman: Worland’s Francie Faure would become one of Wyoming’s most decorated high school athletes by the time her high-school days ended. She won the Milward Simpson Award, which goes to the state’s top all-around male and female athletes, in 1985. She earned it, having won three consecutive cross country championships and 13 individual track titles — including a four-year sweep of titles in both the 800 and 1600. She was the first girl in state history to win four 1600 titles. And she still has the 3A state meet record in the 400 and the all-time state record in the 800, the oldest mark still standing. After Worland, she earned her place on the track team at track-crazy Oregon.

The sophomore: Sheridan’s Marcy Haynes finished sixth at state cross country as a freshman. She went on to win both the 400 and 800 races at the Class AA state track meet as a freshman, and she’d later win the 400 as a sophomore and a senior. She set high school meet records in middle-distance running throughout the region, some of which stood for decades. She later ran collegiately for a trio of track programs in the Midwest.

The trio — Jones, Faure, Haynes — raced at the 1981 girls track and field meet without fully realizing what was at stake.

Everyone knew Jones was going for state history and her fourth consecutive title.

No one knew Faure would win the next three.

And then there was Haynes, the one standing between two runners and their chances to do what no other Wyoming cross country runner had accomplished.

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Jones knew how delicate her grasp was on the titles. After winning titles as a freshman and sophomore, she faced a stiff challenge as a junior from Gillette’s Linda Goddard. Goddard beat Jones handily at the regional meet before state and was on pace to do so again during the state championships. Goddard actually beat Jones by 13 seconds but was disqualified for “missing a flag,” the equivalent of taking a shortcut on the course, early in the race. Jones, who had finished second, was named champion, her third straight.

But that was nothing compared to the challenge that was about to come her way in the 1981 championship race in Lander.

The results on the Wyoming High School Activities Association’s website tell the story better than anyone involved can do today.

• First place: Haynes, Sheridan, 12:39.
• Second place: Jones, Kelly Walsh, 12:40.
• Third place: Faure, Worland, 12:40.

Three runners, one second between them. Two four-peat attempts quashed in less time than it takes to read their times out loud.

But how that came to be? How three runners all ended up at the finish line within a second of each other?

When reached this summer, all three had only faded memories of that race, if any.

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Jones said she had no memory of her final high school race.

“It was probably so traumatic that I blocked it out,” she said.

Haynes, too, has no memory of her only state cross country championship.

“Cross country really wasn’t my thing,” she said. “It was something I had to do. She (Jones) was a distance runner, so it probably was more upsetting to her than it was exciting for me. … Maybe that’s why I ran well, because I didn’t think about it.”

Faure has the clearest memory of the trio, but even her details aren’t complete; she needed to touch base with her high school coach, Doug Reachard, for some of the details.

Faure said she was a distant third when Reachard called out to her over the last 100 or 150 yards to go catch the leaders. She tried, but came up short of a miraculous comeback. For Faure, she said “it wasn’t one of those nip-and-tuck battles. It just was for the last second. … At the finish line, I was there when they were there.”

Even though the details of the championship didn’t stick with any of the three runners, the lessons they picked up from competing helped guide them throughout their lives.

Haynes — now Marcy Zadina — fought knee injuries in high school and, despite surgery, never fully returned to her form, finishing third at state as both a junior and a senior. She still ran collegiately, first at Nebraska before a stress fracture in her foot forced surgery and the end of that path. She later joined the track and field team at South Dakota State, then bounced around a bit before finishing her degree and her track career at Minnesota-Duluth.

After having the opportunity to be a stay-at-home mom to her two sons — one who is now a collegiate hockey player and the other who is an actor — she settled in Cocoa Beach, Florida, where she lives with her sister.

Meanwhile, Jones — now Diana Schwahn — had an accomplished cross country career at Weber State. She then went to the University of New Mexico, receiving her degree in physical therapy in 1989. She now practices physical therapy and runs a physical therapy business in Omaha, Nebraska.

“I still run, not as fast, obviously, and not as far, but at least three or four times a week,” she said. ” … Through cross country I learned how to be a leader, and now in business I’m a leader.

” … Cross country is extremely hard work, so I think I’ve been able to take those skills and apply them to my work life.”

Faure, the youngest of the group, ran for the University of Oregon and lived in Eugene for 22 years before moving to Seattle in 2007. She works for Brooks, which makes running shoes and apparel.

Faure said track and field showed her the importance of “giving your best and showing up for your team. There’s just lifelong lessons that are kind of ingrained that I don’t even think about them anymore. … At this point I probably take (the lessons) for granted.”

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With both Jones and Faure thwarted in their four-peat attempts, Wyoming went another two decades before its first four-time state cross country champion.

Natrona’s Sarah Balfour became Wyoming’s first such athlete in 2004, winning four consecutive Class 4A championships. The next year, Rocky Mountain’s Emily Higgins completed a four-year sweep of the Class 2A championships. And, of course, eventual Gatorade national cross country runner of the year Sydney Thorvaldson of Rawlins won four straight at Class 3A from 2017-20.

On the boys’ side, Saratoga’s Grant Bartlett could become the first four-time champ this year as he goes for his fourth Class 2A championship this weekend.

As the runners from 1981 showed, winning a fourth championship doesn’t dictate success or failure beyond that one race.

The memory will eventually fade.

The lessons will stay.

–patrick

Note: This is the third in a series of stories about some of Wyoming’s biggest high school sports underdogs.

Compared to Wyoming’s larger schools, Saratoga was late to the wrestling party.

The Panthers did not even had a wrestling program until the 1953-54 school year, seven years after the sport was sanctioned in Wyoming.

Then again, Dale Federer was not a part of things until then.

Federer, who grew up on the family homestead in southeastern Wyoming, went to Cheyenne High and joined the wrestling team while at the University of Wyoming, came to Saratoga in 1953 with plans to bring the sport to the upper North Platte valley.

The challenge of developing a competitive, much less a championship, program to Saratoga was daunting. Once high school wrestling was established in Wyoming as a high school sport in 1946-47, early wrestling championships were the exclusive domain of big schools.

After Cody won the state’s first six wrestling championships, a group of big schools — Cheyenne Central twice, Rock Springs and Laramie once each — all won state championships. Usually, those titles came while competing against other large schools, who were often the only ones to field wrestling teams.

Only one classification of wrestling existed at the time, unlike the three-classification setup (4A, 3A and 2A) that Wyoming has today. In those days, small schools had little chance to compete for a championship, much less win one.

Then, behind an innovative coach and a rare collection of talent, Saratoga proved that assumption wrong.

The school had fundraisers to support the fledgling program. And even with a couple missteps, the Panthers’ youngsters were quick studies. Each year, they did a little better. In 1954, the Panthers finished eight out of 10 teams at the state meet; in 1955, they were seventh out of 12; in 1956, sixth out of 16.

By the 1956-57 season, the Panthers were consistently among the top wrestling teams in the state. Federer was president of the Wyoming Wrestling Coaches Association.

And in the first practice of that new season, one of the final pieces of a potential champion showed up in a freshman phenom who went on to rewrite Wyoming’s high school wrestling record books.

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Dave Edington has a special place in Wyoming’s high school wrestling history — the first wrestler to ever win four individual state championships.

His first title came in 1957. Not coincidentally, that season, Saratoga blitzed the competition, including all those big schools who were there first, and romped to the team title at the state meet.

This championship was no fluke. The tiny school that was only a few years removed from adding the sport had the deepest and most talented team in the state, beating the likes of Cheyenne, Casper and Laramie.

Saratoga finished with three individual champions — Edington at 120 pounds, sophomore Merle Oxford at 95 pounds and senior Ron Perue, who was undefeated for the season, at 145 pounds. Junior Gary Maki finished as the runner-up at 112 and sophomore Norm Perue was the runner-up at 154, while senior Rod Johnson was third at 133.

Saratoga finished with 73 team points, well more than runner-up Newcastle at 62. The remaining 13 teams in the team standings — all of them Class AA or Class A teams, as Saratoga was the only Class B team entered at the meet to score any points — couldn’t come close to matching the pace set by the Panthers.

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Edington was without a doubt a special talent. After winning his fourth title in Saratoga in 1960, all without losing an in-state match in four years, he wrestled at the University of Wyoming and went undefeated as a freshman. But in a match early in his sophomore year, his opponent suffered a blood clot mid-match and died. Edington was forced to take time away from wrestling, and when he tried to return, he was out of condition. He never wrestled competitively again.

However, his wrestling journey was only beginning.

As a wrestling coach in Ronan, Montana, Edington established his second legacy. Over 20 years (1968-88), Ronan won eight state championships, including five consecutive from 1978-82, and had 33 individual champions. Other accolades and opportunities rolled in at the state, national and international levels, including a coaching spot on the 1976 Olympic team.

Today, Edington is in his early 80s and lives in Ronan.

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Federer, meanwhile, found his calling beyond Saratoga and beyond Wyoming.

After returning to the University of Wyoming to pursue his doctorate in counseling, Federer joined the faculty at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo in 1963. He continued there until 1987, when he retired after a career that included starting a crisis hotline in the area and developing a senior peer counseling program. His civic leadership roles in San Luis Obispo continued long into his retirement, and he died in 2016.

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Although other wrestling championships came, Saratoga never again put together an all-class championship — in fact, Saratoga remains as the only all-class champion to come from the Class B ranks in the 18 years before Wyoming split into three classifications of wrestling prior to the 1964-65 season.

The Panthers finished fourth at state in 1958, third in 1959 and seventh in 1960. However, when three-class wrestling was established, Saratoga won the first three Class B wrestling championships in 1965, 1966 and 1967. The team also won Class B titles in 1974, 1975 and 1977 and came within a point of winning it all in 1976, as well.

However, Saratoga hasn’t finished in the top five at a state wrestling meet since 1998.

Even so, the Panthers’ title paved the way for other smaller schools to try wrestling. In less than a decade after Saratoga’s championship, three-class wrestling had come to Wyoming, and schools that had never tried wrestling before or had done so on a limited basis expanded their programs to take advantage of the new opportunity.

Direct lines can be traced from Saratoga’s 1957 championship to the sport as it exists in Wyoming today.

After all, it took the Panthers to prove wrestling wasn’t just a sport for big schools.

Did they ever.

–patrick