Say hello to champlists.com

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After several months of preparation and research, I’m proud to announce the newest website to highlight Wyoming’s high school sports history.

Say hi to champlists.com.

The site is exactly what it says — lists of champions for Wyoming’s sanctioned high school sports. But it’s much more than that.

Each sport has its own special area: alpine skiing, cross country, golf, gymnastics, indoor track, Nordic skiing, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, tennis, track and field, volleyball and wrestling. While each sport has individual and team champions, several sports have more than that. For example, soccer and volleyball have all-state team listings and state championship history broken down by school; volleyball has listings for championship coaches; and other sports have listings unique to them.

In short, I’m bringing the wyoming-football.com and wyoming-basketball.com treatment to other high school sports in the Equality State. Although the research for other sports is not as deep or intricate as the research for football and basketball, champlists.com does help fill a gap in Wyoming’s high school sports history.

While the Wyoming High School Activities Association’s website with its sports archive has been incredibly useful, it has also been limited by a reduced range. The WHSAA website does not list champions or results prior to 1973, the year the WHSAA moved from Riverton to Casper, for any sports except football or basketball. WHSAA listings have long been incomplete for sports like cross country, golf, swimming, tennis, wrestling and track. Champlists.com tries to close that gap while at the same time make it easier for people to find specific names, records and details for each sport.

Despite all of my best efforts to this point, many sports have incomplete listings of their champions. Your help is invaluable to completing these lists. Please use this form to send me any missing information you have, as well as any documentation you have to support it, such as a newspaper clipping, yearbook listing or something similar.

In that same vein, champlists.com is a work in progress. If there is something else you’d like to see there, let me know; I’ll see if I can research it, or maybe if we can research it together. I’m going to look for ways to constantly expand the listings that are available to satiate your curiosity about Wyoming’s high school sports history. Broadly, I am planning on updating champlists.com once a year, likely in the summer.

Similarly, I will likely expand the scope of this blog to include occasional posts about other sports, as I have done the past few years with the occasional basketball or track and field post. I have several fun and interesting posts in the works already.

If you’ve made it this far, you care about this kind of stuff. So give champlists.com a look, and let me know what you’d like to see from it moving forward.

–patrick

Riverside hires experienced coach to fill open spot

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The new head football coach at Riverside comes to the Rebels with six years of head coaching experience in Nebraska.

Jason Mitchell, who was previously a head coach at three different high schools in Nebraska and was a volunteer assistant at Burns last season, will be the Rebels’ new head coach.

Riverside Principal Matt Jensen verified Mitchell’s hire to wyoming-football.com on Friday. The Big Horn County School District No. 4 hired Mitchell as coach and as a middle school social studies teacher at Riverside at its meeting Thursday.

Mitchell said he was the head football coach at Valentine, Minatare and Lodgepole high schools in Nebraska. Valentine finished as Class C-1 runners-up in 2006 under him; he was head coach at Valentine for three years, Minatare two years and Lodgepole one year prior to its consolidation. Minatare and Lodgepole were eight-man programs while Mitchell was there. He was also the wide receivers coach for a year at Peru State College in Nebraska for a year.

In an interview with wyoming-football.com on Friday, Mitchell said he is looking forward to the teaching, coaching and mentoring opportunities he will have in Basin.

“When I saw that opening come up, I did a little bit of research, and I love the idea of coaching in a community small enough where you get to know the players beyond (the team),” he said.

Jensen also said he and Dale Query will join Riverside’s coaching staff as assistants.

Class 4A Laramie, Class 2A Glenrock and Class 1A nine-man Greybull, Lingle and St. Stephens have hired new head football coaches for 2021. If you know of other head coaching changes in the state, please email me at pschmiedt@yahoo.com.

–patrick

St. Stephens makes a change at head coach

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St. Stephens will have a new head coach for 2021 after the Eagles’ coach since 2017 resigned to take an athletic director position in Oregon.

Billy Brost, the Eagles’ head football coach since 2017 and also the school’s track coach, resigned Tuesday to become the athletic director at his alma mater, The Dalles High School, a Class 5A school in north-central Oregon.

Dee Harrison, who was Brost’s co-head coach in 2017 and who has been both the offensive and defensive coordinator for the Eagles since then, will be the new head coach for both the football and track teams at St. Stephens, Brost said.

“The administration feels good about moving forward with Dee, and so do I, because we built this together,” Brost said to wyoming-football.com Tuesday afternoon.

Brost and Harrison met with players Tuesday to inform them of the switch, Brost said.

Brost called his new position a “dream job” but also indicated that St. Stephens would only be a phone call away.

“I think they’re on the verge of doing something special,” Brost said. “St. Stephens will always be near and dear to my heart.”

Brost and Harrison took over coaching the Eagles’ football program together halfway through the 2017 season. Brost became head coach prior to 2018, with Harrison as the assistant.

Harrison previously coached throughout the West, including Eastern Oregon University. He was the head coach at Firth, Idaho, from 2009 to 2012, taking the Cougars from an 0-7 finish his first year to an 11-1 record and a Class 2A runner-up finish his final year. He was also a head coach at West Jefferson in Terreton, Idaho, for two years and was a junior high coach at Arapahoe, just down the road from St. Stephens.

“We’ve kind of been in this together, and we’ve kind of helped each other out for the whole four, five years we’ve been doing this,” Harrison said Tuesday. ” … It’s a just a matter of taking the reins and continuing to rebuild and hopefully building some more on it.”

The Eagles went 1-6 in both 2018 and 2019 in Class 1A six-man. St. Stephens did not play in its first year of Class 1A nine-man last year as the St. Stephens school was closed due to COVID-19.

Class 4A Laramie, Class 2A Glenrock and Class 1A nine-man Greybull and Lingle have hired new head football coaches for 2021, while Class 1A nine-man Riverside is looking for a new head coach. If you know of other head coaching changes in the state, please email me at pschmiedt@yahoo.com.

–patrick

This post was updated at 8:47 p.m. July 13 with comments and additional information from Harrison.

Wyoming’s top returning high school football players by uniform number: 2021 edition

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A uniform number is something special.

It’s the source of pride, whether it’s in face paint, T-shirts or tattoos. It’s the one way, outside of their play itself, that players can be identified. It’s how coaches usually refer to opposing players.

With 99 options to choose from, a number can follow a player forever. The choice isn’t always easy.

The list below represents the top 99 (minus a few) players in Wyoming high school football, as listed by uniform number. Altogether, the list represents all classifications, all positions, all geographic areas — a solid cross-section of the Wyoming football scene.

But forming this list is always one of the most challenging tasks of my summer. Choosing one player per number when numerous players are deserving becomes a fool’s errand. Conversely, sometimes FINDING one returning player who wore a given number at any school in the state is tough.

Even if your favorite player isn’t connected with the number on the list, trust me — I considered them all. You’re welcome to disagree, and I welcome comments on this post to let me know which number, and name, you’ve got your eye on this fall.

My annual disclaimer: I can’t guarantee that the numbers players wore last year will be worn again by them this year. I can’t even guarantee that they’ll go out, or that they haven’t moved since the end of last year. I used last year’s stat listings and rosters posted online to determine what jersey number players wore; if your team didn’t compile stats or didn’t post a roster, I didn’t (moreover, couldn’t) include those players. Also, at least one of these players wore more than one number last year; they’re noted with asterisks.

This is the third year I have done this list — you can see a couple repeaters from the 2020 and 2019 lists on this year’s list.

NumberNameSchool
1Andrew SkorczRock Springs
2Brody HasenackJackson
3Jacob SchieveGreen River
4Geoffrey JohnsonSaratoga
5Connor MicheliMountain View
6Reed ThompsonPine Bluffs
7Nathanial TalichCheyenne Central
8Sadler SmithJackson
9Cam BurkettKelly Walsh
10Taylor PierceWorland
11Brock DouzenisWorland
12Ryan BakerThunder Basin
13Cooper GarberBig Horn
14Samuel RamsbottomKaycee
15Gavin GoffCheyenne East
16Dom LopezCheyenne East
17Hadley MyersSnake River
18Sam ScottJackson
19Peyton CorniaEvanston
20Zach RatcliffPowell
21Cade ButlerBig Horn
22Ryan ClapperSoutheast
23Kaeden WilcoxNatrona
24Cadon ShakleeRock Springs
25Jayden ArchuletaDouglas
26Isaac SchoenfeldRock Springs
27Jonathan Vazquez VargasJackson
28Keltan EwingDouglas
29Rylan WehrDouglas
30Holden McConkeyNewcastle
31Lane OeschStar Valley
32McCoy SmithLyman
33Cord HerringSoutheast
34Aaron CarverWorland
35Hyannie FaustoWheatland
36Tanner CollinsMountain View
37Matisse WeaverLander
38Preston NicholsLovell
39Texas TannerSheridan
40Toran GrahamPowell
41Slayd DaleySaratoga
42Tim VerburgCampbell County
43Cayden DymondCampbell County
44Colter DawsonJackson
45Jake SchlattmannGreybull
46Samuel HulickBuffalo
47Charlie NicholsCheyenne Central
48Cooper HarrimanGuernsey
49Conor ManloveBurns
50Kris TopaumRiverton
51Dylan MolzahnLusk
52Dawson CurtisDouglas
53Thomas HowardBig Piney
54Riley BlackburnLusk
55William PewJackson
56Daniel GormanCody
57Frank ArmajoLander
58Diego PaniaguaPine Bluffs
59Chris LarsonSheridan
60Lucas ChappellStar Valley*
61Jaxson McGeeGreen River
62Sheldon ShoopmanPowell
63Wade BarkerEvanston
64Kelton BournazianRock Springs
65Mason WellsLusk
66Lane SchramekPowell
67Will BakerSoutheast
68Kirk KaySoutheast
69Eddie TokarczykHulett
70Dayne LampLusk
71Cale HawsBurns
72Taylor FossCampbell County
73Chase OsterGreybull
74Ivor McPhieLander
75Matt McMillanKemmerer
76Kyle LogarDouglas
77Dylen ClendenenRocky Mountain
78Jacob KnoblochTongue River
79Josh ThompsonBig Horn
80Jake HicksWheatland
81Vaun PiersonKaycee
82Heston FisherSaratoga
83Rodee BrowWheatland
84Jackson KirkbrideBurns
85Jake KampmanKemmerer
86Hogan TystadNewcastle
87Robert KoivupaloLander
88Chase MillerTorrington
89Lucas EngleRiverton
90No returners identified
91Tyson ChristiansenRocky Mountain
92No returners identified
93No returners identified
94No returners identified
95No returners identified
96No returners identified
97No returners identified
98No returners identified
99Jaxson StanleyShoshoni

Chappell also wore No. 88 last fall.

–patrick

Glenrock chooses new head coach with Colorado connections

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A coach with head coaching experience in Colorado will be the new football coach at Glenrock this season.

Paul Downing, previously the head coach at Coal Ridge High School in New Castle, Colorado, will take over the Herders’ head coaching role this season.

Glenrock High School Principal Mark Fritz said via email on Wednesday to wyoming-football.com that Downing had been hired to coach football and teach social studies in Glenrock. An email sent to Downing on Thursday morning was not immediately returned.

Downing was the head coach at Coal Ridge from 2018 through this season. Coal Ridge went 3-3 last season during Colorado’s spring football season, the program’s best record in his three years. Coal Ridge went 1-8 in both 2019 and 2018.

He was also head coach at Highland High School in Ault, Colorado, for the 2015 and 2016 seasons, going a combined 10-9. During 2017, Downing stepped away from coaching to battle Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

He also coached middle school football at Donelson Christian Academy in Tennessee for six years and was an assistant high school coach at Au Gres-Sims School in Michigan and at Kiowa (Colorado) High School for one year each.

Downing takes over for Ryan Collier, who was a combined 6-11 in two seasons as the Herders’ head coach. Collier resigned in May. Glenrock went 4-5 last season and did not qualify for the Class 2A playoffs.

Class 4A Laramie and Class 1A nine-man Greybull and Lingle have hired new head football coaches for 2021, while Class 1A nine-man Riverside is looking for a new head coach. If you know of other head coaching changes in the state, please email me at pschmiedt@yahoo.com.

–patrick

Updates: Laramie, Powell, Lovell, Saratoga, Hanna, Upton, North Big Horn

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A few updates to the site made recently:

I fixed the location of the 1987 Class 2A championship game — it was in Upton, not Lovell. Thanks to Joe White for the catch on that!

I added Saratoga’s 57-16 victory against Hanna on or around Oct. 30, 1987; I added it to the missing games list because I couldn’t find a location, and I’m not exactly sure on the date.

I added Powell’s 19-6 victory against Red Lodge, Montana, on Oct. 1, 1939.

I added Laramie’s 36-6 victory against the Colorado State freshman team on Nov. 11, 1921.

I also fixed some things for the Oct. 12, 1979, game between North Big Horn and the Lovell JV. I originally had North Big Horn winning 26-24; the Lovell JV actually won the game by that score. It’s still on the missing games list because I still haven’t been able to pin down a location.

All the updates have been made on all the relevant pages.

Two other updates I’ve made to the site:

First, I went through and changed all references from “Gillette” to “Campbell County” in reference to the Camels. Much like I’ve done with other schools who have gone by multiple names, such as Cheyenne Central, Natrona and a handful of others, I’ve made the change for consistency’s sake, so there’s no doubt as to which school I am referring.

Second, I’ve added 2021 schedules to all the individual team pages. They’re now ready to be filled in through November as game results roll in week by week. It’s always a fun update to make last year’s results part of the history and this year’s results part of the present. 🙂

–patrick

Five records tied or broken in 2021 Wyoming Shrine Bowl

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Five total Shrine Bowl records were either tied or broken in the 2021 Wyoming Shrine Bowl on June 12.

Cheyenne East’s Graedyn Buell, the game’s offensive MVP, set two Shrine Bowl records — total offense (381 yards, with 310 passing and 71 rushing yards combined) and completions (28). His 40 passing attempts was third all-time, and his 310 passing yards second all-time.

Cheyenne East teammate Jackson Hesford tied the Shrine Bowl record with 13 receptions. Cheyenne Central’s Brady Storebo had eight catches to tie for third all-time.

Thunder Basin’s Dyse Shepherd tied a Shrine Bowl record with three others with three touchdown catches.

The South also set a team record with 25 first downs.

The South won the game 34-32. See a full list of results and records here.

Thanks to Paul Garcia, South assistant coach, for his help in tallying statistics and figuring out records.

–patrick

Riverside looks for new head coach

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Riverside is looking for its third head coach in three seasons as Greg Mendenhall resigned as the Rebels’ coach after one season.

Mendenhall verified his resignation with wyoming-football.com via email on Wednesday; his resignation as Riverside’s football and head girls basketball coach was on the Big Horn County School District No. 4 agenda for its June 8 meeting.

In a follow-up on Friday, Mendenhall said via email that he plans to continue to teach at Riverside Middle School, where he teaches science, but will not coach.

The Rebels went 2-7 last year, their first year in Class 1A nine-man. They lost to Southeast in the first round of the playoffs.

Class 4A Laramie and Class 1A nine-man Greybull and Lingle have hired new head football coaches for 2021, while Class 2A Glenrock is looking for a new head coach. If you know of other head coaching changes in the state, please email me at pschmiedt@yahoo.com.

–patrick

Note: Updated at 10:54 a.m. June 25 to reflect Mendenhall’s continuing to teach at Riverside.

Wyoming high school football Scorigami: The video that covers every unique score from 1894-2020

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After looking at every score of every game for every year of Wyoming high school football — more than 25,000 games, by the way — I have a breakdown to share:

Scorigami is something I’ve looked at before on this site. In fact, I broke down the beginnings of the 2020 scorigami before Week 5, and I’ve had other posts talk about common and uncommon, and missing, final scores.

The video above, though, goes a step beyond all that, as it shows every unique final score we’ve seen across Wyoming high school football since 1894.

And I think that’s pretty cool.

For the video’s sake, I had to cut out the numbers that actually show the scores. If you’re interested in that, the completed version of the Wyoming high school football scorigami file is here.

If you dig this, let me know. Leave a comment here, or share the link via the Wyoming-football.com Twitter or Facebook pages. Or just let it wash over you like a waterfall of red and gray boxes.

–patrick

2021 Wyoming Shrine Bowl: South wins first game since 2012 thanks to three-TD surge

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A surge of three touchdowns in less than two minutes of game time gave the South team a lead it never relinquished, helping the South win its first Wyoming Shrine Bowl victory since 2012 in a 34-32 victory against the North on Saturday in Casper.

The South took control of the game in at the end of the third quarter, scoring two touchdowns in the span of four seconds. A 13-yard touchdown run by Cokeville’s Nate Barnes cut the North’s lead to 26-20.

On the North’s next offensive play, a shotgun snap went awry, and Cheyenne East’s Julian Vigil recovered the loose ball in the end zone. A successful 2-point conversion made the score 28-26 South; the North never regained the lead.

After an interception by Barnes, East’s Jake Rayl added a 17-yard touchdown catch less than two minutes later, at the 14:02 mark in the fourth, pushing the South’s lead to 34-26.

The North nearly tied the game in the final minute, though.

Thunder Basin’s Dyse Shepherd completed a 99-yard drive with a 26-yard touchdown catch, his third of the game, on a fourth-and-5 play with 49 seconds remaining. But the South defense snuffed out the North’s 2-point conversion attempt to keep the South’s lead at 34-32.

Carter Lobatos of Cheyenne Central recovered the North’s onside kick attempt to ice the game.

The North had control of the game early. Shepherd’s first two touchdowns, one a 36-yard catch and the other a 20-yard catch, on passes from Cody’s Caleb Prior gave the North a 14-0 lead. Rayl’s 26-yard touchdown catch with 16 seconds remaining in the first half made the halftime score 14-7, North.

Thunder Basin’s Jaxon Pikula scored on a 5-yard run early in the third quarter to boost the North lead to 20-7, but Buell answered with a 12-yard score to make it 20-14. Natrona’s Braxton Bundy notched an 8-yard touchdown run with 1:51 to go in the third quarter to extend the North margin to 26-14.

Then the South unleashed its three-touchdown bonanza to jump up 34-26.

Buell was named the offensive player of the game, while Cody’s Nic Talich was the defensive player of the game. Full statistics from the game were not immediately available.

The game acts as a fundraiser for the Shriner’s Hospital for Children. The game typically raises between $20,000 and $30,000 annually for the hospital.

Last year’s game was not played due to COVID-19. The North had won the previous seven games.

The North leads the all-time series 25-19-3.

Scoring plays
North: Dyse Shepherd 36 pass from Caleb Prior (Jesse Trotter kick), 8:45 1Q (7-0 North)
North: Shepherd 20 pass from Prior (Trotter kick), 9:21 2Q (14-0 North)
South: Jake Rayl 26 pass from Graedyn Buell (Brant Nelson kick), 0:16 2Q (14-7 North)
North: Jaxon Pikula 5 run (kick failed), 11:29 3Q (20-7 North)
South: Buell 12 run (Nelson kick), 9:44 3Q (20-14 North)
North: Braxton Bundy 8 run (run failed), 1:51 3Q (26-14 North)
South: Nate Barnes 13 run (kick failed), 0:50 3Q (26-20 North)
South: Julian Vigil fumble recovery in end zone (Buell run), 0:47 3Q (28-26 South)
South: Rayl 17 pass from Buell (kick failed), 14:02 4Q (34-26 South)
North: Shepherd 26 pass from Prior (run failed), 0:49 4Q (34-32 South)

See previous Shrine Bowl results and records, and see all-time Shrine Bowl rosters in an interactive database.