School: Midwest
Nickname: Oilers
Colors: maroon and silver
Stadium: Oiler Field
State championships: 1979 and 1991
Times worth remembering: The Oilers’ best teams came in 1979-80, when Midwest won 17 consecutive games, a pair of Powder River Conference championships and a Class B state title. In that two-year span, the Oilers outscored their opponents by an average of 31-9. The 1979 title, won by defeating Big Piney 33-8, was the first state title for the Oilers.
Times worth forgetting: It’s hard to overlook the struggles of the 21st-century Oilers, who have had their most successful seasons playing sub-varsity schedules. The period from 2003-07 was especially tough, as Midwest went 5-32, posting three of those five wins in that time over Wyoming Indian. In those 37 games, Midwest broke into double digits only six times. The 2003 Oilers scored only 14 points all season; in 2007, the Oilers only scored six points.
Best team: No one can claim they didn’t see the 1947 Oilers coming. After finishing 8-1 in 1946, with the only loss 27-26 to Douglas, Midwest reloaded in 1947 and proved to be one of the best teams in the state regardless of classification, finishing 7-0-1. The strength of the 1947 team was its defense – the Oilers gave up just 25 points all season and won five games by shutout. However, at the end of the season, coach John Bays made it public his team was not interested in playing in the postseason and dismissed an idea to play Natrona in the postseason “Turkey Bowl.”
Biggest win: The game the locals still recall best is the 1991 9-man championship, and not just for the football. By 1991, the oil boom had gone bust, and Midwest was a town trying to capture the few stray remnants of pride it had remaining. The 1991 Oilers gave the town its pride back. And winning the way they did — in a 6-0 defensive struggle against Big Horn, the team that had busted the Oilers’ hopes so many times back in the 1980s — the town once again had that glimmer of hope that had all but faded. It was the Oilers’ last hurrah — the team missed the playoffs for the next 17 years — but it also gave the town one last thing on which to hang its hard hat before the extraction industry bottomed out soon afterward.
Heartbreaker: The Oilers of 1985 and 1986 were as good as any team in Midwest’s history. But neither one made the playoffs. In 1985, Midwest went 6-2, beating every team in the 2A Powder River Conference, but losing to the two 1A schools in their own conference — including a 14-12 gut-wrenching loss to Big Horn in the season finale — kept them out of the playoffs. In 1986, the Oilers were even better, posting a 7-0 record before again facing Big Horn in the regular-season finale. Again, it was the Rams that won — this time 21-14, in overtime — and because of how 1A playoff qualifying worked at the time, with the No. 4 seed rotating between three conferences, the 7-1 Oilers stayed home for the playoffs.
Thanks to AD Tom Rogers at Wyoming Indian, I now have the Chiefs’ full coaching history, from the start of the program in 1972 to the present. That’s now all posted on the Wyoming Indian team page. Thanks a ton, Tom!
If you think you might be able to help with the Coaches Project, click here to see what I’m missing.
–patrick
Another arm of this site is dedicated to tracking down the names of the coaches for each school for each season. I’m seeking some help with this project, too, and to help let you know what I’m missing, I’ve set up a page with a checklist of what I’m missing.
Click here to see the list of what I need. The same page is permalinked above, along with the radio station guide and the “about” page.
I made a big Coaches Project update today. A few years ago, my dad gave me his old WHSAA directories from 1976, 1984 and 1985. Thanks to those, I plugged in some of the missing coaches for Basin, Bow-Basin, Byron, Cokeville, Cowley, Deaver-Frannie, Glendo, Greybull, Hanna, Lander, Lyman, Moorcroft, St. Mary’s, Saratoga, Ten Sleep, Wind River and Wyoming Indian. Check out those individual team pages to see the updates.
Anyway, if you can help, that would be awesome. I especially need help for Cokeville, Green River, Greybull, Hanna, Lander, Lingle, Lyman, Moorcroft, Rawlins, Saratoga, Ten Sleep, Thermopolis, Torrington and Wyoming Indian, as well as all the defunct programs.
As always, e-mail me at pschmiedt@yahoo.com if you have some help you can drop my way. Thanks!
–patrick
In doing some double-checking on playoff records, I uncovered a few places where I miscounted. When I totaled the victories and losses together, the numbers weren’t equal, so I double-checked every team’s record. Now those totals are equal, but in the process several teams have had their playoff records corrected:
Basin is 0-2, not 0-3; Big Horn is 21-21, not 20-22; Burlington is 11-18, not 11-17; Byron is 13-4, not 12-4; Cheyenne Central is 19-15, not 18-15; Cody is 11-16, not 10-16; Kemmerer is 17-16, not 17-15; Laramie is 18-17, not 16-17; Lovell is 15-17, not 13-18; Mountain View is 22-15, not 21-15; Powell is 13-9, not 12-9; Rock Springs is 15-21, not 15-20; and Shoshoni is 7-17, not 6-18.
I’ve created a bare-bones basic page listing the state’s playoff history, as well as playoff records for every team. Click here to check it out; I’ll make it pretty later.
–patrick