Familiarity with either War Memorial Stadium or championship games are a common thread for the teams that will be playing in next week’s state championship games.
Some teams are not only familiar with the atmosphere surrounding state championship games, they are also familiar to title games at War Memorial Stadium. Defending state champions Douglas, Thermopolis and Sheridan all earned return trips to Laramie this weekend.
Some teams are making their first trips to Laramie for title games but aren’t unfamiliar to championship settings. Big Horn, Lusk, Buffalo, Cokeville and Natrona have all played in state championship games in the past eight years.
Meanwhile, two teams — Snake River and Hanna, the two six-man title game participants — are pretty new to this whole football championship thing.
All told, they will come together in Laramie next weekend for an exciting weekend of high-stakes football.
How they got to this point, though, is a story in and of itself.
Natrona was undefeated until the final week of the regular season. Two big victories in the playoffs — including Saturday’s 30-10 victory over Gillette — earned them a spot in the title game.
As fate would have it, the team Natrona draws in the title game is the only one that beat the Mustangs in the regular season. That’s Sheridan, the hot-and-cold defending champs that are as hot as anyone right now, especially after beating upstart Cheyenne East 46-12 on Friday night.
The 3A title game matches the state’s two most consistent mid-size school programs: Douglas and Buffalo. One of these two teams has played in the championship game each season since 2003, including when they played each other in 2008. And, of course, they’re conference rivals, and Douglas beat Buffalo 22-7 earlier this season.
But both of them had to fight and claw and scrap to get to this point. Douglas got pushed by Riverton but won its 30th consecutive game thanks to a solid defensive effort in a 23-2 victory; Buffalo needed overtime to beat Cody 24-21 on the road in one of the best games of the season.
The defending champion in 2A, Thermopolis, has played the part of a defending champ all season long. That is, except for this one game where they had to go to Sheridan County. That was the trip to play the Big Horn Rams, and the Rams dominated the defending champs 42-7. Now, the Bobcats have their chance for revenge.
The Bobcats have been playing out of their minds in the playoffs, including a 39-15 victory over Lovell on Saturday. The trouble is that the Rams have been doing the same; Big Horn is unbeaten and blasted Greybull 37-7 in the semis.
The 1A 11-man title game will pit two undefeated teams, Cokeville and Lusk, that have just been rolling teams all season long. Cokeville, for just the time this season, didn’t win by more than 40 points, but still scored enough to beat four-time defending champ Southeast 24-7; Lusk has scored at least 46 points in each of its past eight games, including a 66-15 semifinal blasting of Lingle.
Oddly enough, despite the success and tradition of both programs, the teams have only played each other once previously, a 1994 Class 1A semifinal game that Cokeville won 7-6 in Cokeville. …
As for the newbies to championship tradition, Snake River and Hanna, well, they get to play each other for the rights to the six-man championship. Snake River has straight been thumping teams; the Rattlers continued that trend on Saturday by trouncing Kaycee 42-12. Hanna has been surviving by winning close, a trend that continued with Saturday’s 33-32 home win over a tough Ten Sleep team.
Snake River, of course, is a startup program. Last year, the Rattlers were faced with resurrecting a team that had been dead for more than 50 years. As for Hanna, the Miners have played in just one state championship game in the past 50 years, and that was when they won the 1A nine-man championship back in 1989. The two teams have become rivals of proximity in six-man’s short history — they’re both in Carbon County — and Hanna will be looking to reverse the result of a 50-34 loss to the Rattlers earlier this season.
It’s quite interesting that three teams playing in title games next weekend — Buffalo, Thermopolis and Natrona — have one loss, and in each case that one loss came against the the team that they’ll face in the War — Douglas, Big Horn and Sheridan, respectively.
Nevertheless, it promises to be a fun weekend in Laramie. Once again, here is the schedule:
Friday
Class 1A six-man, Snake River vs. Hanna, noon
Class 3A, Buffalo vs. Douglas, 3 p.m.
Saturday
Class 2A, Big Horn vs. Thermopolis, 10 a.m.
Class 1A 11-man, Cokeville vs. Lusk, 1 p.m.
Class 4A, Sheridan vs. Natrona, 4 p.m.
Feel free to start discussing these matchups now. Post a comment below and we’ll chat! I’d love to hear your opinions about the title game matchups, the semifinals or anything about Wyoming high school football.
As for me? Well, I hate to say I told you so, but…
This week: 10-0 (100 percent). This season: 238-52 (82 percent).
–patrick