School: Manderson
Nickname: Demons
Colors: red and white
Stadium: Unknown
State championships: None
Times worth remembering/best team: The good times were few and far between for the Demons, who had just four winning seasons in 20 years of football — and none consecutively — and no playoff appearances. But if a season sticks out, it’s the 1962 season, when Manderson went 5-2-1. That team had a knack for winning close, low-scoring games and held all of its opponents to 13 or fewer points; a 7-6 loss to Byron and a 13-12 loss to Morton were the team’s only smudge.
Times worth forgetting: Although Manderson was perennially a conference doormat, the Demons typically pulled off a couple victories each season to keep interest going and opponents honest. But from 1965-68, when the Demons went 4-30-1, there wasn’t much to celebrate. The Demons weren’t bad defensively, but rarely got its offense untracked — they averaged only about 9 points per game during the first three years of that stretch.
Biggest win: What made the 1962 season special was how it started. After a 12-0 win over Meeteetse, the Demons beat Cowley 12-6 at Cowley — a game that may not have been recognized at the time as perhaps the biggest win in school history. But after that, Cowley (and the rest of the Bighorn Basin schools) never let Manderson sneak up on them again. Manderson went 0-13-1 in its final 14 games against Cowley before dropping football after 1975.
Heartbreaker: Success was never really Manderson’s calling card, but it had to hurt to go out like this. In the final game in program history, the Demons took a 70-8 beating from Deaver-Frannie. The defeat was made all the more difficult by how Manderson had improved heading into the season finale, beating Burlington 12-6 and losing to Ten Sleep 14-6 in the two previous games. But Deaver showed no mercy on the outgoing Demons, who will never have a chance to avenge the 62-point loss they took in their last outing.