Updates: Mostly early 1950s Bighorn Basin

It’s been a serendipitous week in my research. I kind of stumbled into some great information about the Bighorn Basin’s six-man division in 1952. The info I found eliminated three games from my missing games list: I found the location for the Byron-Meeteetse game on Oct. 3 (Byron), the location for the Deaver-Frannie-Meeteetse game on Oct. 8 (Meeteetse) and the date and location for the Byron-Meeteetse game on Oct. 24 (Meeteetse).

I also added four games to the 1952 season: Cowley’s game at Meeteetse on Sept. 26 (also added to missing games because I couldn’t find a result); Cowley’s 44-21 victory over Deaver-Frannie on Oct. 3; Deaver-Frannie’s 43-35 victory over Meeteetse on Oct. 31; and Basin’s 13-12 loss to the Worland JV on Oct. 30.

The opening week of the 1951 season also turned up a few changes. I added two games — Byron’s 28-6 victory over Colstrip, Mont., and Deaver-Frannie’s 48-12 victory over Belfry, Mont. — but added them both to the missing games list because I couldn’t pin down exact dates or locations. Conversely, the game between Cowley and Colstrip scheduled for Sept. 15, 1951, was not played and came off the database completely.

This week, I spent a bunch of time trying to knock as many games as possible off the missing games list as well as opportunistic chip-aways at the Byes Project (trying to account for every open week listed on this site). Here are some other updates I made this week.

Missing games:

Found the location for Guernsey-Sunrise’s game with the Torrington JV on Sept. 4, 1965 (it was in Guernsey).

Removed an extra game scheduled for Nov. 11, 1950, between Rock Springs and Rawlins; the game was not scheduled originally and never played.

Found the score for Douglas’ 25-13 victory over Edgemont, S.D., on Sept. 30, 1949.

Noted that the Oct. 25, 1963, game between Burlington and Morton was canceled. Morton tried to find a last-minute replacement but couldn’t do it.

Found the score for Moorcroft’s 37-12 victory over Hulett on Oct. 14, 1955.

Found the date and location and corrected the score for the Lander JV’s 36-6 victory over Morton on Sept. 25, 1952 (it was in Lander; I originally had 32-6).

Found the location for Newcastle’s game with Pine Ridge, S.D., on Nov. 11, 1952 (it was in Newcastle).

Removed an extra game between Buffalo and Riverton on Sept. 8, 1950; it was never on Riverton’s schedule to begin with.

Removed an extra game between Sunrise and Albin on Sept. 26, 1950; they played a week later than that.

Found the date for the game between Burlington and Cowley on Sept. 29, 1950.

Found the location for the game between Hanna and Saratoga on Sept. 29, 1950 (it was in Hanna).

Noted that the Oct. 20, 1950, game between Thermopolis and Basin was canceled.

Byes Project:

Added Douglas’ 34-0 victory over the Natrona JV on Oct. 1, 1955.

Added Deaver-Frannie’s 20-8 victory over Meeteetse on Oct. 12, 1951.

Coaches Project: Updates for Albin, Byron, Cowley, Deaver-Frannie, Hanna, Powell, Saratoga, St. Mary’s, Superior and Thermopolis. I also made the decision to accept two initials as sufficient in place of a first name for identification; many newspapers in the 1940s and prior did not identify many people, especially high school football coaches, by their first names. Whenever possible, I’ve used the first name in place of the two initials, but in several cases I’ve decided to let the two initials be enough (despite a ton of searching).

–patrick