Get in your DeLorean, set the flux capacitor for Aug. 30, 2024, and crank that baby to 88 mph. When you’ve gone back a few weeks, ask someone which 12 Wyoming high school football teams will still be undefeated by the halfway point of the regular season.
After they get over the shock of the fact that we’ve made time travel possible in just one short month, you might get them to throw out some predictable guesses — Sheridan, Cody, Star Valley, Big Horn, Mountain View, Lingle…
Then, because you have knowledge they don’t, casually drop Saratoga into the conversation.
Of the dozen teams still with a zero in the loss column (Meeteetse, Encampment, Snake River, Pine Bluffs and Campbell County are the others, along with the aforementioned “predictables”), Saratoga’s no-loss start to 2024 might just be the most surprising. And the most overdue.
The Panthers are on their third head coach in three years, but new coach Jared Mason has things pointed in the right direction for a program starved for success. Saratoga hasn’t had a winning record since its six-man days; it hasn’t had a playoff berth since 2020 and hasn’t had a playoff victory since 2007.
Yep, that Saratoga is now the Cinderella undefeated team of Class 1A nine-man.
Last week’s victory was pretty easy for the Panthers, a forfeit against Guernsey. An 8-6 nail-biter against Lusk is the only tight game that Saratoga has had this season, with 50-8 (Wind River) and 67-7 (Cheyenne South’s JV) victories notched over the first two weeks.
This week, the Panthers play, well, the Panthers, as Wright makes the trip to Saratoga. Saratoga has actually won the last two games in this series by a combined score of 10-0 (yes, you read that right), with a 4-0 victory two years ago and a 6-0 W last year.
For karma’s sake, a 5-0 victory to make Saratoga’s record 5-0 would be fitting. Nevertheless, I’m sure Saratoga would take the victory no matter the final score to keep the winning streak going.
A 5-0 start is not unprecedented in Saratoga. But it’s been a while. Even a 4-0 start has been 20-plus years in the making.
The last time Saratoga started 4-0 came in 2003. However, after a 21-17 loss to Cokeville in game No. 5, the Panthers faltered down the stretch, going 1-3 to close out the regular season and losing to Big Horn in the first round of the Class 2A playoffs.
Prior to that, Saratoga’s best start — and best most recent season — came in 1982. That season, the Panthers racked up an 8-0 regular season, beat Moorcroft in the Class B semifinals and narrowly lost (7-2) to Lyman in the B championship game, finishing 9-1.
That was the most recent peak for the Panthers’ program. Since then, Saratoga has not reached a title game. And the Panthers have reached the semifinals just two other times, losing to Sundance in 2005 and Big Horn in 2007 in their only two other opportunities to reach the season’s final game.
This year’s Panthers still have challenges ahead. After Wright, the Panthers face 4-0 Pine Bluffs, 3-1 Southeast and 4-0 Lingle in the final three weeks of the regular season.
For now, though, the Panthers can enjoy this moment — and just maybe extend it further than anyone outside Carbon County, or anyone without a time machine, could have anticipated a month ago.
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At just past halfway in the regular season, some trends have started to emerge. Some other games that have my attention this week because of, or in some cases in spite of, those trends include:
Sheridan’s streak watch continues this week as the Broncs travel to Cheyenne Central. With 36 consecutive victories in their rearview, victory No. 37 would set the state record for longest unbeaten streak, breaking Worland’s 34-0-2 run from 1953-56. I don’t like to use the word “unprecedented,” because too many people often misuse as “I can’t remember any others like this but I’m too lazy to see if it’s actually the first time.” But a Bronc W would make the word the exact right one. ICYMI, I’ve mentioned this streak more than a few times here already this season, but hey? In more than a century of high school football in Wyoming, a streak like this has never happened. So I’ll indulge and enjoy this while it lasts. …
A couple of Class 3A teams with high expectations hit roadblocks in the first week of conference play, with Powell falling to rival Cody and Riverton coming up just short against Douglas last week. Their games this week will be good gauges for how the rest of the year might go, with Riverton venturing to Buffalo and Powell hosting Star Valley. …
Worland is turning into that 2A monster everyone thought they might. The Warriors have won three in a row to start West Conference play, allowing a total of six points in that stretch. Last week’s 27-0 shutout of Lyman was the most impressive in the bunch. This week’s Warrior foe is Lovell, and I’m intensely curious to see how that game goes — particularly if Worland gets caught looking ahead to Week 6 and undefeated Mountain View waiting there. …
If Lusk gives us any indication, the 1A nine-man East Conference championship chase should be pretty interesting. The Tigers play at Pine Bluffs this weekend, and after two close games in a row (an 8-6 loss to Saratoga and a 27-24 victory against Southeast), the Tigers’ outcome in this one will be yet another barometer in a conference that’s proving to be full of parity. …
After two victories the past two weeks by a combined nine points, Greybull gets the chance of the season this week when the Buffs host Big Piney. Winner gets control of their own destiny in the 1A nine-man West. Can Greybull’s good fortune continue against the defending champs? …
The Class 1A six-man North Conference has the most differentiated conference standings. Combined, the top four teams — Burlington, Midwest, Meeteetse and Riverside — are a combined 9-0 in league play. The bottom three — Hulett, Kaycee and Ten Sleep — are a combined 0-9. Something, finally, has to give when Burlington plays Meeteetse this week.
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This week’s schedule brings up an interesting trivia question: When is the last time a Class 4A-level school forfeited a game before it was played? That’s what Cheyenne South has done this week, forfeiting its game against Campbell County in Gillette due to what the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle’s Jeremiah Johnke said Wednesday was “due to the number of injuries limiting player availability.”
As it turns out, South’s forfeit loss is a 4A first. According to the research I’ve done, none of the current teams in Class 4A has ever — EVER — forfeited a game in advance, dating back to 1894.
That previous statement comes with several asterisks and caveats. A couple times, 4A teams have had to forfeit a game after it was played; hey, it happens. And many games at the big-school level have been straight-up canceled, with no winner or loser declared. The most recent one of these involving a current Class 4A school came in 1968 when then-Class B Upton canceled its game with Campbell County, which was then in Class A. Prior to that, the last big-school cancellation came in 1961, when Sheridan and Natrona failed to play each other for the first time in decades because weather wiped out what was supposed to be both teams’ season finales.
Before 1948 and the formation of classification football, such cancellations were much more common. Games were easier to let slide because without classifications, or even “official” conferences, games could go down as canceled instead of forfeited. This was/is a clerical conundrum more than anything. Asterisks and caveats, etc., etc.
Still, only a handful of times has even a current 3A-level school forfeited a game prior to kickoff. The last time I can find a 3A-level team forfeiting a game that wasn’t related to a disease outbreak happened in 1948, almost 76 years ago. The only forfeits involving 3A-level teams, on either side, in the long history of Wyoming high school football are these:
- Douglas won two forfeited games in 2021 against both Torrington and Rawlins during COVID-19 outbreaks at those respective schools.
- Rawlins won against Kemmerer at the end of the 1955 season via forfeit. Kemmerer hadn’t beaten another varsity program in four years at that point.
- Buffalo forfeited its season finale against already-conference-champion Newcastle at the end of the 1948 season due to low numbers and injuries. (This is the game cited above.)
- Torrington won by forfeit against Douglas at the end of the 1942 season, a season probably ended early due to wartime travel restrictions.
- Buffalo, like Douglas, also forfeited its 1942 season finale. The Bison forfeited to Newcastle due to “lack of funds as well as the absence of many students caused by their working in beet fields of that vicinity,” the Newcastle News Letter Journal said on Oct. 29, 1942.
- Both Powell (against Cody) and Douglas (against Lusk) picked up forfeit victories on Nov. 11, 1940, for unspecified reasons.
- Finally, Torrington beat Lingle by forfeit in 1925 after Lingle’s game with Gering, Nebraska, got pushed back a week due to weather. Lingle opted to play Gering instead of Torrington, as the Trailblazers already had a game scheduled that week with Morrill, Nebraska.
So it’s safe to call South’s decision this week unprecedented, too, just like Sheridan’s winning streak. But just as unprecedented, too, is the Bison’s losing streak, and apparently so too is their injury and depth situation. I’m not here to critique South’s decision; I’m here to point out its rarity, its unprecedentedness that’s forcing me to make up words like unprecedentedness to describe it.
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Now comes everyone’s favorite part of the week, the picks. I offer straight-up picks, with the projected winner in bold, because that’s difficult enough. You’ll never see a point spread predicted here. Sorry and/or you’re welcome.
Thursday
Class 2A
Kemmerer at Lyman
Interclass
Lingle at Cheyenne East sophs
Friday
Class 4A
Cheyenne East at Kelly Walsh
Laramie at Natrona
Sheridan at Cheyenne Central
Thunder Basin at Rock Springs
Class 3A
Evanston at Cody
Jackson at Green River
Lander at Douglas
Riverton at Buffalo
Star Valley at Powell
Torrington at Rawlins
Class 2A
Burns at Wheatland
Cokeville at Thermopolis
Lovell at Worland
Moorcroft at Big Horn
Mountain View at Pinedale
Newcastle at Glenrock
Tongue River at Upton-Sundance (at Upton)
Class 1A nine-man
Lusk at Pine Bluffs
Shoshoni at Wind River
Wright at Saratoga
Wyoming Indian at Rocky Mountain
Class 1A six-man
Encampment at Farson
Meeteetse at Burlington
Saturday
Class 1A nine-man
Big Piney at Greybull
Class 1A six-man
Hanna at Casper Christian
Hulett at Midwest
Riverside at Ten Sleep
Snake River at Dubois
Interclass
Buffalo JV at Kaycee
In addition to South-Campbell County, this week’s game between Guernsey and Southeast has been removed from the schedule, the Cyclones picking up the forfeit victory. For a full schedule including kickoff times, click here.
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Here are the results of my picks from last week and this season:
Last week: 27-4 (87 percent). This season: 107-35 (75 percent).
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We’re halfway through the regular season. What, aside from two unprecedented streaks, sticks out to you so far? Leave a comment here, or hit me up on the Facebook page or on Twitter.
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–patrick
TR at US is postponed due to the Elk Fire. Makeup TBA.