Here is a fun little game to get us through the April doldrums, where the Laramie weather has turned downright October-ish and I keep waiting to grab my notebook and head to a game….
You have one game and three choices.
Winning this game is a necessity. Fortunately, you get to choose three pieces to this team, and they can come from any era of Wyoming high school football. On this team, you get to pick the coach, the quarterback and the kicker.
Who do you choose?
To get the discussion started, here is who I choose… but I’d love to hear your choices, too.
My coach: Todd Dayton. Give me one game, and I want Dayton, Wyoming’s all-time top coach in terms of victories, coaching it. I really didn’t understand, Xs- and Os-wise, how Dayton won so many games until November, but watching Cokeville play Lusk in last year’s 1A 11-man title game proved to me just how quickly he can turn a bad situation into a good one. If you remember that game, Lusk scored an easy touchdown on its first drive, but had a hard time making a first down — much less a touchdown — after that. After the game, the pack of reporters asked Dayton what his team did to fix the problem. He said it was a simple change along the defensive line to combat Lusk’s blocking schemes. That explanation resonated with me for a couple reasons. One, it only took one drive for Dayton, his assistants and his players to notice the problem and fix it. That’s efficient. Two, Dayton and his staff had trained their players well enough for them to quickly adapt to the new situation and to change what they had worked on all week to fit a new game plan. It worked — Cokeville won 26-6 — but the thing is that in Cokeville, such little, almost imperceptible, adjustments are what help make the Panthers a force year in and year out.
My quarterback: Corte McGuffey. Other quarterbacks have won more games. Other quarterbacks have won more championships. Other quarterbacks have thrown for more yards, more touchdowns, more completions. But ask me who I want under center for the game-winning drive. It’s Corte. He proved himself in Riverton by helping the Wolverines win a Class 3A title in 1994 — Riverton’s first state football championship, a game in which McGuffey threw for more than 400 yards — and then went onto a stellar career at Northern Colorado.
My kicker: Aaron Elling. The Lander Tiger/UW/Minnesota Vikings kicker has hit a few clutch kicks in his career. Although his leg never helped Lander win a state title, with a game on the line I want consistency. And Elling may be the most consistent kicker a Wyoming high school has ever produced (although Natrona’s Aaron Levin may come in a close second).
Your turn…. I am looking forward to hearing who you would pick. Only 129 days to the 2011 kickoff!
–patrick
You might be a victim of your own list Patrick, I don’t know that anyone would argue with your trio, and I don’t know that anyone can outdo them either!
Coaching-wise, I’ll take another Lincoln County product, Robert Linford but I admit I’m biased. 8 title games in 9 years got me that way.
McGuffy was the QB for Riverton my senior year of high school when the Wolverines came in and torched the Braves in the second round of the playoffs. I had never seen (and still never have) a Wyoming kid throw a better and mroe accurate deep ball. When former UW Coach Joe Glenn visited Star Valley we talked about that game because of his time at Northern Colorado and me chuckled that he had watched that game film. No wonder.
Elling as the kicker is a non-argument too. How can one argue a guy who had a productive NFL career and a stellar college career? Again, I’m biased because Elling kicked in Laramie during my time there. Lander always seems to have a great kicker regardless of who has been in charge of the team, there must be somebody carrying that torch.