School: Mountain View
Nickname: Buffalos
Colors: purple and black
Stadium: Clarence Lammers Stadium
State championships: 1984, 1995 and 1997
Times worth remembering: Few teams were as consistent as the Buffalos from 1995-2002. In those eight years, Mountain View played in six state championship games and won a pair, going undefeated in both 1995 and 1997. In those eight seasons combined, the Buffalos went 62-17. The Buffalos ran off a similar streak in 1962-67, going 40-4-1 with three undefeated seasons — but won no state championships, mythical or otherwise.
Times worth forgetting: Two abysmal stretches mark the Buffalos’ program. The first came with back-to-back winless seasons in 1972 (0-9) and 1973 (0-8) when the team was shut out 12 times in 17 games. The second came in a five-year stretch from 1977-80, when the team went 2-32; that includes back-to-back winless seasons in 1977 (0-7) and 1978 (0-6) in which the Buffs were shut out 11 times in 13 games and scored only 21 points total in the two seasons combined.
Best team: Of Mountain View’s six unbeaten teams, three stand out as outstanding — the 1962 team only gave up 12 points in a 6-0 season; the 1995 team outscored its foes 458-65, including 148-14 in the playoffs, on its way to a 10-0 record; and the 1997 squad allowed just 28 points all season and scored 327 on its way to a state title. Let’s just call it a draw; placed on the field against each other, they’d tie.
Biggest win: They say you always remember your first — and that’s certainly the case with Mountain View. The 41-14 2A title-game victory over Tongue River in 1984 helped not only the school, but the entire region. The Southwest had long been viewed as inferior by other regions (something demonstrated year in and year out by the statewide polls), but Mountain View’s ’84 title was the Southwest’s sixth B/2A championship in nine years. It was the end of the beginning for both the region and the school, and both went onto greater heights in the 1990s and 2000s.
Heartbreaker: The 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers may have coined the phrase, “Wait ‘til next year,” but Mountain View gave it a whole new twist. It all started in 1999 with the toughest defeat in school history, a 16-6 home loss to Bridger Valley rival Lyman, a team Mountain View beat in the regular season, in the 2A championship game. The loss began a string of “almost” — the Buffalos also lost championship games in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004. They have yet to win another state title.