School: Big Horn
Nickname: Rams
Colors: maroon and yellow
Stadium: Dow Memorial Field
State championships: 1985, 2003 and 2004
Times worth remembering: Under Bobby St. John, the Rams of 2002-04 went to three consecutive state championship games. They won two, but more than that, they set a standard of excellence that the 21st-century teams have aspired to reach. Since ’04, the Rams have made it back to the title game two more times and have been perennial contenders in Class 2A.
Times worth forgetting: The Rams went five years without a win from 1959-63, going 0-26-2. The streak eventually reached 31 games — fourth-longest in state history — before Big Horn beat Ten Sleep 19-7 on Sept. 25, 1964. After that, the Rams promptly went 0-12-1 in their next 13 games.
Best team: What set the 1985 state championship team apart was its defense. That year, the Rams shut out their first five opponents and only gave up 35 points the entire season. Big Horn rode that defense to the Class 1A championship, winning three tight, critical games in a row (a 14-12 win over Midwest in the final week to make the playoffs, followed by a 21-3 win over Cokeville and a 7-6 victory over Wright in the postseason) to cap a 10-0 season and the school’s first championship.
Biggest win: Beating Lusk in the 2003 Class 2A title game officially completed Big Horn’s resurrection. Only a year before, the Tigers had thumped Big Horn 31-0 in the title game, but with a core of seniors surrounding some talented juniors, the Rams blew through the regular season with only one close game and rampaged the 2A playoff field, culminating with the win over the Tigers, the long-awaited championship and something else that came much later, but was certainly aided by that championship: the title of perennial contender.
Heartbreaker: St. John’s last game as coach of the Rams is one they’re still talking about in Wyoming’s football circles. The 2007 2A title game came down to the final moments, and Riverside snuck out a 21-20 victory after driving 99 yards on a late fourth-quarter drive, then cashing in a two-point conversion on a run by Chanse Darling.