Entering the 2016 season, only 50 of Wyoming’s 65 high school football fields will have lights.
Of those 15 without lights, 10 stadiums belong to schools that play six-man football. The only 11-man programs without lights on their field are Mountain View, Lyman, Big Piney, Cokeville and Sundance — and Sundance won’t host any Upton-Sundance co-op home games this year as the field is rebuilt in a new location to make room for a new elementary school.
As more and more 11-man programs add lights, day games are becoming rarer and rarer as more schools opt for the Friday night lights.
Most of the schools playing day games this season are six-man schools. Ten Sleep is the only program in the state that will play every regular-season game in 2016 during daylight hours, and 14 of the 16 six-man programs will play at least half their games during the day.
Of 11-man programs, Cokeville’s seven day games is tops; Big Piney, Lyman and Mountain View will play five day games apiece. No other 11-man program will play more than half its games during the day. And 31 of Wyoming’s 64 programs will play all their games at night, including every 4A and 3A program.
Games were defined as day games if they started prior to 5 p.m. Zero Week scrimmages and jamborees of 4A weren’t considered.
Here are the schools playing at least one day game this regular season:
Ten Sleep: 8 day games
Burlington, Cokeville, Dubois, Farson, Hulett, Kaycee, Snake River: 7 day games
Normative Services, Rock River, St. Stephens: 6 day games
Big Piney, Hanna, Lyman, Mountain View: 5 day games
Guernsey-Sunrise, Meeteetse, Riverside: 4 day games
Lingle, Shoshoni: 3 day games
Greybull, Midwest, Pinedale, Rocky Mountain, Saratoga, Wyoming Indian: 2 day games
Glenrock, Kemmerer, Lovell, Newcastle, Tongue River, Upton-Sundance, Wright: 1 day game
Among those games are 10 games to be played in daylight hours at stadiums with lights. NSI is the leader here — only one of NSI’s four home games this year will be under the lights as the Wolves embrace the six-man day game tradition. Shoshoni will play a pair of home day games, while Guernsey-Sunrise, Riverside, Tongue River, Wyoming Indian and Rocky Mountain will each play a single day game despite having lights on their fields.
Want to see a full season schedule with kick times for every game? Click here.
Want to read up on Wyoming high school football stadiums? Click here.
–patrick