Three Wyoming high school football coaches have the chance to become the winningest coaches at their respective high schools this fall.
Cheyenne South’s Dan Gallas, Lovell’s Doug Hazen and NSI’s Anthony Simmons have the chance to win more total games than any other coach in their programs’ histories if they can win enough games this fall.
Each coach has significantly different thresholds to reach.
Hazen needs six victories to overtake Lovell’s all-time wins leader, Roy Strom, who has 59.
Simmons needs nine victories to overtake Mike Gorzalka, NSI’s all-time wins leader with 14.
And Gallas needs four victories to move past Tracy Pugh, the only coach South had known prior to this year, and his three victories.
They’ll join an existing group of 12 active coaches that are already have more victories than any other coach in their program histories. In descending number of total victories, they are:
Todd Dayton, 298 at Cokeville
Steve Harshman, 174 at Natrona
Mark Bullington, 129 at Southeast
Ray Kumpula, 109 at Glenrock
Vic Wilkerson, 101 at Gillette
David Trembly, 78 at Dubois
Larry Yeradi, 74 at Wright
Chad Goff, 65 at Cheyenne East
Michael Bates, 52 at Snake River
Andy Garland, 24 at Upton-Sundance (as co-op)
Trip Applequist, 16 at Farson
Terrance Reese, 2 at Rock River
The coach with the most victories at his current school without being the program’s all-time leader is Douglas’ Jay Rhoades, who has 81 victories but still needs 33 more to catch the Bearcats’ all-time leader, Pete Petranovich.
The biggest deficit to make up belongs to Laramie’s Chuck Syverson, who has nine victories at Laramie but still trails John Deti Sr. by 194.
–patrick