About a year ago, I compiled a list of playoff records for Wyoming football coaches. One of the notable things about the list was that every coach on the list had his fair share of losses. Even the best coach can’t win every playoff game every year… right?
Well, I went back to the data, and as it turns out, of the 356 coaches who have coached at least one Wyoming playoff game, 33 are unbeaten in the postseason. Of those 33, though, only seven have three or more victories:
Rick VanCleeve, Thermopolis 1985-92, 9-0
Lee Kremers, Kaycee 2015-16, 6-0
Jim McLeod, Cheyenne Central 1979-89, 6-0
Wilford Mower, Byron 1945-52, 6-0
Lou Maiben, Byron 1954-57 and Wheatland 1959-62, 4-0
Will Gray, Pine Bluffs 2011-2016, 3-0
McKay Young, Star Valley 2016, 3-0
Three of these coaches — Kremers, Gray and Young — led their teams to state championships last season.
Of the remaining 26 coaches, 17 are 2-0 and nine are 1-0.
This is a tough list on which to stay. The longer coaches coach, the more likely they are to have at least one playoff loss. Even the best playoff coach, Cokeville’s Todd Dayton (whose 67 playoff victories are more than twice as many as any other coach in state history) has 14 playoff losses to his name, too.
Meanwhile, 128 of those 356 coaches are winless in the playoffs….
–patrick