Note: This is the third in a series of stories about some of Wyoming’s biggest high school sports underdogs.
Compared to Wyoming’s larger schools, Saratoga was late to the wrestling party.
The Panthers did not even had a wrestling program until the 1953-54 school year, seven years after the sport was sanctioned in Wyoming.
Then again, Dale Federer was not a part of things until then.
Federer, who grew up on the family homestead in southeastern Wyoming, went to Cheyenne High and joined the wrestling team while at the University of Wyoming, came to Saratoga in 1953 with plans to bring the sport to the upper North Platte valley.
The challenge of developing a competitive, much less a championship, program to Saratoga was daunting. Once high school wrestling was established in Wyoming as a high school sport in 1946-47, early wrestling championships were the exclusive domain of big schools.
After Cody won the state’s first six wrestling championships, a group of big schools — Cheyenne Central twice, Rock Springs and Laramie once each — all won state championships. Usually, those titles came while competing against other large schools, who were often the only ones to field wrestling teams.
Only one classification of wrestling existed at the time, unlike the three-classification setup (4A, 3A and 2A) that Wyoming has today. In those days, small schools had little chance to compete for a championship, much less win one.
Then, behind an innovative coach and a rare collection of talent, Saratoga proved that assumption wrong.
The school had fundraisers to support the fledgling program. And even with a couple missteps, the Panthers’ youngsters were quick studies. Each year, they did a little better. In 1954, the Panthers finished eight out of 10 teams at the state meet; in 1955, they were seventh out of 12; in 1956, sixth out of 16.
By the 1956-57 season, the Panthers were consistently among the top wrestling teams in the state. Federer was president of the Wyoming Wrestling Coaches Association.
And in the first practice of that new season, one of the final pieces of a potential champion showed up in a freshman phenom who went on to rewrite Wyoming’s high school wrestling record books.
+++
Dave Edington has a special place in Wyoming’s high school wrestling history — the first wrestler to ever win four individual state championships.
His first title came in 1957. Not coincidentally, that season, Saratoga blitzed the competition, including all those big schools who were there first, and romped to the team title at the state meet.
This championship was no fluke. The tiny school that was only a few years removed from adding the sport had the deepest and most talented team in the state, beating the likes of Cheyenne, Casper and Laramie.
Saratoga finished with three individual champions — Edington at 120 pounds, sophomore Merle Oxford at 95 pounds and senior Ron Perue, who was undefeated for the season, at 145 pounds. Junior Gary Maki finished as the runner-up at 112 and sophomore Norm Perue was the runner-up at 154, while senior Rod Johnson was third at 133.
Saratoga finished with 73 team points, well more than runner-up Newcastle at 62. The remaining 13 teams in the team standings — all of them Class AA or Class A teams, as Saratoga was the only Class B team entered at the meet to score any points — couldn’t come close to matching the pace set by the Panthers.
+++
Edington was without a doubt a special talent. After winning his fourth title in Saratoga in 1960, all without losing an in-state match in four years, he wrestled at the University of Wyoming and went undefeated as a freshman. But in a match early in his sophomore year, his opponent suffered a blood clot mid-match and died. Edington was forced to take time away from wrestling, and when he tried to return, he was out of condition. He never wrestled competitively again.
However, his wrestling journey was only beginning.
As a wrestling coach in Ronan, Montana, Edington established his second legacy. Over 20 years (1968-88), Ronan won eight state championships, including five consecutive from 1978-82, and had 33 individual champions. Other accolades and opportunities rolled in at the state, national and international levels, including a coaching spot on the 1976 Olympic team.
Today, Edington is in his early 80s and lives in Ronan.
+++
Federer, meanwhile, found his calling beyond Saratoga and beyond Wyoming.
After returning to the University of Wyoming to pursue his doctorate in counseling, Federer joined the faculty at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo in 1963. He continued there until 1987, when he retired after a career that included starting a crisis hotline in the area and developing a senior peer counseling program. His civic leadership roles in San Luis Obispo continued long into his retirement, and he died in 2016.
+++
Although other wrestling championships came, Saratoga never again put together an all-class championship — in fact, Saratoga remains as the only all-class champion to come from the Class B ranks in the 18 years before Wyoming split into three classifications of wrestling prior to the 1964-65 season.
The Panthers finished fourth at state in 1958, third in 1959 and seventh in 1960. However, when three-class wrestling was established, Saratoga won the first three Class B wrestling championships in 1965, 1966 and 1967. The team also won Class B titles in 1974, 1975 and 1977 and came within a point of winning it all in 1976, as well.
However, Saratoga hasn’t finished in the top five at a state wrestling meet since 1998.
Even so, the Panthers’ title paved the way for other smaller schools to try wrestling. In less than a decade after Saratoga’s championship, three-class wrestling had come to Wyoming, and schools that had never tried wrestling before or had done so on a limited basis expanded their programs to take advantage of the new opportunity.
Direct lines can be traced from Saratoga’s 1957 championship to the sport as it exists in Wyoming today.
After all, it took the Panthers to prove wrestling wasn’t just a sport for big schools.
Did they ever.
–patrick