Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Superlatives, that’s a word rarely heard in this age of constant complaint, but superlative it was last weekend at Harold Bailey Field in Shoshoni.
The Class 1-A / 2-A West Regional Track Meet is the largest among the six regionals held across the state, with eight Class 2-A boys’ and girls’ teams in attendance and 13 Class 1-A teams.
The Shoshoni staff did an admirable job of hosting the event. The parking lot was full. Athletes were in their place at the right place and at the right time and the facility was spotless.
That spotless facility requires a lot of work in a major event and Shoshoni Maintenance Director Skylar Rambo had his crew in place to handle the athletes, coaches, parents and fans of 42 teams from Cowley to Cokeville.
Those coaches were treated to another great display of “Wrangler Hospitality” in the aptly named “Hospitality Room.”
Mistalyn Steffen has a reputation for putting on outstanding hospitality rooms at Shoshoni events, whether it be regional track, the Wrangler Classic Basketball Tournament, or the Wrangler Wrestling Duals.
Michelle Rambo and the District 24 Recreation Board were in lockstep with Mistalyn in keeping the coolers stocked and the food hot as crowds descended on the room in waves. The eternally smiling Emily Jarvis was a gracious host throughout the event.
Tables that conducted experiments and a little biology class dissection were filled with Tuperware containers full of cookies and other treats.
Well done ladies.
On the track, the performances were impressive in both 1-A and 2-A Divisions.
If you haven’t noticed, high schools are springing up around Fremont County over the last decade or two.
Riverton was at Evanston and Lander on the Panther oval in Powell, but everyone else from Fremont County was in Shoshoni.
In Class 2-A, the host Wranglers, along with Wyoming Indian and Wind River, represented the larger classification with Rocky Mountain, Greybull, Kemmerer, Big Piney, and Thermopolis.
Fremont County had five 1-A teams in competition: Dubois, St. Stephen’s, Ft. Washakie, Arapahoe Charter, and Western Heritage Lutheran Academy. St. Stephen’s was the lone holdout for having athletes move on to the state championships later this week in Casper.
Izelee Hereford is the first Lady Eagle from Ft. Washakie to compete at the state track meet, she qualified in the 300-mter hurdles.
Moving beyond Fremont County, there were a couple of outstanding athletes from far away over South Pass in Sublette and Lincoln Counties.
Micah Strong has been a solid runner and overall athlete for four years at Big Piney High School. Defenders on the basketball court know that Strong is an Energizer Bunny with limitless energy. On the track, she is at another level.
Strong swept one of the most difficult combinations in track and field last Friday and Saturday, winning gold in the 100, 200, 400, and 800-meter runs. She had a fabulous weekend and will continue her sprinting career at the University of Montana Billings.
The outstanding performance came from sophomore Cole Rogers of Kemmerer. Sophomore boys can be great varsity athletes, but Rogers set the standard a bit higher.
He swept four events as well, winning the 100 and 400-meter dashes. His 400-meter time of 49.6 is fast for any division or age, for a sophomore it’s incredible.
While his 400 time was spectacular he blistered the hurdle events running 14.4 in the preliminaries on Friday of the 110-meter-high hurdles, then adding a 38.4 in the 300-meter intermediates later in the day.
I missed the 110 hurdle prelims shooting pics at the shot put ring but a few people told me Rogers ran with something in his teeth.
On Saturday, as he beat the field by two full flights of hurdles, I shot close ups of him as he ran, and he hurdles with a medal clinched between his teeth. Who is to argue? It’s working well for him.
In Powell, a pair of Lander Lady Tigers continued to just get better and better. Between them, Adelyn Anderson and Paisley Hollingshead hold six Lander Valley High School track records. Anderson is a junior and Hollingshead just a sophomore.
Anderson already holds the Class 3-A state record from last year’s throw of 44-7.25 in the shot put, but she’s after Baillie Gibson’s overall record of 48-9, scored 15 years ago. Anderson threw 48-6 at the Shane Brock so it is in reach.
In Powell, she broke the Lander discus record set by Shelly Dove in 1996. Dove’s throw was 152-5, while Anderson threw 161-6, which is two feet farther than the all-class record also held by Gibson.
Hollingshead has competition in the long jump with Jaden Meyer of Douglas just an inch behind her 3A West winning leap of 18-0.5. She set a new Lander record last weekend, with a high jump of 5-6.25 and holds the 100 and 300-meter hurdle records as well. Meyer is her competition in both hurdle events with a just a few tenths of a second separating them.
In Class 4-A Riverton has a pair of athletes who will contend for state championships.
Addison Alley enters the 100-meter hurdles with the fastest time in the state, but Tristyn Buss of Kelly Walsh is just a tenth behind her.
Wolverine junior Kayden Liebrecht must have eaten his Wheaties last weekend in Evanston. Liebrecht has thrown over 50 feet several times this season in the shot put and won the West 4A with a throw of 51-2.
His discus was a full 26 feet behind his previous best in Uinta County. Liebrecht tossed it 169-7, but trails Gillette’s Raynor Ranum by 18 inches entering the state finals.
Liebrecht is chasing one of Riverton’s oldest track and field records, dating back to 1970 when Dave Kucera won the then AA Class with a toss of 172-3. Rylan Koehn’s record in the shot, 52-7.75 was set recently at the state finals in 2021.
The dreaded Natrona County weather, with its own systems often forming atop Casper Mountain, is supposed to be tame this weekend. We’ve heard that before.
In a venue that’s seen rain, hail, sleet, snow, hurricane-force winds, and even tornado warnings, we all take the weather forecast with a grain of salt.
A final note on kids being kids, despite the pressure some would put on them. At the motel, the Big Piney girls decided to sparkle a bit more than their performances on the track showed. Each Lady Puncher had ample amounts of glitter in their hair. I didn’t notice it until I was reviewing photos on my camera and noticed bits of light in the Sublette County girl’s hair. I thought at first that my camera was failing, nope, just my fashion sense.
Here’s to a good weekend.