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.
It’s that time of the year. The trunks are packed for another nine months with the gear from fall. Shoulder pads, helmets, sleds, blocking dummies, and ropes are all packed away by the first snowfall. The runners of autumn take a few weeks off before they begin indoor competition and the swimming pool switches from girls to boys.
For volleyball, at present, like soccer, there isn’t much of an off-season. Many of the girls play year-round in a misguided attempt to master the sport. Playing only one sport diminishes the performance of the athlete in that endeavor, but you’ll never be able to convince parents that their budding Division I all-star isn’t improving with every AAU, Rec League, or off-season contest.
Oh well, have at it while the boys and girls who play multiple sports continue to improve and surpass one-sport athletes. It’s not just once; it’s every time.
The arrival of winter last Saturday reminds us we don’t live on the West Coast, the deep South, or the Southwest, where sports like baseball are played 12 months a year. We in the less temperate zones must turn indoors except for Nordic and Alpine skiers.
It’s basketball and wrestling season, with a smattering of indoor track meets in the larger communities with better facilities than we find here in Fremont County.
Tournaments dominate the first half of the basketball season, and they’ve become the only venue in wrestling aside from a few classic duals like Riverton vs. Lander or Lovell vs. Powell. The tournament nature of wrestling offers mostly open tournaments where wrestlers from any school, no matter the size, can meet boys and girls in their same weight class from anywhere around the state and in neighboring schools in Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska.
Basketball is different. Some may like the eternal tournament aspect, but I don’t. It gets old from the onset. Endless tournaments, auspiciously to “get the kids exposure,” drag the season into just four weeks of league play with home and away games against conference opponents. Gone are the days of rivalries, both local and long distance, replaced by the endless tournament season.
With the theft of the Strannigan Tournament by Casper, the Wolverines and Lady Wolverines won’t play a home game until mid-January. In all, Riverton has just five home games this entire season.
What does that do for Grandma and Grandpa, who just want to watch the kids play a few games? It makes it difficult to follow the local team. Even mom and dad have trouble getting off work when their children are on the court in Casper, Rock Springs, or Cheyenne for much of the season.
Add the alluring, “Siren Like” (you’ll have to understand the Ulysses metaphor for this) attraction of the Wyoming Sports Ranch in Casper, and the amount of local games diminishes even more. The attraction of playing on the “state tournament floor” at the Ford Wyoming Center is killing local tournaments.
Now it’s just Class 4-A with a toss to the defending Class 3-A State Champion Lovell Bulldogs, but next year the Casper tournament will extend to two weeks with one three-day weekend dedicated to Class 1-A/2-A and the next to Class 3-A/4-A. That will diminish or eliminate excellent tournaments like the Wrangler Classic in Shoshoni or the East-West played every other year in Ethete and Pavillion, with Big Piney facing teams from Sheridan and Campbell County.
The Lander Tournament, with the boys playing at home and the girls in Douglas, then vice versa the next year, is likely to go as well.
Tournaments are big business. Each state final brings $3-5 million to Casper, and they get every one of them in Natrona County. Volleyball, boys’ and girls’ basketball, wrestling, and the all-class state track championships are all revenue generators for the businesses in the Oil City.
We’re left with nothing.
On the subject of nothing, how about disappearing this basketball season? By disappearing, I mean, how about leaving the officials alone? The shortage of basketball officials is reaching critical levels. The reason is simple, the idiots in the stands are making it less and less appealing for men and women to give up their Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday Nights and Saturday afternoons to officiate a local high school game.
Fan behavior has passed the atrocious level and now borders on the criminal.
My oldest granddaughter, Jayne Orbell, competed in basketball for the first time this fall as a third grader at Queen of Angels Catholic in Norwin, Pennsylvania. Jayne loved it and is now playing in a recreational league in Norwin.
Even at this level, little eight-year-old girls, there are overzealous coaches that cheat, fans that lose their minds on an obvious traveling call, and adults who act like anything except adults during games.
The Diocese of Greensburg, which supervises the Catholic School League that Jaynie plays in, takes parent actions, fan behavior, and decorum in the stands and on the court seriously. They’ve prepared a statement that must be read by a parent before every game, from third grade through high school varsity level competition.
The Wyoming High School Activities Association has a similar statement on fan behavior that is read prior to each varsity game, but it might as well be Helen Keller in the stands, since the moronic clowns that attempt to intimidate officials and change the outcome of calls don’t notice it at all.
It is a fabulous message, but one that is totally ignored.
How many times must some idiot in the stands be thrown out by local law enforcement after an official stops a game and calls the administrator on duty to throw out the miscreant? How many times must an official be hit with wads of popcorn sacks and booed after making a correct call at a crucial time before we end up playing in empty gyms with just the teams and coaches in the gym?
How many times must this persist until we no longer have basketball games because the “adults” can’t control themselves?
Cheer load? Sure, it’s part of the game, and the kids love it. As a coach, I relished the wall of noise rising up behind me, whether in support of my team or the other squad on the floor. It was awesome.
I’ll never have the experience of the wall of sound that came down from the Wyoming Indian fans as my Shoshoni Wranglers watched a 10-point lead evaporate in just 75 seconds in the first game ever played at the Alfred Redman Memorial Gym at Ethete.
We held on to win by four points in overtime. The memory of that encounter with my late friend, Alfred, the man who brought basketball to the Wind River Reservation, will be forever stamped in my memory.
Try to behave yourself this winter. The game is for the boys and girls; it’s not about you, it’s not about partisan announcers or other adults in the stands.
It’s about the kids, and the officials who make sure the game is played fairly and by the rules.