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.
A rumor circulated around the state earlier this week that Torrington was pulling out of the Wyoming High School Activities Association and joining a conference in Western Nebraska. Like most rumors, there was a kernel of truth in an otherwise inaccurate story.
Torrington High School had joined the Western Conference in the Nebraska Panhandle, but that doesn’t mean they’re ditching the WHSAA.
In a prepared statement published on KOZY FM’s website in Torrington, it appears at first as if the Trailblazers are saying goodbye to the Cowboy State. Here is the official notice from the Goshen County School District published on August 7.
Torrington High School Joins Western Conference as Newest Member
“The Western Conference is happy to announce that Torrington High School has officially joined as its newest member school, effective for the 2026-27 school year. This exciting addition strengthens the conference’s commitment to fostering competitive excellence across Western Nebraska and now Eastern Wyoming. The Western Conference, made up of the largest school districts in the Nebraska panhandle, has been a premier league in Western Nebraska for many years, with rich tradition, and teams that often compete well at the state level.
Torrington High School, home of the Trailblazers, brings a history of athletic achievement and school spirit to the Western Conference. Torrington’s community and school size also makes them a great fit with the rest of the schools in the conference. Their inclusion expands the Western Conference back to six schools, (Alliance, Chadron, Gering, Scottsbluff, Sidney, Torrington) after Mitchell exited the conference following the 2024-25 school year.
The Western Conference anticipates great competitions and new rivalries as Torrington High School integrates into the league’s schedule.”
A call to Torrington High School Activities Director Gabe Bartlett quickly cleared things up.
“We used to be part of that conference,” Bartlett said. “It’s a scheduling thing because they’re so close to us. We try to play them as much as we can.”
Membership in the Western Conference is especially helpful with middle school sports, where Torrington has a two-hour driving limit for teams and competitions they can play.
“Our junior high football schedule is almost all Nebraska because we have a rule in middle school that we don’t travel far,” Bartlett said. “The farthest we go is Newcastle. We play Mitchell, Chadron, and Gering.”
The scheduling as part of the West Conference in Nebraska doesn’t extend to all sports.
“We don’t have it in all sports, we don’t play Scottsbluff, we do it for scheduling,” Bartlett said. “Mostly volleyball and basketball, not in wrestling or football.”
Nebraska doesn’t have conferences. Post-season play is determined in a point system.
“It’s like the wild west,” Bartlett said. “It doesn’t matter it’s all on a points system.”
Torrington plays in basketball and volleyball tournaments in Nebraska as a big part of their non-conference schedule. It’s only 32 miles from Torrington to Scottsbluff and they pass through Morrill and Mitchell on the way. In contrast, it’s 250 miles one way to play conference rival Buffalo.
Out-of-state opponents aren’t as common as they once were. In 1972 and 73, Riverton played Scottsbluff, Nebraska in football.
For two generations, Laramie High School, under legendary football coach John Deti, Sr., routinely beat up Denver Metro schools on the gridiron.
Pine Bluffs still competes in Colorado tournaments.
Cokeville, Lyman, and Star Valley compete regularly in football against Idaho, Colorado and occasionally Utah teams.
In the northeast, Upton and Newcastle often play teams from the Black Hills in basketball.
What you don’t see is many football games with out-of-state opponents in 6-man or 9-man, and you see none in Class 4-A. Class 4-A opens play when everyone else is in still in Week Zero play so everyone in the state can play everyone else. Scheduling takes a lot of the excitement out of competition in the big schools. It’s almost always a yawning blowout in the opening round when the top seed hosts the lowest seed in 4-A. Sometimes the fourth/fifth game is interesting but that’s about it in the opening round of the playoffs.
It wasn’t always this way.
Everywhere I’ve taught and coached, Lusk, Riverton, Shoshoni, and Wyoming Indian, I’ve perused the trophy cases, paying special attention to those dusty old trophies from the 1940s and 50s.
In Lusk, they have these beautifully bronzed plaques from games played long ago in the trophy case adjacent to the office in the high school lobby.
The first game the Tigers played was an 8-6 loss to the Sioux County Warriors of Harrison, Nebraska. Over the years, they played Edgemont, Provo, Igloo, and Hot Springs, South Dakota, Crawford, Chadron, and Rushville, Nebraska.
The first away game I ever coached was at Hemingford, Nebraska, in the second game of the 1980 season. We beat the Bobcats 13-0 that night.
Lusk’s enrollment plummeted in the 1970s. From the 1940s to the 1960s, the Tigers competed well against Campbell County, Torrington, Laramie, and Cheyenne schools. By the late 70s, their enrollment was below 200, and they were getting beat up on the gridiron, not just beaten on the scoreboard but losing players who had to go both ways against larger schools that platooned.
In 1979, they dropped to Class B and became a football powerhouse for the next 30 years.
In 1990, the WHSAA had a proposal to realign that had Lusk competing against many of those same teams that had beaten up their players just over a decade earlier.
The Tigers would have none of it.
They pulled out of the WHSAA for football and played an independent schedule. Two of those teams, in 1991 and 1992, were unbeaten and would surely have been state champions if they could have played in the division where they belonged.
In 1994, realignment again took place, and the Tigers were back in the fold with the WHSAA.
There is always a realignment proposal on the table for the WHSAA to consider. They’re usually introduced by the smallest school in the classification. You don’t see Natrona County or Star Valley trying to create new conferences. They’re the big boys in their divisions, and it wouldn’t affect them anyway unless Star Valley had to move up to Class 4-A.
The latest proposal is that football divisions be extended into all sports, or almost all. That means if you play 6-man football, you play 1-A basketball, volleyball and wrestling. If you’re 9-man it’s Class 2-A, 2-A 11-man means Class 3-A, with 3-A moving to 4-A and 4-A football playing all sports in a new 5-A format.
It’s a little untenable. Wyoming only has 77 high schools. Five divisions is a little excessive. There would be just 10 teams in 5-A, 12 in 4-A, 16 in 3-A, and 13 in 2-A. Everyone else would play in Class 1-A.
That’s not much competition in an 8-team state tournament bracket. If they took only four teams in each state tournament, it might make it more competitive, but in the age of “everyone gets a trophy,” that would never fly.