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.
Ralph Cottrell compiled a record of 45-17 in three seasons, but never qualified for the state tournament and didn’t get a fourth chance. He established a trend that would follow the head coaches of the Shoshoni Wrangler boys for the next 87 years.
Shoshoni played just one, two, or three games from 1932 to 1937, but in 1938, Cottrell’s first year as head coach, they had a full schedule of 23 games. The Wranglers were 17-6 that year.
Over the next 87 years, 42 different head coaches have led the Shoshoni boys’ basketball team.
Three coaches lasted six seasons, beginning with Bill Sollars in 1960, Brady Slack in 2014, and me from 1987 to 1993.
Sollars posted three straight state championship teams, winning it all in 1962, 63, and 64. In his first five years, he had winning seasons and qualified for state four times. In 1965, the Wranglers were 7-13. Sollars didn’t come back in 1966.
The Wranglers added state championships in 1952 and 53 under Jack Herron, a 1967 title with Larry Clause as head coach in 1967, and my boys in 1988.
Shoshoni qualified for the state tournament 24 times since the 1938 season.
From 1997 to 2022, Shoshoni never made the trip to the state tournament in Casper, one of the longest dry spells in all of Wyoming basketball.
In those years, they went through a dozen coaches. I knew them all, and most of them were excellent teachers, mentors, and coaches, but they didn’t last long.
It’s a trend in Shoshoni that needs to stop.
It’s not just boys’ basketball. Football coaches get the same treatment, though on a lesser scale.
The late Harold Bailey was informed of his removal as Wrangler head football coach on a morning sports radio show. None of the administrators had the professionalism to let him know in person.
The same thing happened to Gordon Maxson after he built a program up from an 0-19 season to respectability, including a win over the best basketball program in Wyoming, the Chiefs of Wyoming Indian.
Here are the names and tenure of the men who gave up weekends, rode countless miles on yellow school buses, ignored their families, and spent the entire winter in a gymnasium with a couple dozen high school boys while being gossiped about, lied about and reviled by many of the parents of those same boys.
Richard Cotton (4), Ken Swartz (1), Randy Gates (1), Gordon Maxson (3), Marty Weber (3), Rick Reid (3), Brad Nimmo (1), Travis Draper (1), Max Mills (2), Dan Martin (1), Brady Slack (6), Cory Sova (1), Jonathan Wakelin (3), Taylor Dick (2).
Let’s take a close look at the Wranglers’ Fremont County rivals, just 50 miles to the southwest at Ethete, since 1983. Here is a list of Wyoming Indian’s head coaches over the last 42 years, with their tenure: Alfred Redman (23), Craig Ferris (19). The Chiefs qualified 37 of those 43 years with Redman and Ferris. Wyoming Indian won the state tournament 13 times since 1982, six under Redman and seven under current head coach Ferris.
Two head coaches in 43 seasons, as compared with 18 at Shoshoni in the same time period.
I’m writing this because the same poison that led to 42 head coaches in 87 seasons, an average tenure of just two years for a boys’ basketball coach in Shoshoni is once again festering to the surface.
A coalition attended the Fremont County School District 24 board meeting last week calling for the termination of Taylor Dick as head coach.
I’ve watched Taylor coach the Wranglers for the last two seasons. He knows the game, knows the kids, and gets a good effort from the boys every night. I don’t attend practices, but then neither do the naysayers who always want a new head coach.
In high school athletics, the kids win and the coaches lose games; that’s just how many fans view the process. Their little superstars are just inches away from a Division I scholarship and the fame and fortune of the NBA if that doggone coach would just play them more.
Here’s a scoop, mom and dad, your kid isn’t that good.
After we won the state title in 1988, I had a couple of parents with their junior high school age boys come up to me after school one day.
“Where are Daryl and Troy going to play next year?” they asked.
They were referring to Daryl Fullerton and Troy Stone, two outstanding players.
Daryl was headed to Utah to play baseball, and Troy to Montana to play football. I told the kids and their parents that.
“No, we mean which NBA teams are they going to play for?” they said.
I laughed out loud, and none of them appreciated it.
“They’re great Wyoming high school players,” I said. “Very few Wyoming boys play small college basketball, much less Division I or the NBA.”
They walked off in a huff, bruised by a dose of reality.
Reality is what many parents need. If they put as much emphasis into academics as they do athletics, their children would fare much better in the adult world waiting for them.
But as Uncle Rico said in Napoleon Dynamite. “How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?… Yeah… Coach woulda put me in fourth quarter, we would’ve been state champions. No doubt. No doubt in my mind.”
That’s the mindset that faces every Shoshoni boys’ basketball coach and has been the case since it all began back in 1938.
It needs to change.
My favorite story in how to battle this trend goes to head coach Chuck Wells in the 1986-87 season.
Fans and parents have become more brazen with the arrival of social media, but back in the dark days before the internet, it was word of mouth and petitions that worked behind the backs of coaches.
One night, at a home game, Chuck and I knew there was going to be a petition passed around calling for his termination. Chuck knew who the parties were, everyone does every time in a small town.
We all know who the people upset with Taylor Dick are, they’re the ones that send him epic e-mails, and miles of texts complaining about why their son doesn’t play more.
We spotted the petition going through the stands on the opposite side of the bench during the game. Chuck leaned over to me and said, “Coach, let me know when that petition is right behind us.”
I kept track. It was about five rows up, directly behind our bench, and I told Chuck. He said, “Tell the boys to block the baseline and put them in a 22 trap,” then he called timeout.
As I huddled with the team, I watched Chuck walk up the five rows of bleachers, rip the petition out of a guy’s hand, and heard him say, “Give me that son-of-a-bitch, I’ll sign it.” He signed the petition calling for his termination.
The petition stopped there and didn’t come back.
The point of this is that Taylor Dick is a good teacher, a good role model and a good coach. On top of that, consistency is badly needed in the Shoshoni boys’ basketball program. The two and you’re through needs to stop.