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.
You could call it “tales of the wind” or more simply, track season. Thankfully the wind we experience in Fremont County is somewhat erratic. That’s not the case in the “Wind Corridor” that extends from Evanston to Lusk in a pattern similar to home interest rates when the economy is strong.
If you’re a track athlete or soccer player, the wind is a constant companion in most of the state. Soccer balls are supposed to fly in parabolic arcs on long kicks, but often they make 90-degree turns in flight or stall completely when the Wyoming wind catches them. It’s almost as if a giant, invisible hand swats the ball on some blustery afternoons.
The exception to the gusts of spring is often the Big Horn Basin, where the constant gale force winds that buffet Rock Springs, Rawlins, Laramie, and Casper are much more subdued, at least most of the time.
I’m sure we had windy days at the old 330-yard track around the football field at the original Wind River High School at Morton back in the 1970s, but the funny thing is, I don’t remember it.
I do recall getting pounded with cinders on the backstretch of Wilford Mower Track in Riverton before it was resurfaced with a rubberized coating. Cinder tracks were fast, but hard to maintain, and if you fell, it was akin to sliding down a belt sander.
Sometimes, it’s the thaw that creates problems on the track. In an early season meet in Thermopolis late one afternoon and early evening, we had a quadrangular with the Bobcats along with Basin and Ten Sleep. It was a good meet, but the Thermop track had standing water in the first three lanes almost the entire length of the south curve.
We were running the mile, and my friend Cubby was far out in front. The rest of us were running in a pack of about a dozen guys. On the gun lap, we all picked up the pace into the last curve, the wet one. In those days, the starting line and the sprints were run on the west side of the track.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a red jersey cutting inside us. It was a kid from Basin trying to get in front in lane one. He moved in front of us by a stride then almost in slow motion began to slip and then fell face first into the water. He came in about 20 seconds after the rest of us had finished. Not the best decision.
You don’t usually find any wind at the Thermopolis track. That’s why it is arguably the fastest-running surface in the entire state.
Jump ahead a decade, and I’m taking my Lusk Tiger track team to a meet in Bayard, Nebraska. Lusk’s proximity to the Cornhusker panhandle had us running often in Bayard, Mitchell, Morrill, Gering, and Scottsbluff. Nebraska track, even small school track, is very competitive.
That day in Bayard, the wind wasn’t blowing, it was howling. Estimates were in the 60 to 70 mph range, not for the faint of heart.
Bayard had something I’d never seen, and haven’t seen since, self-righting hurdles. When a hurdle was knocked down, it sprang back up automatically. In retrospect, it’s probably not the safest technology since someone could knock down a hurdle in lane four and sent it into lane six, where it would right itself just as another hurdler was approaching.
You won’t find those at Harry Geldien Stadium at Kelly Walsh, the permanent site of the state track championships. What you’ll find is heavily weighted hurdles with sliding weights to counterbalance the height of the hurdle. The higher the hurdle the farther back the weights go. When a hurdler hits one of these, it usually breaks their stride unless they’re very powerful sprinters.
Breaking stride is common in Rock Springs on the Tiger track just below the high school.
I was coaching the Riverton hurdlers with head coach Casey Steele, and the wind was ridiculous that day.
The wind was at the back of the 100 and 110-meter hurdlers, which can also be a problem since it lengthens a hurdler’s stride, knocking them out of a three-step rhythm, and can cause some spectacular wrecks. There were no wrecks in the spring hurdles that day, but a lot of hurdles were knocked down, and the times weren’t so great.
The 300-meter intermediate hurdles were different. Boys and girls start at the same 300-meter mark on the far side of the track. They run about 80 meters down the back straight before turning into the curve, then down the home stretch to the finish line.
The wind was gusting to at least 50, maybe faster.
I had three girls and three boys in the race. One of the girls was slight, only about 5-2 and barely 100 pounds, the other was average, and the final one was a tall, strong gal. The gun sounded, and on the first hurdle, I knew there were going to be problems. The two bigger girls cleared as usual, but the little one staggered badly as she struggled with the wind. She made it over the first hurdle, but on the second one, she was just starting to hurdle when a gust hit and stopped her in mid-air. She came down on the hurdle, caught herself with her hands and pushed it down. She was automatically disqualified for pushing the hurdle, but she survived.
In the boy’s race, my guys did OK but were three seconds off their best time.
The only hurdler to finish close to his best time was Big Piney senior Kyle Gerik. At 6-2 and 195 pounds, Gerik was strong enough to battle the wind and came across the finish line around the 40-second mark. He went on to win both hurdle events on another windy day in Casper a month later.
The final windy story (aren’t they all?) takes place pretty much every year in Lander. For most of the day at the Shane Brock, the Twilight, or the Riverton/Lander duel, the weather is close to perfect at Bill Bush Stadium, but around 1:30 to 2 pm on many days, a little horizontal cyclone descends on Tigertown from the red foothills to the west.
I noticed it for the first time back in the early 2000s, and it’s been consistent since.
As I covered the meet, I didn’t notice that the Lander kids and coaches had quietly walked into the track shed or the gym. All that remained outside were the “pilgrims.”
The only sign it was coming was a little dusty cloud with a few pieces of paper flying toward us. It hit, knocking over hurdles, the tables near the finish line, lifted the timer’s tent and knocked over the pole with the automatic timing camera on it.
Then it was over.
Green jerseys and jackets came out and the meet went on without any other bad weather.
I asked my late friend, the legendary Lander track coach Bob Harms, how they knew to go inside just a few minutes before it hit.
With that characteristic grin, and the pencil behind his ear, Bob said, “We live here.”
We all do when it comes to the springtime Wyoming wind.