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.
Ever wonder why teams play where they do? School size, location, and travel are all factors.
The worst travel issues come in Class 4-A football. Many observers refer to the 4-A division in football as the “Interstate League.” It’s easy to see why; all 10 teams are on Interstate 80, 25, or 90. Though there are two conferences, East and West, in 4-A football, it doesn’t matter; they all play each other. That’s why the big boys get an extra week of regular season while the other three divisions are playing Zero Week games.
Rock Springs is what we call a statistical “outlier.” The Tigers are the only Class 4-A team west of Casper; everyone else is a relatively quick drive down the four-lane. The Tigers play their closest game with Laramie, just 209 miles away. Another 45 miles and they’re in Cheyenne. It’s almost 400 miles one way to Sheridan, Thunder Basin, and Campbell County. That’s a lot of bus miles, no matter how you stack it.
Why?
ADM, (Average Daily Membership) is the gauge used to determine classification for athletics per the Wyoming High School Activities Association. No matter how you slice it, someone will always be at the bottom of the class in enrollment, and someone else will have the largest student body.
There is no way to avoid that. Especially in a state with almost 100,000 square miles of territory divided into 23 counties, 48 school districts, and 70 high schools.
Classification doesn’t just come down to enrollment; it must factor in culminating tournaments, conferences, and scheduling as well. A little lip service is paid to “travel,” but that’s a little hollow when you see Wyoming Indian and Fort Washakie playing home and away with Big Piney, Kemmerer, and Saratoga next basketball season.
Historically, Laramie played three or four games each year in Colorado. Under John Deti Sr., the Plainsmen tore up the Metro teams in Denver. Cheyenne East and Central picked up Denver games as well, along with Greeley and the other larger schools in Weld County.
Look at the Lusk Tiger trophy case at Niobrara County High School, and you’ll see memorable seasons with wins over Igloo, Custer, Hot Springs, and other South Dakota teams. My first road game long ago as a coach was against the Hemingford Bobcats in Nebraska.
Riverton played a memorable home-and-away with Scottsbluff, Nebraska, in the 1970s.
But this is no more. Aside from Star Valley, which opens its season with three Idaho schools every year, very few teams play out-of-state opponents.
They don’t play traditional rivals either.
Sheridan and Buffalo is a classic series, so is Riverton and Lander. They still play for keeps in football, but in other sports, especially basketball, sometimes they don’t play at all.
Some of the old rivalries ended with the arrival of 6- and 9-man football. You can play a “hybrid” game as Casper Natrona graciously does with 6- and 9-man teams every season, but they’re not the same, and they give an advantage to the smaller team since they play on an 11-man field. It’s harder to contain a quick kid on the big field than it is on an 80×40 6-man field.
Football is a collision sport. Basketball, soccer, and wrestling are contact sports, but the physics of football put it on another level.
The Wolverines play football where they should, in Class 3-A. It gets confusing when basketball, volleyball, wrestling, soccer, and track and field roll around. Big Red is 4-A in those sports.
Once again, you might ask why?
The logic is that football requires more players and has a higher injury potential than other sports. That’s true. Doesn’t soccer have as many players on the field as football? Why do the Wolverines have to play Kelly Walsh and Natrona County, schools with soccer enrollments that are triple Riverton’s?
You only need five players in basketball and six in volleyball. If you have a great starting lineup and no injuries, you can play with anyone. But how often does that happen?
For basketball, the theory is that a 1-A team must have two great players, and eager role players to fill the gaps to be a contender. In Class 2-A, it’s three and an equally energetic group of kids who’ll step in to do the dirty work. Class 3-A, you get it, four and five in 4-A. At least that’s the logic. The reality is vastly different.
In 1990, the WHSAA reclassified football, moving Lusk to a larger conference. The Tigers had been there before. In the late 1970s, Lusk was pummeled weekly by Douglas, Wheatland, Torrington, and Buffalo. They weren’t going back.
Rather than play in that conference, the Tigers seceded from the WHSAA and played an independent schedule. They picked up Morrill, Nebraska, and continued to play their familiar Class 2-A Texas Trail opponents.
As is often the case, Lusk was about to go up a class when they had a small senior class and a lesser team. The Tigers went 1-7 that first year as an independent. The next two seasons under head coach Jerry Fullmer, they were unbeaten and would have been a strong contender for another state championship.
The Tigers stood their ground, and in 1993, they returned to the WHSAA and the class where they belonged.
Is it time for Riverton, Green River, and Cody to do the same when they’re placed in a 4-A classification? There is a natural break of over 100 students between Riverton and Evanston.
There are other glaring disparities. Tongue River moves up to Class 3-A with 190 students. The Eagles haven’t been competitive for a while in 2-A, and now they’ll play Douglas and Powell, two teams with 2.5 times their enrollment.
Numbers can be misleading. Fort Washakie jumps to Class 2-A in everything except football next fall. The Eagles are listed as having 114 students for the upcoming school year. Friends who teach at the Fort tell me a different story. They estimated only 40 to 45 kids walking the halls every day.
The state made an adjustment in classification for Wyoming Indian, Fort Washakie, and Arapahoe Charter by taking their two-year average and reducing it by 30 percent to reflect the reality of enrollment.
They haven’t done that for Moorcroft, who jumps back and forth between 2-A and 3-A. There is a religious colony near Moorcroft which doesn’t allow their children to compete in athletics. They account for a large portion of the school’s enrollment. The Wolves should never be 3-A, but they are at times.
Enrollment will always be an issue with 70 schools divided into four classes. Some want to go back to the old days of one division.
In 1922, Cowley beat Cheyenne for the state championship. The Jaguars beat Lander, Sheridan, Rock Springs, and Wheatland as well. Those days are gone. Lander beat Manville in that same tournament.
Others want more classes. That is one option. The top 10 schools all exceed 1,000. The next 10 don’t double the enrollment of the top and bottom, nor does the third. The fourth would have 18 teams, and the bottom class the remaining 22.
Classification in Wyoming will never be perfect, but when geography, participation, and enrollment point in different directions, it’s worth asking whether one formula can still fit every school…