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.
On a crisp autumn afternoon, the Shoshoni Wranglers played their first football game. An 18-0 loss to the Riverton Junior Varsity on October 26, 1929. The Wranglers played 11-man football in a brief three-game season.
The following year, they fell 26-0 to the Gebo Miners at home.
On Monday, October 16, 1933, Shoshoni scored the biggest win of their early history with a 6-0 decision over the black and gold, Riverton Wolverines in Riverton’s City Park.
After that, the Great Depression hit Fremont County hard, and Shoshoni didn’t field another football team until the fall of 1941.
That year the Wranglers rolled over Manderson, Pavillion, Fort Washakie, and Ten Sleep before losing the Wyoming 6-man state championship on November 19, 1941, to the Cowley Jaguars in Big Horn County.
The late Bud Currah and Dale Downey were an end and quarterback on that first Wrangler team to play for a state title.
It was an era of tumultuous times for the Wranglers, with the Great Depression and World War II filling up the pages of the Shoshoni Enterprise. There wasn’t much room for high school sports.
Another tumultuous era is descending on the proud tradition of Shoshoni football, this one a descent fueled by demographics.
Shoshoni and the Dubois Rams were the only teams in Fremont County to have played 6-, 8-, 9- and 11-man football in their history.
The 2026 season is in question for the Wranglers, with just a handful of boys coming out for football.
Fremont County School District Activities Director Matt Mason called every returning player on last season’s roster and could get only 13 to say they’d be out for football. That’s a light number, even for the Class 1-A 9-man West that Shoshoni plays in.
Head coach Tony Truempler resigned after last season along with long-time assistant Jody Good. The advertisement for their replacement didn’t run until late June, and complications with a new hiring platform delayed the posting of the position even later.
The result is that Truempler has agreed to come back for one more season.
It’s not the season the very successful Wrangler head coach was looking for. Truempler has one of Shoshoni’s three state titles, and an appearance in only one of two runner-up finishes.
The Wranglers won their first title in 1959, with the only undefeated season in school history. They beat Midwest in the semi-finals and Byron 20-6 for the state title.
In 1985, the late Harold Bailey’s Wranglers rolled to a 9-1 season with an 18-7 win over Cheyenne Seton on a snowy Okie Blanchard Field in Cheyenne.
Truempler’s 9-man Wranglers made back-to-back appearances in 2021 and 2022, beating Rocky Mountain 19-7 and dropping a close 33-27 game to Pine Bluffs, both at War Memorial Stadium in Laramie.
It’s not likely the Wranglers will reach the post-season this year. Not because they can’t win, but simply because a junior-varsity-only schedule is in their future.
With just 13 boys, and six of them incoming freshmen, it’s a challenge to play in a very competitive Class 1-A West. Rocky Mountain and Greybull have big rosters; Big Piney will field another great team, and Wind River and Wyoming Indian will both be improved. Incoming Saratoga has a bevy of talented athletes coming off a Class 1-A state basketball title. It’s not the place for ninth graders to take the field.
This is the reality in small schools where cycles of athletes rise and fall with each graduating class. When you get two classes back-to-back that have talented athletes, you have a chance to make a little noise statewide in small school athletics.
Shoshoni is not in that position.
The ones who suffer the most with a junior varsity season are the seniors. There are only two possible senior returners this fall for Shoshoni.
Returning all-state quarterback Caden Kisling was expected to be one of the best quarterbacks in all of Wyoming football, regardless of classification, but as is often the case, he’s an outstanding athlete in many different sports. Kisling is an excellent golfer, with a solid chance of being a state champion for the Riverton Wolverines and possibly a college scholarship as well.
Kisling will head to the links this fall, leaving the gridiron behind.
That leaves Cameron Eder and Brody Shepard as the two returning Wrangler seniors. Eder hasn’t committed to football yet, but Shepard has.
Shepard is another great athlete. He’s the defending Class 2-A 126-pound state champion and posted a solid 2:02 in the 800-meter finals at the state track meet last spring.
Naturally, his competitive instincts are high and he doesn’t want to play a junior varsity schedule in his final football season.
He doesn’t have many options.
His family could move, and he could play for Riverton, but he enjoys Shoshoni High School and doesn’t want to do that. Brody would be a great asset to Wolverine football, wrestling, and track.
The Wyoming High School Activities Association has well-established rules for transferring students. If the transfer is not due to a parental move, the athlete must sit out any varsity sport he participated in at his previous school for a full calendar year. That’s cut down on a lot of frivolous transfers over playing time and perceived favoritism.
But it hurts legitimate student opportunity.
If Riverton were to allow Shepard to play, the Wolverines would have to take all of Shoshoni’s enrollment, and Big Red would bounce to Class 4-A instead of their present 3-A classification. That’s not fair to the boys of Riverton.
There is an opportunity if, for some reason, there aren’t enough boys to field a team. No one has determined what that number is yet.
If there are only seven or eight players, Shoshoni can still opt to play a 6-man schedule.
As it is now, Shepard has the chance to earn all-conference honors even though he’ll be playing mostly junior varsity level games.
Shoshoni officials have contacted league schools, and they’re all in agreement that all-conference honors are still a possibility. The Wranglers will schedule a “hybrid game” with Riverside, in which Shoshoni plays 9-man when they have the ball and 6-man when Riverside is on offense.
Casper Natrona, under head coach Steve Harsman, has been gracious in sending lower-level teams to play 6- and 9-man teams.
Cheyenne East has played Shoshoni the past few years home and away in 9-man contests, and the lower-level Thunderbirds love the chance to play a different game.
We’ll know next Monday when players report for their first practices in 6-man, 1-A 9-man, and 2- and 3-A 11-man football. Class 4-A started earlier this week.
Hopefully, the boys will surprise the adults, and the Wranglers will have 15 to 20 players, and their schedule will be on the varsity level.
You’re only young once, and very few get a chance to play at the next level. Let’s hope the boys make the right decision.