It’s been a long, challenging road for Fremont County girls wishing to play high school softball. In November 2019, the WHSAA voted unanimously to bring girls’ softball to Wyoming. The first season commenced in the spring of 2021.
There were originally 13 schools, six in the West Conference and seven in the East, for the inaugural season.
Cody, Green River, Kelly Walsh, Natrona County, Rock Springs, and Worland were in the west. Campbell County, Thunder Basin, the three Cheyenne schools, Central, South, and East, Laramie, and Wheatland made up the east.
There are now eight teams in newly aligned North/South Conferences with the addition of Sheridan, Jackson and Torrington.
You can add a ninth team beginning next spring with the Lander Lady Tigers.
“We can’t play varsity yet, there is a two-year rotating schedule,” Kesha Martell, one of the main players in bringing softball to Fremont County, said. “Lander will play a junior varsity schedule next spring.”
Lander activities director Matt George will set the schedule at a WHSAA scheduling meeting.
Working with Martell, who served as president, are Chelsie Wilson, vice-president, Danielle Hartenstein, secretary, and Leanne Massey, treasurer. Other board members include Nick Johnson, John Shade, Chantal Thompson, and Rusty Visher
“I don’t know where we will land,” Martell said. “There are 8 teams in 4-A north and south.”
Lander is in the middle of both conferences geographically. Their placement may come down to traveling distances.
“We’ll make the ninth team in one of those conferences,” Martell said.
The situation may take care of itself as Evanston is investigating softball.
“The Evanston coach reached out to me asking, ‘How did you do it?'” Martell said.
Lander won’t be the smallest school to play softball, but they’ll be much smaller than the Class 4-A teams. Wheatland, Torrington, and Worland all have lower enrollments than Lander.
“If they can do this, we can do this,” Martell said. “Maybe more teams will come on.”
Part of the process of getting school board approval for softball was renovating the fields.
“We worked hard to get our field up to par, we worked to get new scoreboards,” Martell said. “We will play at the softball fields right behind the high school.”
Since softball was first sanctioned six years ago, girls and their parents from across Fremont County have tried to get a team organized. Efforts failed in Riverton when the Fremont County School District #25 Board of Trustees chose not to pursue the endeavor.
The Wyoming High School Activities Association has a competition rule that allows students from adjoining districts to compete in sports that their school does not offer. Shoshoni has sent swimmers, soccer players, and cross-country runners to Riverton for decades.
That seems like a simple solution until you realize that Worland is the closest “adjoining” school, 85 miles from Riverton and over 100 miles from Lander.
Riverton and Shoshoni girls did compete in Worland, but traveling was a major deterrent.
“I played rec softball in Lander my whole life, from 8 to 18; it’s always been close to my heart,” Martell said. “When my daughter Savanna began playing, I knew I’d need to find her opportunities to play and play at a more competitive level. Do you want to drive to Worland to play on that team? That wouldn’t be wise to drive my daughter through the canyon and not be worth the risk. At that moment, we had just won the state championship 14U. We won two years in a row in the rec division.”
A state championship team in a rec division is different than a competitive high school program, but it does provide a tremendous boost in numbers and talent level for a fledgling program.
“We’re pushing our travel team as well,” Martell said. “What a great chance to get my girls playing high school softball.”
Lander has a talent pool of prospective coaches who are former college softball players and have shown interest in the program.
“This has been a two-year conversation. The first time we went to the board, they said come back to us in the budget planning. It took $60,000 total to start,” Martell said. “We didn’t give up. We asked if we could present during the budget session. Serol Stauffenberg left; they said we’d like you to work with our new AD. Matt George has been amazing; he wants kids in our district to have opportunities. Let’s look at all the reasons we can’t and solve those things. In the end, it all worked out.”
“Softball is a unique sport in that many girls don’t play other high school sports,” Martell said. “It allows students to become athletes that don’t normally do those things.”
Lander has 185 girls at present in their recreational softball league from age four to 14. They have 22 high school-age girls.
“If we can keep this momentum going, it’s gaining nationwide,” Martell said. “With the traction, I hope it can be even bigger.”