sports

On a bright and warm morning, Campbell County High School's football players are slowly shuffling out of the locker room and out to the practice field. The players have already had a conditioning workout earlier and a coaches' talk. Now they are waiting for the second practice to start.

Anna Royo and Maria Oreshkina were playing a tennis match in Denver when they found out that their whole athletic season came crashing to an end.

"Everything was shocking 'cause like, overnight, it was—everything was cancelled," Anna Royo said.

As the University of Wyoming football team struggled down the stretch on offense, few people took it harder than offensive coordinator Brent Vigen. In fairness he was in a tough spot, he'd lost a number of offensive lineman, two running backs and his starting quarterback due to injuries.

As the Cowboys prepare to play in the Arizona Bowl Vigen tells Bob Beck that the silver lining is that a lot of young players just missed winning a couple of big games and that the future of Cowboy football is bright. However…the season certainly didn't go as planned.

This week University of Wyoming women's basketball coach Joe Legerski surprised many by announcing his retirement. Legerski is the winningest coach in program history and was coming off a 25 win season. He tells Bob Beck that a big reason for his choice had to do with family considerations.

The Official NCAA wrestling season is over, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t still wrestling going on. University of Wyoming’s freshman are still preparing to compete in this month’s U.S. Open.

This past weekend was the 20th Cody Ice Climbing Festival. The festival is a weekend long featuring nightly speakers and ice clinics. Angela Vanwiemeersch, a professional ice climber, has been climbing for over five years. As a woman, she teaches many all women classes. She spoke with Wyoming Public Radio’s Kamila Kudelska about how she got introduced to ice climbing and how the sport is becoming more attractive for women.

The football season may be over, but the conversation around concussions marches on. The day before the Superbowl, the NFL gave three winning companies $50,000 each to help them develop superior athletic technology.

Most states have existing laws or pending legislation requiring public schools to teach sexual violence prevention. That leaves Wyoming as one of the few states with absolutely nothing on the books. The Wyoming Sexual Violence Prevention Council is working to fill that gap by supporting a growing network of local projects; among them is a program that works with K-12 student athletes.

Jackson, Wyoming is all about extremes. Folks from across the country flock to the mountain town to summit peaks, to ski fresh powder and to party. Athletes are revered for going over the edge, whereas those who fall into addiction are not. But what if the underlying cause of an avalanche death and a drug overdose are one in the same? The Mindstrength Project is taking advantage of that connection.

Many programs on the University of Wyoming campus are facing budget cuts, but there are those who believe that academics is suffering more than it should.

That’s especially when compared to athletics. In public forums several faculty and staff members say they want athletics de-emphasized at the University. The reason is because they think it costs a lot and is not priority. 

It’s safe to say that 2015 was a terrible year for the University of Wyoming football team. A slew of key injuries, coupled with inexperience on the defensive end, saw the Cowboys finish with a horrific 2 win and 10 loss record. The good news is that Wyoming returns 18 starters from last year’s team and the hope is that they will be much improved. 

For many years, the University of Wyoming choir programs have been recognized as among the best in the country.

Since 2008 Doctor Nicole Lamartine has been the Director of Choral activities and she’s so highly thought of that she conducts and give seminars around the world and she’s a highly regarded singer in her own right. But she also has a hidden talent as a weight lifter.

A power lifter to be exact and a pretty good one, for instance, she currently holds the world back squat record after squatting 265 pounds.

The Wyoming Cowboys football season fell apart last year. The Cowboys finished with five wins and seven losses, but lost five of their last six games. After the season ended the Cowboys also lost their Coach, and watched their starting quarterback AND his backup leave the team. New Coach Craig Bohl had a lot of success coaching at North Dakota State where he won three National Championships in a division below Wyoming. The question is whether he and his coaching staff can turn things around in Laramie. 

University of Wyoming football coach Craig Bohl has been a winner at a number of places.  While an assistant Coach at Nebraska the Cornhuskers won two national championships and his last three teams at North Dakota State won the last three Football Championship Subdivision titles. 

He is taking over a Wyoming team that has struggled with consistency in recent years, especially on a defense.  Bohl is friendly, but businesslike.  Unlike most football coaches he wears a jacket and a tie to work.  He told Bob Beck that the transition to Wyoming has been a good one.