Fall practice is now underway for all SVHS sports as volleyball, football and cross-country had their initial meetings and are on their way to the mandated number of practices needed for competition. Ty Draney is beginning his 20th season at the helm of the runners, McKay Young is starting his ninth season as head coach of the football team and Suni Brown is embarking on her second season as head coach of the volleyballers.

• Cross-Country

According to Draney, about 50 runners turned out for their midnight practice affectionately referred to as “Cross-mas”.

“It’s pretty early to tell really but we’ve head a great summer mileage-wise,” he said. “Maybe the best we’ve ever had. The challenge we have as coaches is meshing the people who put in a lot and those who maybe did  less than that.”

Lightning was popping in the valley skies as the clock ticked over to Monday but most of the strikes stayed clear of the high school.

“We dodged some major storms and got some good times with a mile time trial and the kids ran fast,” Draney added. “We don’t spend a lot of time running fast in the summer, so to jump on the track and run fast is a lot like tearing off a band-aid, it’s a shock to the system.”

As mentioned in previous editions of the Independent, the Braves are going for a three-peat as Wyoming 4A champs and the Lady Braves return all five of their State runners from last season. The girls team in particular appears to have newcomers ready to challenge those returning varsity runners.

“For the first time in awhile we have more girls than boys,” Draney said.  “We have a lot of youth on the girls side but enough experience that we can mesh [them together] and surprise some people this fall. We’ve been talking this summer about the individual part of running can be a selfish act but a huge component of what we do is the team element. We is greater than Me is something we’ve talked about so there’s always something to look at as we compete with each other.”

• Volleyball

For coach Suni Brown, this is the worst week of the season not because of getting the volleyball machine grinding again, but because of cuts. The first few days are all about hard work and numbers and then some girls will not be part of the roster.

“I wish we didn’t have to do cuts and could get rolling but we have to gather a lot of data and information to do that,” Brown stated. “It’s a lot of drill work and stat taking. We do different kinds of singles and threes and sixes. There are a lot of numbers so that we have the information we need to make our cuts. These first few days are hard on the coaches and the girls and it’s kind of scary for them. But they showed up and are working hard.”

One big change for the Lady Braves is a change to the first varsity tournament of the season. For some 30 years the program has competed at the Cokeville Invite, but this year the staff made the decision to send underclassmen to Cokeville while their junior varsity and varsity teams will travel to Cheyenne. It is a choice to try and avoid any type of “shell shock” when the Lady Braves meet up with the state’s largest schools from the eastern side of the state in November.

“We really need to see those teams from that side of the state,” Brown continued. “We haven’t been [at this tournament] before but most of the teams from’ that side of the state go to Cheyenne and then Casper so we were hoping to get into one or the other. I feel like if we want to compete with the other side we need to play that other side. So hopefully this is beneficial for us.”

The upperclassmen will be in Cheyenne on August 30-31 and then in Evanston on September 6-7 before hosting at SVHS on September 13-14.

•Football

This year the expectations are sky high for the Braves as they officially begin their quest for a three-peat. This Braves return five All-State players from last year’s (11-1) campaign and start off the season with a pair of home games against Shelley (August 30) and Preston (September 6).

“We’ve got about 120 players out and we’re excited to hit the ground running,” stated head coach McKay Young. “Right now we’re trying to embrace the pressure to do it again. Rather than avoid that talk we’re talking about embracing trying to do something that hasn’t been done in about 60 years. Three-peats don’t happen much in football. People get complacent and cocky and lazy and winning isn’t good enough anymore so we’re trying to talk about it instead of avoiding it.”

One big change from last season will be the certainty of who will be starting the season at quarterback. A year ago, the program used Tristian Hilton, Smith McClure and Cooper Lancaster in the first few games of the year. A regular rotation of Hilton and McClure followed in the latter half of the year. Hilton is now graduated and Lancaster will likely be lining up all over the field this year as a junior.

“No quarterback controversy like we had last year,” Young chuckled. “It’s awesome to have Smith back who played really well and really finished on a huge game at War Memorial with four touchdowns. To have him bringing the momentum and confidence is big. We have maybe as talented a group of wide receivers as we’ve had. In the running back room we have a stable of guys and we talked to them about the process of defining guys’ roles and sharing that load.

“Our offensive line is as big as we’ve had and while we’ll miss some all-time greats like Clay Merritt and Jesse Gibson, we have some great guys coming back and some guys ready to step into those roles.”