Morning Sports: September 25, 2024

Sheridan College Rodeo: This weekend is the Pat Hamilton Memorial Rodeo at the Sheridan County Fairgrounds as Sheridan College will host teams from the Central Rocky Mountain Region.

The rodeo season is 10 rodeos long with 5 of them in the fall season and the other 5 will take place next spring.

This weekend is number 3 of 5 for the fall.

Faith Heim of the Sheridan College women’s team competes in the barrel racing and breakaway roping.

She made a late season charge last season in the barrel racing, and ended up placing 5th in the region, but it’s only the top 3 at the end of the season that get to go to the College National Finals Rodeo.

Heim has already competed in 2 college rodeos this season and says the lone home rodeo could be just what she needs to get back into the competition, because so far things have not gotten off to a good start.

Another barrel racer, Maci DeHaan also has had her season not start off as well as she would like, but says she has faith in the system.

Rodeo competition at the Sheridan County Fairgrounds starts at 6pm on Friday and Saturday and at 10am on Sunday.

Slack rounds start at 12-noon on Friday and at 9am Saturday.

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Sheridan Hawks Hockey: The Sheridan Hawks swept a 2-game series this past weekend at Cody and are now 5-1 on the season.

Someone in the NA3HL’s promotions department has taken notice.

The league has developed its own power ranking system like you might see in the NHL, and other pro sports.

In the league’s first rankings of the season, the Hawks are #1.

Helena and Great Falls are right behind them at #2 and #3.

Joshua Serino currently leads Sheridan in goals and points, and is 2nd in assists.

He joined the Hawks mid-way through last year at about the time when the team was getting its act together.

Serino explains what’s been working this early in the season.

This weekend Sheridan plays a 2-game series at Rapid City, South Dakota and will return home the following weekend to host Great Falls.

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Sheridan County HS Football: There’s been a change to this weekend’s schedule.

Tongue River has announced that the game at Newcastle will now be played on Saturday at 1pm instead of tomorrow night.

All other games involving Sheridan County High School Football teams will play on Friday.

Sheridan is at home vs. Kelly Walsh, while Big Horn travels to Burns.

Both of those games are scheduled to kickoff at 6pm.

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Sheridan County HS Volleyball: This weekend’s schedule will be a busy one.

It starts tomorrow night as Big Horn and Tongue River play each other at TR starting at 7pm.

On Friday, the Lady Rams play at Wright, while the Lady Eagles are at home vs. Moorcroft.

On Saturday, Big Horn hosts Moorcroft and Tongue River will entertain Wright.

Meanwhile, Sheridan has 4A East Conference games scheduled for Friday and Saturday at Cheyenne South and at Laramie.

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Wyoming High School State Tennis: The 3-day state meet starts tomorrow at Gillette.

Competition on all 3 days is scheduled to begin at 8:30am.

Saturday’s matches will be championship and 3rd place matches only.

Last week the Sheridan boys won the north regional tournament, and will try to win only their 2nd state title in school history.

The only other one was back in 1985.

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Mountain West Conference vs. PAC 12: Things are starting to get ugly quickly between the Mountain West Conference and the PAC-12.

The latter has filed a lawsuit claiming the Mountain West Conference’s $10-million per school poaching penalty is unlawful, unenforceable and is a violation of anti-trust law.

When the 2 conferences put together a scheduling agreement for the 2024 football season, the MWC included the poaching penalty clause in the agreement as a disincentive and to help cover the costs for liquidated damages.

This is not related to the exit fee that each school must pay the Mountain West Conference for leaving.

Last week, Colorado State, Boise State, Fresno State and San Diego State announced their respective schools were leaving the Mountain West Conference to join the PAC 12.

Earlier this week, Utah State climbed on board.

Back at home, the Wyoming Cowboys football team will start Mountain West Conference play this week at home vs. Air Force.

Kickoff is scheduled for 6pm.

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Colorado Rockies Baseball: The Colorado Rockies lost the first game of a 3-game series at home vs. St. Louis last night 7-3.

Aaron Schunk hit a solo home run for the Rocks.

Today’s game is scheduled to begin at 6:40pm.

Colorado has 5 games remaining on the season, and are already assured of having a better record than last year, but still need to find a way to win 3 of those 5 games, in order to avoid a 100-loss season.