North-Central Wyoming High School Football Players Preparing For WY Shrine Bowl 2024

Strong legs will run (and play football), so that weak legs can walk.

On Saturday, (June 8th), 11 recent high school football graduates from North-Central Wyoming will try to bring glory back to the North.

It’s the annual Wyoming Shrine Bowl football game, as the North and South battle for bragging rites, and to raise funds for the Shriner’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The North leads the overall series, but the South won last year’s game.

Sheridan High School Quarterback Dominick Berrettini says this year’s players had nothing to do with last year, but they’ve been hearing about it, and he adds this year’s North team is ready.

“When we had a dinner before we left with the Sheridan, Big Horn, Tongue River players, the whole time those Shriners guys were saying ‘bring that trophy back to the North.’ It’s sitting in the back of our minds for sure. I wouldn’t say we have a chip on our shoulders. We didn’t get to experience it, but we come down here for this charity game, but at the end of it, we want to bring that trophy back to the North. It’s so different, especially the guys that we’ve always played against and then bringing up some of those 6-man and 9-man guys, and then 2A, 3A guys, but everybody’s blending in pretty well. We’ve got some key building stuff and I think that’s got us rolling a little bit extra on that team bonding stuff and everybody’s doing a super great job, just coming together.”

In the past, players would take a trip to the hospital to visit patients, but that did not happen this year.

Instead a few patients visited the players to share their stories and experiences.

Berrettini says talking with those patients was a real eye opener.

“Some of the kids we met, I think they can’t even do sports. A lot of them have trouble walking, anything like that. What comes to mind, there’s was a young man, adopted from China, he had something wrong with his leg, going through all these surgeries and he can’t even do anything. Same with this girl, she has got scoliosis and can’t play normal sports like we can or they want. We take it for granted, I want to say, and so that’s a big reason I think why some of these guys are out here to play.”

Saturday’s Shrine Bowl football game is scheduled to kickoff at 2pm from Natrona County High School in Casper.