90 years ago this week: When disease stopped Wyoming basketball

We all remember six years ago how disappointed we were when the Wyoming state high school basketball championships were suddenly cancelled. Gyms went quiet. Teams that had battled through months of winter practices and games were left without a final tournament – at least for Wyoming Class 3A and 4A. For players, coaches and fans, it was heartbreaking.

The cause, of course, was COVID-19.

At the time, it felt unprecedented. Generations of Wyoming athletes had grown up assuming that every season ended the same way, with teams gathering for a state tournament and a champion crowned on the court.

History, however, reminds us that it wasn’t the first time disease stopped basketball in Wyoming.

Ninety years ago this week, in March of 1936, the state tournament was also cancelled. The reason had nothing to do with war, the Great Depression or a natural disaster. Instead, it was the same basic problem that frustrated athletes in 2020: contagious diseases spreading through communities and schools.

During that winter, outbreaks of several illnesses were moving through Wyoming towns. Among them were mumps, whooping cough, influenza and scarlet fever, highly contagious diseases that spread easily among school-age children. This was long before the vaccines and antibiotics that later helped control such illnesses. When outbreaks appeared in a community, they could move rapidly through classrooms and entire schools.

Newspapers from the time show how seriously officials treated the situation.

In early March 1936, the News Letter Journal in Newcastle reported that Upton basketball teams were forced to forfeit games rather than risk spreading illness between towns. School officials explained that cases of mumps and scarlet fever were present in the community and that many students were absent because of the outbreaks.

The concern was straightforward. Bringing large groups of students together from multiple towns could easily spread the diseases further across the state.

Soon the problem was confirmed to be much broader. Reports from the Casper Tribune-Herald explained that the Wyoming State Board of Health refused to allow teams from several cities, including Casper and Laramie, to participate in a planned basketball meet because contagious diseases were circulating in different parts of Wyoming.

With travel between communities considered risky, the annual state basketball tournament scheduled for Casper was cancelled.

At the time, high school basketball was already a central part of community life across Wyoming. Winter games packed small-town gyms, and the state tournament was the highlight of the season. Teams had worked for months to earn a chance to compete for the championship.

Yet state public health officials decided the risk was simply too great. With illness spreading and limited medical tools available to control it, the safest option was to cancel the gathering.

The defending champion that season was Rock Springs High School, which had just finished an impressive 19–1 regular season. They were anxious to keep their season going. When the official state tournament was halted, Rock Springs officials attempted to organize an alternative event to finish the season.

The Rock Springs Board of Education announced plans for an invitational tournament to be held March 19–21. Invitations were extended largely based on season records and on which teams health officials still permitted to travel.

In other words, the best teams from communities that were not already shut down by illness.

The teams invited were Cheyenne, Douglas, Kemmerer, Laramie, Lovell, Rawlins, Rock Springs, Thermopolis and Worland.

The plan was to conduct a single-elimination tournament. Lose and you go home.

Even those plans faced uncertainty. Because disease outbreaks varied from town to town, travel restrictions and health concerns still affected which teams could actually participate. In an era without vaccines for mumps and without the antibiotics that later helped treat infections like scarlet fever, prevention was the only reliable defense.

For two days, three Big Horn Basin teams kept practicing, with Thermopolis, Lovell and Worland hanging onto the hope of a trip to Rock Springs for a state tournament.

But on March 14, 1936, the Wyoming State Board of Health put its foot down. The risk to communities and schools was simply too great. Officials ordered the Rock Springs tournament cancelled, as well.

For players and fans in 1936, the season ended with disappointment. Communities that had followed their teams all winter were left without a true state tournament. Athletes who had hoped to compete for a championship never received the opportunity.

Before vaccines dramatically reduced the spread of many childhood illnesses, outbreaks of diseases such as measles, mumps, scarlet fever and whooping cough were common. Schools sometimes closed for weeks, and public gatherings were frequently restricted to slow the spread.

In that environment, even something as beloved as basketball occasionally had to take a back seat to public health.

Looking back nearly 90 years later, the story of the cancelled 1936 basketball season offers a fascinating window into Wyoming history. It shows how communities balanced their love of sports with the realities of disease long before modern medicine made many of those illnesses far less threatening.

Nearly a century ago, Wyoming high school players practiced all winter hoping for their chance at a state championship. Instead, their season ended early because illness had spread across the state.

The gyms were quiet then, just as they were for Wyoming Classes 3A and 4A in 2020.

And in both cases, players, coaches and fans were left wondering what might have happened if the tournament had been played. 

Note: Rock Springs finished 19–1 in 1936 and entered the season as the defending state champion. The state tournament was cancelled that year, but the Tigers went on to win the state championships in 1937 and 1938. If their best record in the state during the cancelled 1936 season were counted as a championship, Rock Springs would have claimed four consecutive state titles. Only four other Wyoming schools have achieved that feat: Cheyenne Central (1942–45), LaGrange (1958–61), Campbell County (1992–97) and Burlington (2014–17).

Lovell players in 1936

In the program for the Lovell regional tournament, later cancelled by the health department, someone had a little fun writing these tongue-in-cheek notes about the Bulldogs boys team, descriptions that reflect a style of humor we likely wouldn’t use today.  

Coach Wendell Poulson has been a coach in Lovell for three years. He graduated from B.Y.U. where he was a letterman in both basketball and football. He has coached for the past six years and has taken a team to the state tournament every year.

Gene Robertson — “Known as sleepy. He is very good natured all of the time, and hasn’t the ambition to be otherwise.”

Wilmer Burnham — “He thinks mostly about dances and ‘wimen,’ (but) he sometimes gets out to practice. This lad is plenty good!”

Lawrence Lynn — “Over six feet tall, with blue eyes and brown hair.”

Billy Griffith — “He is just another of those ‘blue-eyed blondes’ that all of the girls are wild about.”

Lynn Doerr — ”He is tall, dark and handsome, but very bashful out in public, but just wait until you get him alone, girls.”

Wyo Brown — ”A junior, although partially deaf, is a very valuable player to his team.”

Jack Pearson —  “He’s very tall and very, very slender. He’s bashful, too, so remember girls to take advantage of leap year.”

John Richardson — “Plays at guard on the team, is very dark and not very hard to look at.”

Norman Doerr — “Known as ‘the’ fighting player. He goes after his man and fights until he comes out victorious.”

Big Horn Basin high school records, 1936

Basin High School 7 wins, 8 losses 

Burlington High School 2 wins, 13 losses

Byron High School 8 wins, 11 losses

Cody High School 9 wins, 7 losses

Cowley High School 14 wins, 9 losses

Deaver High School 3 wins, 7 losses

Gebo High School 11 wins, 14 losses

Greybull High School 19 wins, 3 losses

Lovell High School 13 wins, 5 losses

Manderson High School 4 wins, 10 losses

Meeteetse High School 1 win, 9 losses

Otto High School 2 wins, 2 losses

Powell High School 3 wins, 10 losses

Shell High School 3 wins, 1 loss

Ten Sleep High School 7 wins, 5 losses

Thermopolis High School 18 wins, 3 losses

Worland High School 15 wins, 6 losses 

Worland Institute  0 wins, 4 losses