Pre­dic­tions — Pokes vs. Thunderbirds

The Wyoming Cow­boys were 7–6 (4−4 MWC) last sea­son with an amaz­ing vic­tory against the Fresno State Bull­dogs in double-overtime of the New Mex­ico Bowl. This sea­son, the Cow­boys hope to do at least that well again and become eli­gi­ble for another bowl game. Head Coach Dave Chris­tensen is ask­ing a lot from his young play­ers, but he thinks that his Cow­boys can ‘Bring the Wood’, come game day.

The Cow­boys kick off their sea­son at home on Sep­tem­ber 4^th against the South­ern Utah Uni­ver­sity Thun­der­birds. The Thun­der­birds went 5–6 (2−2 Great West Con­fer­ence) in 2009. Last sea­son SUU lost to their only MWC oppo­nent, San Diego State, 19–35. … Con­tinue Reading

Jazz Per­for­mance Begins UW Cul­tural Pro­grams Fall 2010 Con­cert Series

Sept. 3, 2010 — Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming — Jazz musi­cian Cyrus Chest­nut will start the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming Cul­tural Pro­grams fall con­cert series at 7:30 p.m. Fri­day, Sept. 10, in the Fine Arts Cen­ter con­cert hall.

Tick­ets cost $22 for the pub­lic and $18 for stu­dents and senior cit­i­zens. Tick­ets can be pur­chased online at www.uwyo.edu/finearts or call (307) 766‑6666. Tick­ets are also avail­able at the Wyoming Union infor­ma­tion desk and Fine Arts box office. The Fine Arts box office hours are Mon­day through Fri­day, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., and one hour before each sched­uled per­for­mance. … Con­tinue Reading

New Edi­tion of Wyoming Almanac Now Available

Sept. 3, 2010 — Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming — Who drove the first car in Wyoming? What was the first radio mes­sage received in the state and who was the doc­tor who removed an arrow from Jim Bridger’s back?

The answers to these and scores of other ques­tions rang­ing from the triv­ial to the sig­nif­i­cant can be found in the sixth edi­tion of the Wyoming Almanac, writ­ten by broth­ers Phil, David and Steven Roberts and pub­lished by Sky­line West Press.

Phil is a Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming his­tory pro­fes­sor. David teaches jour­nal­ism at Mis­souri Val­ley Col­lege in Mar­shall. He founded the Med­i­cine Bow Post news­pa­per and also taught jour­nal­ism classes and served as a stu­dent pub­li­ca­tions adviser at UW. Steven taught his­tory and social stud­ies at Vet­eran and Moor­croft high schools and retired last year after a career in the U.S. Postal Ser­vice human resource division.

The book pro­vides a handy guide to Wyoming cul­ture, his­tory, pol­i­tics, sports, peo­ple, media, art and many other cat­e­gories. … Con­tinue Reading

War Memo­r­ial Sta­dium gets a new look

Changes abound, both at War Memo­r­ial Sta­dium and through­out the Moun­tain West Con­fer­ence. In Laramie there’s new box seats and a new look to the exte­rior of the sta­dium. In the Moun­tain West, a few teams are on the outs (Utah to and BYU to in 2011) – while some new blood is being added to the con­fer­ence (Boise State from the WAC and pos­si­bly Nevada and Fresno State, also from the WAC, in 2011).

War Memo­r­ial Sta­dium is enter­ing its’ 61^st year as home of Wyoming Cow­boys foot­ball. The newest facil­i­ties at the sta­dium are box seats on the east side of the stands. The project has taken over a year to com­plete and will be in full use this week­end to open the 2010 sea­son. Not only do the new boxes greatly increase the num­ber of lux­ury seats at the sta­dium, but there has also been addi­tions to increase the longevity of the stands on the east side and changes to have more access points for the fans convenience.

The Moun­tain West Con­fer­ence will be mak­ing ren­o­va­tions next sea­son as well. Utah has accepted an offer from the Pac-10 and will change con­fer­ences in 2011. BYU has also decided to leave the MWC. The Cougars will play foot­ball in the Inde­pen­dent league, but all of their other sports will com­pete in the WAC. The new blood com­ing into the MWC next sea­son is the foot­ball jug­ger­naut, Boise State Bron­cos. Not only will they bring some more atten­tion to them­selves in the national spot­light, but they will only increase the pres­tige of the Moun­tain West Con­fer­ence among other top con­fer­ences nation­ally. There could be even more teams brought into the con­fer­ence in the future, but noth­ing else has been set in stone.

[RECAP] New Mex­ico Bowl Stunner

In case you missed it, the Wyoming Cow­boys fin­ished their sea­son in spec­tac­u­lar win­ning fash­ion. In one of the first games of Bowl sea­son, the Cow­boys took on the Fresno State Bull­dogs in Albu­querque, NM. In front of a national audi­ence on ESPN, the Cow­boys came back in the fourth quar­ter and sent the game into over­time. Lead­ing the Cow­boys back into con­tention was fresh­man quar­ter­back Austyn Carta-Samuels. Carta-Samuels used his head, his legs and his arm to keep the UW drive alive on mul­ti­ple fourth down con­ver­sions, which brought the Cow­boys into scor­ing range.

The over­time period was even more dra­matic than the fourth quar­ter had been, if you can believe that. In over­time, the Cow­boys hog-tied the Bull­dogs on four con­sec­u­tive downs inside the 5-yard-line to pre­vent Fresno St. from scor­ing. Wyoming then scored on a per­fect touch pass to the cor­ner of the end­zone to give the Pokes the advan­tage of forc­ing Fresno St. to also score a touch­down. The defense did exactly what they had done through­out the fourth quar­ter and first over­time pos­ses­sion. They com­pletely smoth­ered the Bull­dogs offense.

The Cow­boys came away with a thrilling Bowl vic­tory for first sea­son Head Coach Dave Chris­tensen. The MVPs of the game were fresh­man quar­ter­back Austyn Carta-Samuels for the offense and senior line­man Mitch Unrein on the defense. With an incred­i­ble start to a Head Coach­ing career, Dave Chris­tensen is already among some of the most élite coaches that the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming has had in their 113 years of existence.

Yel­low­stone unveils new vis­i­tor center

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK,
Wyo., Aug. 25 PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Yel­low­stone National Park unveiled its new, state-of-the-art Vis­i­tor Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter at Old Faith­ful, cre­at­ing a focal point of inno­v­a­tive learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in the heart of Yellowstone.

“While there are more gey­sers and hot springs in Yel­low­stone than in the rest of the world com­bined, most vis­i­tors were leav­ing the park with­out a basic under­stand­ing of the amaz­ing hydrother­mal won­ders they had just encoun­tered,” explained Karen Bates Kress, Pres­i­dent of the non­profit Yel­low­stone Park Foun­da­tion. “Now, thanks to many gen­er­ous donors, we can open this Cen­ter — and the minds of nearly 3 mil­lion vis­i­tors annu­ally — to the won­ders of the park.” … Con­tinue Reading

A Step in the right direction

I have had a myr­iad of health issues in the past few months even though I am a rel­a­tively healthy guy in my late 20s. I exer­cise a few times a week, I ride my bike, and I eat my veg­eta­bles. Nev­er­the­less, my wal­let has now been crip­pled by the debts I have accu­mu­lated due to my unex­pected
health issues.

Even though I only spent less than 24 hours in a hos­pi­tal, I am respon­si­ble for some con­sid­er­able bills. I can barely even keep up with the bills that seem to come to my home every day. An emer­gency room bill. A CT scan bill. An overnight hos­pi­tal stay bill. A vas­cu­lar surgeon’s bill. A hematologist’s bill. A credit card bill that I have had to use for pre­scribed meds. Then I have to get blood tests once a week and so I incur another bill to get my blood work done every sin­gle week. It’s insan­ity! … Con­tinue Reading

Ayers speaks at UW

The bat­tle is over and Meg Lanker reached her goal. On April 28^th, at 7 p.m. Dr. William Ayers spoke at the Small Sports Com­plex at the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming. The pro­test­ers along the side­walk to the door were quiet with their signs as stu­dents, pro­fes­sors and com­mu­nity mem­bers alike filled the gym.

Due to pre­vi­ous threats of vio­lence when Dr. Ayers was sched­uled the first time, intense secu­rity mea­sures were put in place. Every­one enter­ing the com­plex was searched and bags were exam­ined before enter­ing the bleach­ers. Police offi­cers with bomb dogs stood next to the entrances and along the walls sev­eral other offi­cers stood at the ready, but the audi­ence was calm.

The con­tro­versy build­ing up to this appear­ance of Dr. Ayers elicited a crowd that exceeded by mul­ti­ple times the pos­si­ble atten­dees to the intended pre­sen­ta­tion on April 5^th. With the debate and law­suit about his appear­ance well in mind, the audi­ence was keen to hear what Dr. Ayers him­self had to say about the con­tro­versy regard­ing his pres­ence on cam­pus. Those atten­dees hop­ing to hear him berate the UW admin­is­tra­tion were out of luck. The civil­ity which with Dr. Ayers addressed the con­tro­versy set the tone for the evening.

…It is impor­tant to note that an invi­ta­tion is in no way an endorse­ment, Dr. Ayers said about the con­tro­versy and refer­ring the influx of crit­i­cisms Dr. Fran­cisco Rios had received when the out­rage and sub­se­quent can­cel­la­tion first hit cam­pus. Fol­low­ing the brief recog­ni­tion of the con­tro­versy, Dr. Ayers began his pre­sen­ta­tion on edu­ca­tion in the United States. His speech started by exam­in­ing the moment in which we live today. He brought the audi­ence through the changes that gave women the right to vote and abol­ished slav­ery. End­ing these injus­tices took an insur­rec­tion in think­ing and this is really the theme of what I want to talk about tonight– an insur­rec­tion in think­ing. That is, all of us, every one of us, all the time, is trapped in a cer­tain kind of com­mon sense, a cer­tain kind of moment, Dr. Ayers said.

The energy and inspi­ra­tion in his speech evoked in the audi­ence the dis­cus­sion that he had antic­i­pated the first time he was invited to UW. Despite the huge atten­dance, the dia­logue that fol­lowed his pre­sen­ta­tion cre­ated an envi­ron­ment of mutual teach­ing and learn­ing, even when two mem­bers of audi­ence ques­tioned him about his past actions as a mem­ber of the Weather Under­ground. While their com­ments and ques­tions were less than cor­dial at points, Dr. Ayers answered them with respect and calm.

The evening ended with a sense of appre­ci­a­tion for the process Lanker, Dr. Ayers and sev­eral other mem­bers of the Uni­ver­sity went through to ensure that free­dom of speech was kept alive at UW.

Cow­girl ten­nis con­cludes reg­u­lar sea­son with two wins

Symona Symkova returns a vol­ley dur­ing the first match of the day. (Jeremy Stegall/LFP)

The Wyoming Cow­girl ten­nis team fin­ished its reg­u­lar sea­son strong with a pair of Moun­tain West Con­fer­ence wins over Col­orado State and Air Force last week.

… Con­tinue Reading

Pre­his­toric Fishing

It was about 2 p.m. on the Snake River.  Jeff and Alex had already caught a stur­geon each.  The guide said the fish tend to get less aggres­sive by the after­noon, so the feel­ing of rest­less­ness set­tled.  The tip of my fish­ing pole had bounced gen­tly every five-to-10 sec­onds before I yanked the pole into the air finally hook­ing my elu­sive prey.  The guide said he had never landed a fish on this par­tic­u­lar part of the river which inten­si­fied my anx­i­ety ever more.  The boat was pulled down­stream by the tug of the fish, all with­out snap­ping the line or free­ing itself from the hook.  When the boat abruptly stopped, my pole was placed then in its holder and the real bat­tle began.  It lasted roughly 20-to-25 min­utes with the stur­geon jump­ing out of the water twice, try­ing to release itself from the hook.  My left hand was start­ing to cramp from hold­ing the pole.  Even though my pole was in the holder, it was still a nat­ural reflex to main­tain a grip on it.  A sud­den thought comes to mind, could I out­last an aquatic crea­ture that weighs more than I do?  In response, more adren­a­line kicked in and the cramp was gone.  As the fish approached the boat, it was clear it was start­ing to tire and so I guided it to the bank.  The bat­tle was over-and I had never felt so alive.  I went down to the water to claim my trophy.

… Con­tinue Reading