Vikings roll to 6-man title

by Bobby Abplanalp
Wyoming Sports.org

The Guernsey Sunrise Vikings raced to a 63-8 halftime lead over Kaycee, leaving no doubt and rolling past the Buckaroos 76-16 for the Wyoming 1A-6 Man State Championship at War Memorial Stadium Saturday afternoon.

“This was our goal at the beginning of the season, to get to this point,” Guernsey- Sunrise running back Kyler Copsey said. “We knew it was going to take a lot of work and once we started rolling and figuring things out it all just came natural.”

These two teams met earlier this season, but the only difference today is Kaycee did not get shutout, as they lost the first meeting 67-0.

Copsey rushed for 167 yards on six carries, as a team the Vikings compiled 351 yards on the ground. Guernsey Sunrise was not so dominant last week against Hanna-Elk Mountain, as they had to come from behind to win.

“We needed that wakeup call last week,” Copsey said. “We came out here focused and we didn’t think about 67-0 when the first time we played. We wanted to come out and hit hard and set the tone early.”

“We said ‘hey, we got to get focused from the start’,” Guernsey Sunrise head coach Casey Moats said. “Fortunately, we had two or three scores right off the bat and that just let the kids relax and enjoy it and they played hard.”

Despite the outcome, Kaycee head coach Dustin Snipe was pleased with what his team accomplished in its first year of existence.

“My kids never give up,” he said. “We’re a brand new program, they’ve had to learn every game and learn how to take hits and keep their heads up. They’re just a bunch of tough kids who want to compete and want to play hard and they never gave up playing. We weren’t going to give up in that second half and we played a lot better in the second half.”

Guernsey-Sunrise had competition this season, outscoring its opponents by an average of 47 points a game this season.

“The kids just worked their tails off this year,” Moats said. “They just battled hard and came together, and as you saw today, they just did a nice job of becoming a team.”