Four Tigers Recognized

Four players from the Encampment Tigers’ six-man football team were selected to the 1A All-Conference honors, two were selected to the All-State team.

After a seven win season and a thrilling triple-overtime loss to the Burlington Huskies in the state semifinals last month — Korbyn Barkhurst, Gunner Knotwell, Tyrel Brown and Brian Smith earned 2024 all-conference selections by the Wyoming Coaches Association.

Barkhurst and Knotwell were elected to the All-State team. This is the second consecutive all-conference selection for Brown.

All-Conference honors were voted on by 1A head coaches and all-state was voted on by play callers across Wyoming.

Representing Encampment at an All-Conference level is a great feeling, Brown said on Monday.

“This community has done so much for us,” Brown said. “It’s awesome to be able to show the effort they’ve put in out on the field and now on a conference standpoint.”

With only six seasons, Encampment’s six-man team is still in its beginning stages after its return in 2019.

“They put in work to get football back to Encampment,” Smith said about his selection. “It shows that we care and are putting in the work to make it payoff for the community and what they’ve done to help us start this program up again.”

Although much of the season’s success came on the gridiron, many of the player’s fondest memories were during practice or jamming out to classic rock in the locker room.

“We always had good music going,” Brown said about the locker room environment before a home game. “We’re always hyping up and energizing each other with lots of jokes. We’re all brothers on the team and get along really well.”

For Knotwell, the victory against Dubois in October sticks out.

“It was one of our closest games of the season. We barely won on a drive in the last little bit of the game,” Knotwell said about leading the game sealing drive. “We had a little over two minutes left, scored with 17 seconds on the clock and stopped them with an interception after that.”

The final game against Burlington sticks out to Barkhurst.

“Even though it didn’t work out how we wanted it to,” Barkhurst said about the State semi-final, “We all played for each other and put everything out on the field. That’s something to be proud of as a team, knowing that my brothers have my back.”

Football taught the four boys the importance of humility, discipline, character, teamwork and how to be a leader. Their advice for future Tigers football players is to have passion for the game and be willing to put in the extra work.

“You got to put in the work during the offseason to get where you want to be,” Smith said. “It’s definitely a grind and you have to stick with it.”

Knotwell would tell future players to hang out with the team a lot.

“Get to know the team, their tendencies, how you can help and push them to be better,” Knotwell said.

Six players from the Saratoga Panthers’s nine-man football team were chosen for All Conference – Griffin Bartlett, Burris Berger, Easton Mason, Jace Westring, Hazen Williams and Skyler Wood. All players but Wood were selected for All-State honors.

The Saratoga Sun reached out Saratoga head coach Jared Mason for interviews but received no response as of press time.