SUNRISE — The school spirit of this now-abandoned mining town near Hartville, Wyoming, lives on in the surprisingly giant white “S” on a hill that overlooks the school’s former football field.
It’s a quiet field of grass now, no sounds of cheers ring out on Friday nights. There are no grunts of battle, no clash of helmets anymore. But the field was once the scene of a stunning football upset and some of the best football that current Guernsey-Sunrise Coach Neal Hughes has ever seen.
Hughes was a fifth grader in the newly formed Guernsey-Sunrise School District at the time. The year was 1964, the first season for the newly consolidated Sunrise-Guernsey school's Vikings football team, which took the field the year after the Sunrise school district shut down.
Their first season had been a losing one, and they had just one game left to play, with the Huntley Cardinals, the No. 1-ranked team in the state at the time.
No one had beaten them. And no one believed that anyone would beat them, much less the disorganized, ragtag Guernsey-Sunrise Vikings.
“Sunrise and Guernsey detested each other at that time,” Hughes told Cowboy State Daily. “These guys had been enemies in sports all the way through. There were even like bar fights between the dads downtown, everyone so disliked the idea of the schools consolidating.”
But it wasn’t that they couldn’t win, Coach Jack Rafferty told the team. It was that the team was not working together the way a team should. If they could just overcome their differences, Rafferty told them, they could beat anyone. Even the Huntley Cardinals.
So, what Rafferty decided to do for the very last game was to have his quarrelsome team play the final game of the season on Sunrise’s soon-to-be-abandoned football field.
Rafferty knew this would be a great motivator for the Sunrise members of his team. He was betting that his Guernsey team members would also not want to suffer defeat on the field that had once belonged to their rival.
“That last game, he had built into them that they could win the game,” Hughes said. “And that, no matter what, it would be the last game on Sunrise Field, a field that was not used to having losses on it. So, they needed to really come together and work hard to make their last game great.”
Caging The Cardinals
This year is the 60th anniversary of that game, and because of that Hughes has planned a little something special to celebrate.
First, he’s having a pep rally at the old ball field on Saturday underneath that white “S” that’s still shining on the hill.
He’s also going to have some of the former Guernsey-Sunrise football players talk about their last game and what it meant to them to upset the No. 1 ranked team in the state.
“That game was a blow-out,” Hughes said. “I was at the game, and I remember it extremely well. It was a battle. It was some of the best football I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen quite a bit of it.”
Rafferty had a gift for bringing people together and motivating them, Hughes said.
And that gift was displayed like never before in that final game on the Sunrise football field.
“UPSET OF THE SEASON brought victory to the Vikings on Oct. 24, their last game, as they caged the Huntley Cardinals 34 to 27,” one newspaper wrote of the game afterward.
That same newspaper noted that the Vikings had been nipped by the Bulldogs, stung by the Hornets and scratched by the Wildcats in a brutal, losing season.
But for that one last game, they were the cagers, and the Cardinals the caged.
Rafferty would go on to become one of Wyoming’s winningest basketball coaches, according to Hughes, and coach of the year in football, as well.
“He passed on about four years ago,” Hughes said. “But 60 years later, he’d be quite proud to see the Guernsey-Sunrise team on the Sunrise field once again.”
For the game Saturday night with the Wyoming Indians, Hughes said he will also ask each year’s graduates to walk out on the field and stand with their respective year so they can be recognized as well.
A dozen or so volunteers made the hike up the hill this year after the Labor Day parade to paint the Sunrise "S" white again. It's all part of keeping the spirit of Sunrise and its history alive. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Angelina Neider, Ray Monsold's sister, pumps her fists, excited to show that she made it up the hill to help repaint the white "S" for Sunrise, while Kathy Troupe, in the foreground, continues painting rocks with a white spray can. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Ray Monsoldo was among the old-timers who made the trek up a very steep hill to paint the Sunrise "S" white again. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The trek down the hill, obscured by trees, is quite steep and sheer. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The Sunrise "S" seen from a distance. The area where cars are parked used to be a football field for the abandoned mining town's school. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
About That White “S”
Given how many years it’s been, the “S” by all rights should no longer be pristine and white. In fact, in a year’s time red dust from the iron-oxide rich soils should turn the rocks dull and pink.
There are no ghosts as far as Kathy Troupe knows haunting the Sunrise field, which she and her husband now own. But there is a spirit involved in keeping the “S” so white year after year after year.
That spirit isn’t about ghosts, but it is about memories. And not just the Troupes who own the former football field, but everyone that still has a connection to Sunrise and its abandoned school.
The ”S” whitening expedition happens every year after the Labor Day picnic, held on the old Sunrise ballfield.
The picnic is quite the bash. There’s music, there’s orange watermelon from New Mexico and there’s smoked barbecue brisket. There’s burgers, brats, pies, German chocolate cake and all sorts of homemade side dishes. There’s tea, lemonade and beer, as well as a dose of good 70s, 80s and 90s music on the side.
Then, as the picnic is winding down, everyone whose willing and able climbs the hill with a can of white spray paint in hand.
“I guess I do it for my dad,” Troupe told Cowboy State Daily. “It would mean so much to him, especially that his grandchildren are here painting the ’S’ white.”
No One Wanted To Be A ‘Dud’
Marian and Darrell Offe have long been part of the crew that climbs the hill to paint the “S,” though not this particular year. The two, who are in their 90s, don’t feel up to the hike, which is a seriously steep climb, every year.
Marian is a 1951 graduate of Sunrise and, as a cheerleader, she remembers helping paint the “S” white many times growing up as part of the school’s annual freshman initiation.
At the time, there were no spray paint cans. The students carried buckets of lime up the hill to pour on the rocks instead.
Those buckets were quite heavy, former Sunrise student Ray Mansoldo told Cowboy State Daily. But you didn’t dare fail in making the trek up the hill, he added, or you would be considered a “dud.”
The last year of the Sunrise School District, there were just 12 freshmen, and all of them made the trek, Mansoldo said. No “duds” there.
The year before, there were six freshmen and they, too, all made it.
“In the 50s, Sunrise was in a pretty good boom,” Mansoldo said. “But people were getting ready to retire and then transportation got better, so people started commuting, because they lived in a company town and you couldn’t own nothing.”
With people moving out, the school district in Sunrise was no longer sustainable. It closed in 1963, well before the mines, which closed in 1980.
Sunrise Immigrants Treasured The School
The “S” was considered a sacred icon by Sunrise students.
“We all have deep memories, and our school spirit was very strong,” Marian Offe said. “The families who lived there were a number of immigrants, and they took the school very seriously.”
One reason they took it so seriously, Marian believes, is that a free school system for their children to attend wasn’t something they had in their former countries.
“The people who lived up here treasured that free U.S. school system that we have all enjoyed and that they do not enjoy in many countries even today,” she said. “We have it in our country and as citizens, I think we should be, No. 1 proud of it, and stress that we do still have this.”
Darrell, meanwhile, has a different vantage point for the “S.”
He was a student in Guernsey at the time, and the tradition he grew up with was sneaking out in the dark of night to paint the Sunrise “S” orange and change the letter to a “G” the night before every game with Sunrise.
“If you take a look at an ’S’ you can drop the one part down in the center and make an S very simply,” he said. “It’s just a matter of moving some rocks around and then pouring some orange paint on it.”
That was one of the big bones of contention between Guernsey and Sunrise, Marian Offe said.
“Oh my goodness did that ever kick off a storm for years between the two schools,” she said. “But otherwise, it wasn’t desecrated, it was considered an idol. It was the school spirit of Sunrise.”
Pranks Of Old — And Maybe Anew
The prank could be a little dangerous, Darrell added, given that it was quite dark, and the boys couldn’t really see where they were going.
One of the times they went up the hill, the Guernsey boys mistakenly thought there were some Sunrise boys lying in wait for them at the top of the hill.
They booked it out of there as fast as they could in the dark.
“One fella with us was Leroy Good, and he came running down off the hill and didn’t realize there was a fence,” Darrell said. “He hit that, and it damned near killed him.”
Later in life, Darrell served as mayor of Guernsey for eight years. He was also mayor of Hartville for 20-some years, too.
Both the Offes are glad to see that people in the area return to the area year after year to refresh the white “S.” It means a lot to them that people still care enough about the history to do that.
Though Darrell does still enjoy a little mischievous teasing now and again that he’s going to sneak up the old hill to paint that “S” orange once again.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
