Imagine professional football as a totem pole. At the top is the NFL Super Bowl champions, followed by the rest of the league, flexing their might and turning huge profits.
At the bottom, squatting beneath the Canadian Football League, the XFL and the United Football League is American Indoor Football and other small indoor leagues fielding teams like the Wyoming Cavalry.
The Cavalry, formerly based in Casper, announced recently it will return in 2026, this time to Gillette and a new home field at the Wyoming Center at Cam-plex.
Dominic Montero, the new majority owner of the Wyoming Cavalry, told Cowboy State Daily he hopes the Cavalry will tap into enthusiasm Gillette once showed for the now defunct Mustangs.
That team drew nice-sized crowds after it was founded in 2021, he said, but like many indoor football squads around the country, it ran into financial trouble and folded after three seasons.
Montero is now making the rounds in Gillette and reassuring potential sponsors that he’s bringing a totally new operation to town.
He has the blessing of the owners of the original Wyoming Cavalry, which he said offered to give him some footballs left over from that team’s days in Casper.
The team started as the Casper Cavalry and played for more than a decade. It experienced some success, but struggled to keep fans engaged.
Yup, It’s Technically Pro Ball
Now comes Montero and his partners, reviving the name and the can-do spirit of this scrappy sport. The game is played largely by former college players still nurturing the dream of a pro career in a higher league.
But the pay for indoor players is sometimes little more than a shared hotel room, free Subway sandwiches and a couple hundred bucks a week.
There are success stories, with some teams paying more and some players emerging as unicorn talents like Super Bowl champion Kurt Warner. Warner rose from the indoor ranks to become an NFL Hall of Famer.
But mostly, indoor players are like Montero, true believers in football as a lifestyle and the next step after college ends and the NFL doesn't come calling.
Montero played for Glenville State in West Virginia, Valley Forge Military College in Pennsylvania and Peru State University in Nebraska. He went on to earn a place on professional rosters as a lineman and center for the Salina Liberty in Kansas and the BismarckBucks in North Dakota.
“I broke my leg when I was supposed to go to Dodge City, and that was it,” said Montero of his football playing career.
“Then I got into the front office side,” said Montero. “I was the GM and the CEO for the Tropics,” a team in Topeka, Kansas.
“We called them the ‘Tropics’ because it's like you're going on a vacation,” said Montero, explaining the marketing strategy behind a team that lasted for two seasons. “So, you're going on vacation or it's similar to like a zoo because it is absolutely crazy in there.
“There's fans, there's players flying over the wall. Football's going everywhere.”
The Tropics had a policy: If a football flew into the crowd, a fan could choose to keep it. But if a player crashed over the walls marking the sidelines, “You had to throw them back,” laughed Montero.
After a stint with the Omaha Beef in Nebraska, Montero moved on to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Now he’s looking forward to fielding a team in Gillette and building up fan enthusiasm in a town with two quality high school programs, but not much else when it comes to professional sports.
“The one thing Gillette did even post-COVID was pack the house,” said Montero. “So, we're just looking to get a lot of fans around and just really be behind our team.”
Montero would love to see at least one former University of Wyoming player land on the Cavalry roster. Plus, locals in Gillette still nursing football dreams also will get a shot.
“We're going to host two rounds of tryouts coming up here probably in the fall, and then we'll have one before the season,” said Montero, noting one appealing difference between indoor football and the NFL, where the average cost of single-game tickets in the fall of 2025 will be $151, according to the ticket resale site SeatGeek.
In Gillette, said Montero, “We’re only charging $71 for the whole season.”
The Wyoming Cavalry professional indoor football team will be reincarnated in 2026 at Cam-plex in Gillette. (Wyoming Cavalry) 
The Wyoming/Gillette Mustangs had a timultuous three-season run as an indoor football team in northeast Wyoming from 2021-2023. The team folded in 2024, but now Gillette has a new indoor football team, the Wyoming Cavalry. (Courtesy Champions Indoor Football Network via YouTube)
Bus League
Getting butts in seats is the name of the game when it comes to running an indoor football team. That’s how Mike and Argeri Layton broke it down for Cowboy State Daily as they reflected on the original Cavalry’s 1999-2014 run in Casper.
After the first year it changed its name from the Casper Cavalry to the Wyoming Cavalry as a marketing ploy to get fans to drive in from places like Riverton, Buffalo and Douglas.
“There was a kind of a consortium that consisted of some private individuals and a hotel owner, a radio station and the city were also involved so it was a pretty strong group,” said Mike, who credited his wife Argeri with taking care of all the important behind-the-scenes work that kept the team afloat.
“It’s a tough road to get the sponsorships and keep the interest going,” remembered Argeri. “What is weird about this particular business, is you are relying on the other teams to hold up their end and present a good product on the field.
Mike called it a bus league, with the Cavalry traveling by bus to away games in Utah, South Dakota and Nebraska.
The peak of Cavalry glory came in 2009, when games drew as many as 6,000 fans. That year, the Cavalry hosted Pennsylvania’s Reading Express in the American Indoor Football Association championship but lost 65–42.
Even though the Cavalry came up short, Argeri remembers it as, “a fabulous game.”
The Cavalry played in the Casper Events Center, and initially, the city of Casper, which ran the Events Center, cut the team a deal because city leaders wanted to see minor league pro sports take off in Casper.
“At one point, Casper had the Colorado Rockies farm team in Casper and the Cavalry and everyone was saying how great it was,” said Mike. “But neither one of them were really supported, you know, from a ticket sales standpoint.”
“The whole point of this was entertainment and for kids, and to give some of these players one more opportunity to play a little football before they had to grow up and do something else,” said Argeri. “You were there for the entertainment and what you could do for the community.”
The Cavalry ran a Special Olympics camp and let young fans meet the players face to face.
One of the biggest stars to pass through Casper was Tony Case, who played briefly as a long snapper with the New England Patriots.
When all the stars aligned, and the owners of opposing teams held up their end of the bargain, it worked well, said Mike and Argeri.
“We had tremendous sponsorship support, but the problem was, whether it ran its course, we just didn't have the butts in the seats to justify the cost at the Casper Events Center,” said Argeri.
By the time the team in Casper folded, attendance was down to around 2,000.
Cavalry’s Next Chapter
A full house for the revived Wyoming Cavalry in Gillette will be around 4,000 fans. The first game is slated to kick off probably sometime in February 2026, and the new coaching staff is excited to welcome indoor football fans back to Cam-plex.
“You got to have the right community that likes arena football and especially Gillette is very high on it,” said Kenny Hessler, the former assistant coach for the Gillette Mustangs, which folded in 2023 after three seasons.
“The first three years we had it here we were voted the best fans of the league,” said Hessler. “You know we sold out most weeks so yeah, it's very popular here in Gillette.”
Hessler is now part of the coaching staff for the new Wyoming Cavalry. A former high school coach from western Nebraska, Hessler said Gillette is wired for indoor football.
“It’s just a football tradition community I would say down through elementary, junior high, high school,” said Hessler. “It’s a crazy sports town. They love their football here.”
Hessler is keeping an eye out for local talent, hoping to salt the roster with some local players.
“You never know who's coming, where they're coming from but yeah, we would definitely like three or four locals on the team. That would be awesome,” said Hessler.
“A lot of these young kids I talk to, they're still after that dream,” added Hessler. “They’re trying to get maybe to that next level because there's three or four different levels in arena ball. And they're just trying to maybe get to that next one and then maybe they'll get a shot at the NFL.
“They're always dreaming, and you know, that's what I love about coaching … it is the kids.”
Contact David Madison at david@cowboystatedaily.com
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
