Ella Hagen was still in high school when she signed her deal with running shoemaker HOKA.
The two-time Colorado state champion and rising senior at Summit High School landed a name, image and likeness (NIL) agreement with the performance footwear company in 2024, making her part of the brand’s inaugural NIL class, as reported by the running news site FloTrack.
The deal wasn’t just uniting a rising athlete with a logo on a shoe.
HOKA bankrolled this high school kid from Breckenridge with a professional mentor, an international travel schedule and a corporate sponsor — all before her high school graduation.
A year later, Colorado’s High School Activities Association updated its bylaws to permit students to benefit from NIL activities, provided they are not connected to their school, team or activity program. Hagen’s deal was perfectly fine under CHSAA rules.
Right next door in Wyoming, the same kind of deal wouldn’t fly — not because of a state law, but because the Wyoming High School Activities Association’s (WHSAA) existing rules don’t allow it.
Some Wyoming lawmakers want to make sure it stays that way.
Drawing Lines
Sen. Gary Crum, R-Laramie, is one of them.
He introduced Senate File 53, titled “Keeping Amateurism in High School Athletics,” during the current legislative session.
The bill would write amateurism requirements into state statute for any student competing in a sport or activity sanctioned by the WHSAA — essentially pouring legislative concrete around what has until now been an association policy.
“This bill is about keeping amateurism in high school athletics,” Crum told the committee. “It’s to keep professionalism out. As we know, professionalism has hit college sports through what is called NIL.”
Back when Crum played offensive line for the University of Wyoming, the current system of NIL contracts and revenue sharing between universities and their athletes didn’t seem possible. Same goes for Crum’s father Earl.
The Crums are the only three-generation football letter family in UW history.
It started with Earl, who lettered for the Cowboys in 1940. Gary followed, playing offensive line from 1979 to 1981, earning All-Western Athletic Conference honors and serving as team captain in 1981. He went on to play briefly for the Miami Dolphins.
The third generation, Gary’s son Frank Crum, continued the tradition from 2018-2023, starting 49 of 56 games at offensive tackle and earning honorable mention All-Mountain West honors in 2021.
Frank signed with the Denver Broncos as an undrafted free agent in 2024, made the roster and has appeared in multiple games over two seasons.
None of that — not the WAC honors, not the NFL tryout, not the Broncos roster spot — started with a paycheck in high school.
“No,” Crum said, when asked whether money was ever a factor during his playing days as a high school kid in Rawlins. “I guess we got popsicles after practice once in a while, but that’s about it.”
Crum’s Case
The concept behind NIL started in college sports, Crum explained, where universities were generating enormous revenue off their athletes and the argument was that players deserved a cut. That logic doesn’t translate to Wyoming high schools, he said.
“I really don’t believe in the state of Wyoming, the high schools are making a ton of money off of high school sports,” Crum told Cowboy State Daily. “The underlying premise for paying people is just not there in the state of Wyoming.”
High school athletics, Crum argued, exist as an educational opportunity — to teach a young person to be part of a team, to learn competitiveness, to learn to get back up when you get knocked down, to learn dependability.
“It’s not about money,” he said.
Crum acknowledged the college NIL ship has sailed.
“I would have it that way in college today if it was up to me, but certainly that horse is out of the barn,” he said. “It’s just a different deal.”
But he’s determined to keep that deal from reaching Wyoming’s high school gyms and football fields.
What the bill does, Crum said, is pretty straightforward: it prevents participants from getting paid to compete while representing a Wyoming high school in a WHSAA-sanctioned sport.
“It does not eliminate awards, trophies, travel, food, participation, anything that a junior national team or Olympic committee would provide through funding,” Crum added.
Crum’s biggest concern wasn’t a Colorado-style shoe deal. It was something closer to home — the idea that a talented kid in a small Wyoming town could get recruited away by boosters in a bigger one.
“It keeps an athlete from a small school, say in my district, out by Rock River, that’s a really good athlete, from somebody in a bigger town paying that athlete — say, ‘Hey, come to town and we’ll give you a car. We’ll give you 10,000 bucks to come to town and play for our school,’” Crum said.
“I just don’t see that being what high school sports is all about,” he added. “It’s about working as a team, working with the young people you grew up with from when you were in kindergarten all the way through. It’s not about making money off of high school.”
He noted the bill doesn’t address student transfers or open enrollment — just the money.
Border Risk
Crum conceded that under this legislation, a star athlete from Wyoming could end up leaving the state to pursue financial benefits from playing high school sports in Colorado, which allows NIL.
“Yeah, absolutely, if that’s allowed and they get paid down there, then that’s the choice they make,” Crum said.
He framed that as a tradeoff he can live with.
“I think everybody ought to have an opportunity to do what they want, but you’re making a choice, and you’re leaving the amateurism side of the sport, becoming a professional, which is fine,” Crum said. “But you’ve lost your amateurism status. And you can no longer participate in high school” athletics in Wyoming.
Crum said he believes several states have passed similar legislation, and many more are considering it. “It was taken away from college athletics, and we just don’t need this type of thing in high school athletics,” he said.
He called high school sports an institution worth protecting.
The bill covers every WHSAA-sanctioned sport and activity. It doesn’t cover rodeo, which isn’t sanctioned by the WHSAA.
NCAA-lite?
When introducing his bill to the Senate Education Committee on Feb. 16, Crum assured his fellow legislators that Wyoming high school athletics officials don’t need to become a new NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletics Association.
“There’s nothing in here providing for an oversight committee or something like that. It leaves everything with the high school activities association to continue what they do today,” said Crum. “It’s not trying to change the high school activities association where they’re at today or what they sponsor or even down the road if it becomes customary for them to give instead of a little trophy to everybody a big trophy.”
Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, spoke up about the NCAA, stating, “They’ve always been a draconian bureaucracy, but they moved towards the ridiculous at the end, right, where you know, you had a sandwich and all of a sudden there was an investigation. I want to make sure that we do not become investigators and get silly about this.”
Sen. Jared Olsen, R-Cheyenne, asked whether the bill might accidentally prohibit a college from sending a hoodie to a senior during a signing ceremony. Crum said it would not.
Boyd Brown, executive director of the Wyoming Association of School Administrators, offered the only public testimony.
“We’ve had many talks with the Wyoming High School Activities Association about how this might work prior to this bill, and so we support this,” Brown said.
Friday Nights
Rep. Steve Harshman, R-Casper, the veteran head football coach at Natrona High School, said he signed on as a co-sponsor at Crum’s request and told Cowboy State Daily the bill is about preparing the state for what’s coming.
“I think Senator Crum was trying to get ahead of this issue because it’s moved from the NIL issue. It has moved in other states, from colleges to high schools now,” Harshman said.
Harshman said the only entity that can really fix the college NIL mess is Congress — “and they can’t even balance a budget yet.”
The coach from Casper framed the proposed legislation as a way to protect what’s special about high school sports.
“It’s the one time where everybody comes together on Friday night,” he said. “Everybody stands up, cheers on your team scores, and it brings us together.” National Issue
Wyoming’s push comes against a national backdrop that’s moving fast in the other direction.
A 2025 investigation by the University of Maryland’s Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found that 41 states plus Washington, D.C. now allow high school NIL deals.
The investigation’s 50-state analysis found no two state policies are the same, with penalty structures ranging from three-strike systems to zero-tolerance to apparently no published enforcement rules at all, according to CNS Maryland.
A 2023 national poll conducted by the Povich Center, The Washington Post and the University of Maryland found that 54% of Americans think high school athletes should be allowed to earn endorsement money, with higher support among Black (74%) and Hispanic (73%) respondents.
Here’s where it gets interesting for Wyoming: WHSAA Commissioner Trevor Wilson told the CNS Maryland reporters he’d done a “180” on NIL over four years and now sees value in high schoolers learning to earn money for books and tuition.
“I’m hoping we can come up with something that’s fair and makes sense for our students, and they don’t get put in a bad spot,” Wilson told Capital News Service.
But in a subsequent email to Cowboy State Daily, Wilson’s position had shifted back.
“We do not allow our student athletes to earn money from their name, image or likeness relating to high school sports. It’s not a problem,” Wilson wrote.
Wilson acknowledged his earlier comment, saying, “That quote was from a while back.”
His updated position: “At this time, our schools are not interested in allowing or developing any type of NIL policy.”
The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) has also raised concerns. In a 2023 article for the organization, attorney John E. Johnson cited the case of T.A. Cunningham, a 16-year-old Georgia football player whose family relocated to California for his senior year to pursue NIL opportunities.
Johnson, drawing on a 2022 NBC News investigation, noted that written offers made to Cunningham were “very exploitive,” with some claiming commissions of up to 40%, booster contracts laden with complex fee structures and legal jargon that restricted the athlete’s freedom to transfer or sign outside deals, and one ‘contract’ that was simply a $100,000 loan.
Coaching Voices
Don Julian knows what high school sports mean to a Wyoming community. The longtime Sheridan High School head football coach compiled 102 wins and five Class 4A state championships.
Julian told Cowboy State Daily he supports Crum’s bill.
“I believe most things dealing with money cause problems and this is no exception,” Julian wrote in an email. “I have always felt like there is something that is still pure about high school athletics and activities.”
He continued: “High school spirit and loyalty is very special, what a great opportunity to guide, instruct and mentor young people in perseverance, character and hope for our future. I would hate to see money and pay to play taint that opportunity.”
Steve Mischke has been coaching since the 1969-70 school year and has been part of 36 state championships.
Now a track coach with the Johnson County School District, he told Cowboy State Daily, “I am totally against the NIL sort of thing, at any level… I have seen a lot of changes in the extracurricular activities of the youth of the nation. Some have been great and some have been very destructive, NIL for example.”
Asked whether he’d heard any chatter about Wyoming high school athletes getting paid, Mischke offered one last assessment.
Responding by email, Mischke wrote, “The only thing I could confirm is that there is always a certain amount of chatter.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
