There’s been a big change in Wyoming American Legion Baseball this season, and many current and former coaches are already calling it a swing and a miss.
When the 2026 American Legion Baseball season started earlier this month, the Double A and Single A levels were combined into a single Senior Legion level.
That means all 23 teams will compete in two conferences, regardless of the size and skill of their teams.
Baseball teams from smaller communities like Cody, Riverton, Lovell and Wheatland will compete against teams from larger communities like Casper, Cheyenne, and Gillette.
While current coaches are adjusting to the change, former coaches are being more vocal, saying it’s a disadvantage for those smaller programs.
Ryan Brown, a former baseball coach in Cody and Powell, said the teams he coached “wouldn’t have a chance” with the change.
“It’s like telling a 1A football team in Shoshoni that they have to compete with Sheridan’s 4A team,” he said. “Smaller communities don’t have a chance to compete against those bigger teams.”
'Needed To Happen'
Cowboy State Daily reached out to Jason Huggins, the state chairman of Wyoming American Legion Baseball, to discuss the transition to the Senior Legion. He declined to comment until the entire board of directors could schedule a group interview.
Jack Simms, the former state chairman, also declined to comment on the change, only saying that it “needed to happen.”
Brown isn’t surprised that they were reluctant to discuss the change. He described the atmosphere of the annual meeting when it was announced.
“Every year, they do a state meeting held by the chairman,” he said. “This year, they did it over Zoom and muted every single coach on the meeting, so they had no say in anything.”
Can’t But Must Compete
Brown believes current American Legion coaches are staying silent because they’re “scared of ramifications from the state commissioner.”
As a former coach, he has no qualms about sharing his thoughts.
“Their goal is to make the Double A state tournament as competitive as they can be,” he said. “That is what they told everyone, but I know Single A coaches hate it. They were pretty upset, but there’s nothing they can do about it. They weren’t given a chance to have their say.”
Brown said the Single A and Double A levels were established to accommodate the realities of building baseball teams in different communities. Filling a roster with baseball players is much easier in Gillette than in Lovell, primarily because of population.
“Cody, Lovell, Wheatland and those towns have fewer kids to choose from and compete against Gillette, Casper, and Cheyenne,” he said. “In these smaller towns, you need all your athletes to be able to compete against those bigger towns, and you don’t get many kids that go out for baseball.”
Brown cited Cheyenne’s team as an example.
“They have eight to nine guys who are just pitchers,” he said. “That’s a whole team of kids who only pitch, compared to a single team from Wheatland that has 12 kids total. How do you compete with that?”
Pros And Cons
Tagg Lain coached American Legion Baseball in Cheyenne from 1987 to 2015. He led the American Legion Post 6 varsity team to 14 championships at the Double A level.
Lain said the combination of the Double A and Single A levels was “a pretty major change,” but he can appreciate both sides of the argument.
“I haven’t heard positive things about it, but from a competitive standpoint, it's probably the best way to get the top eight teams into one state tournament,” he said. “That's been a problem that has been addressed in different ways going back to the early 2000s.”
Lain explained that many previously competitive teams switched from Double A to Single A as they became less competitive over the years.
That wasn’t because of leadership or the quality of the players, but because of the overall size of their communities and the number of interested and available players.
“Riverton always had a highly competitive team,” he said. “Cody had a great program, and Powell had some really good teams. With those communities slipping out of Double A, that top level of baseball became less competitive because it was only based on the size of the community.”
Lain’s primary concern is logistical.
He thinks the creation of the Senior Legion could deprive both larger and smaller teams of opportunities to gain more experience and exposure by playing out of state.
Many American Legion teams travel to tournaments in neighboring states to get additional experience with teams at their level. Lain believes that it could become less doable if Wyoming’s teams need to keep playing each other.
“It's going to really tie up every team playing so many games within the state of Wyoming that the tradition of traveling to some of the bigger, better tournaments in Denver, Billings, and Rapid City, and getting in front of the best competition in the country, may be hindered a little bit,” he said.
Out Of The Ballpark
Lain, who is now retired in Colorado, wasn’t sure how Wyoming’s American Legion teams were responding to the change.
If their response was and remains negative, that could have repercussions for the Wyoming American Legion Baseball board that it might not have anticipated.
“Parents, coaches, and boosters help sustain these programs,” he said. “They're making decisions that are in the best interest of their local post, their local Legion team, their towns, and their cities, and I hate to see anything that takes away that autonomy.”
That’s why, according to Lain, teams like Cody and Riverton dropped from Double A to Single A in years past. They felt their players could get a better experience competing against teams and communities closer to their populations.
Any community that feels it doesn't have a competitive edge in the Senior Legion might look to take its players to other youth baseball programs. Lain said that’s entirely in the community’s control, and there’s nothing stopping people from making that choice.
“When you’re running your own program, you look out for your own self-interest,” he said. “American Legion baseball is the biggest game in town in Wyoming, and the state has a great Legion program, but I could see teams going to play Senior Babe Ruth, playing independent, or becoming a travel organization just to get out of Legion baseball.”
Extra Innings Or Walk Off?
With the 2026 American Legion Baseball season already underway, all the former Double A and Single A teams will continue competing in the Senior Legion. The question is whether this will be the new normal or a temporary pivot.
In Lain’s 28 years with Wyoming American Legion baseball, he saw several similar efforts to shake things up with the Double A and Single A teams. They were all “attempts to incorporate” everyone, but ultimately only attempts.
“They didn't last very long,” he said. “Change is a difficult thing. I've seen a lot of attempts, but Wyoming doesn’t have enough of the larger communities. It’s a tough situation.”
Brown said he hopes it’ll be temporary.
He had great success coaching Cody and Powell’s Single A Legion teams, but believes they’d be at an insurmountable and disheartening disadvantage in the new Senior Legion.
“I hope it changes back in the future,” he said. “It makes no sense. Why fix something that wasn't broken in the first place?”
It’s too early to say how the new Senior Legion will work for Wyoming American Legion Baseball, or if smaller communities will feel like they’ve lost their opportunities to meaningfully compete.
“This is going to put people in a box,” Lain said. “The concern that I have is not looking backward, but what's in the best interest of Legion baseball going forward.
"You hate to do anything that's going to make it more difficult for these communities to do what they believe is best for their players and their community.”
Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect Ryan Brown is a former youth baseball coach, not an American Legion coach.
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
