Looking to rebound from what could most aptly be categorized as a rebuilding year in 2023, the Kemmerer High School football team heads into its 2024 campaign with a renewed sense of optimism, fueled by solid participation numbers and quality returners, many with varsity experience.

Practice began in earnest two weeks ago, and with the Labor Day weekend now in the rearview, the Rangers are now looking forward to their season opener Friday against Moorcroft.

“It’s going well — we’re getting the hang of things, getting our feet under us a little bit, in terms of schemes, the finer points of our base offense, base defense, that kind of stuff,” said KHS head coach Bart Jernigan. “Working on our fundamentals, getting back into hitting shape a little bit. It’s been good.”

Participation numbers have been trending upwards for the KHS football program in recent years, a trend Jernigan said he hopes will continue. There are seven seniors on this year’s roster, up from three last year.

“We’ll be at 32 kids, I believe, which is a good number for us,” Jernigan said. “We’re up five from last year, and up seven or eight from our average. Hopefully, we’re in a good trend in that way. We have seven seniors, so that bodes well from a leadership standpoint for us. That doesn’t guarantee you anything, but it’s a great place to start from.”

Having a couple of weeks to evaluate his team, Jernigan said success this season will begin with the big guys up front.

“I think our line play should be a strength for us — we were fairly young last year, and we’ll continue to be young this year moving forward, but we have a lot of guys who returned who have a ton of varsity time,” Jernigan said. “We only graduated three seniors, and we returned almost everybody back, so I think that’s a strength, as well — that experience on the field from last year. I feel like our kids have had an excellent offseason — different camps, and things — that hopefully will prove fruitful.”

Offseason workouts were well attended, according to Jernigan, and he believes the Rangers will enter the season stronger than they have been in a while. Class 2A teams are known for their tough, physical style of play, and to be able to compete with the teams at the top, you need to be able to stand toe-to-toe.

“Overall, I think we enter the season stronger than we’ve been in the past, man-for-man,” Jernigan explained. “I think that will benefit us greatly when we play the likes of Lyman, Mountain View and Lovell, teams that are really physical. When you play great teams, it’s nice to have some strength behind you. I’m excited to see how we stack up on that front this year, because last year, I think there were moments where we were just outgunned.”

The Rangers lost quarterback Tanner Schramm and fullback Gabe Emery to graduation, but return just about everyone else on offense. A few kids will transition to different positions, but those transitions should be fairly seamless, according to Jernigan.

“We return a lot of our offensive production from last year — nearly everyone’s back, minus Tanner Schramm at quarterback, and Gabe Emery at fullback,” Jernigan said. “There’s a lot of things to be excited about. And with our numbers going up, hopefully depth will be a key asset to us, as well. Football is such an attrition game, and when you only have 25-26 kids to start with, by the end of the season, you’re limping across the finish line. This year, the goal will be that we sprint through that finish line, and find ourselves in a playoff position.”

With the loss of Schramm and Gabe Emery to graduation, Kemmerer will have a new-look backfield going into 2024, though the names are familiar ones to Rangers fans.

“Kyle Fox will be our starting quarterback, and Logan Emery will be playing fullback for us,” Jernigan said. “Cole Rogers and Derek Hagler will be playing wing, and Noah Parks will also be playing F-back for us. Austin Ruvalcaba and Sam Thatcher will probably play a bunch of H-back. Hopefully having those guys rotating in will allow us to spread the ball around a little bit.”

On defense, a lot of the names read the same, though the defensive line will definitely be a unit to keep an eye on.

“On defense, we return Cole Rogers and Logan Emery — both of those kids were among the team leaders in defensive points, prior to injury,” Jernigan said. “They’ll be an important part of what we do. Graison Kelley and Owen Barton will anchor the D-line up front, and Colter Krell will move down to the defensive end spot this year — I like the strength he’s put on in the offseason. He’s bulked up, and he’ll be a gamechanger for us there. Bridger Anderson will be at the other

D-end, and he’s a good athlete. Logan will bump up to linebacker, and Cole will stay at safety. We have some good opportunities to make hay out there.”

Krell was also the starting center on offense last year, but Jernigan said he’ll shift to guard this season, in an effort to capitalize on his speed and athleticism.

“Given the schemes we run, that center position doesn’t get out in space that much,” Jernigan explained. “Colter’s a really good athlete — he went to state in the hurdles for the track team, and he went to state for swimming, so he’s a great athlete. We just wanted to get that athleticism a little more out in space. I think he’ll do a great job there.”

The Rangers participated in a scrimmage against Cokeville last weekend, and will spend this week preparing to open the season Friday against Moorcroft, a team coach Jernigan and his staff aren’t familiar with, at least outside of the wrestling room.

“We open up with Moorcroft at Shoshoni — that’s a wildcard, just because they have a new coach, and they’re making the jump from 9-man to 11-man football this season,” Jernigan explained. “We don’t know a lot about them, so we’re going in a little blind. I’m sure they’re going to have a tough squad — they have a great wrestling team, so they have the athletes in the building to be competitive. So we’re looking forward to a dogfight there. And there’s a bit of a rivalry that’s developed there between our wrestling teams — a lot of our wrestlers play football, so that will be fun.”