{"id":7205,"date":"2016-12-03T07:30:32","date_gmt":"2016-12-03T14:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wyonation.com\/?p=7205"},"modified":"2016-12-02T20:34:28","modified_gmt":"2016-12-03T03:34:28","slug":"wyoming-no-stranger-hosting-championship-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/wyoming-no-stranger-hosting-championship-events\/","title":{"rendered":"Wyoming Is No Stranger To Hosting Championship Events"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7227\" style=\"width: 220px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7227\" class=\"wp-image-7227\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/lecknerEric1998.jpg\" alt=\"lecknereric1998\" width=\"210\" height=\"318\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/lecknerEric1998.jpg 318w, https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/lecknerEric1998-198x300.jpg 198w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7227\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wyoming basketball great Eric Leckner.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The University of Wyoming is hosting the Mountain West Football Championship Game for the first time in their history. It is the first appearance for the Cowboys in a championship football game since 1996 when Wyoming lost to BYU in the infamous safety game (and yes I&#8217;m still mad at Joe Tiller). Although this is the first time the Cowboys are hosting a football championship game, the University and the city of Laramie are no strangers to hosting such events. Let&#8217;s take a look at what other conference and NCAA championship events the Gem City has hosted.<\/p>\n<h3>Basketball<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>1986 Men&#8217;s WAC Tournament<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The just four years old Arena Auditorium hosted nine WAC teams with UTEP winning the conference title over Wyoming 65-64. Even in defeat Wyoming basketball great Eric Leckner was named the tournament&#8217;s\u00a0MVP starting a streak of three straight tournament\u00a0MVP&#8217;s for the Cowboy big man.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1991 Men&#8217;s and Women&#8217;s WAC Tournament<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Laramie hosted both the men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s WAC basketball tournament this time around. BYU would win on the men&#8217;s side with Shawn Bradley taking home MVP honors. The Pokes did make it to the semifinals but lost to Utah. On the women&#8217;s side, the tournament was the inaugural\u00a0one for WAC women and was won by Utah.<\/p>\n<h3>Wrestling<\/h3>\n<p>The wrestling team often gets overlooked but they have a rich history of producing quality wrestlers and hosting championship meets.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1958 NCAA\u00a0Championships<\/li>\n<li>1965 WAC Championships<\/li>\n<li>1965 NCAA\u00a0Championships<\/li>\n<li>1979 WAC Championships<\/li>\n<li>1981 NCAA West Regional<\/li>\n<li>1988\u00a0WAC Championships<\/li>\n<li>1992\u00a0WAC Championships<\/li>\n<li>1997\u00a0WAC Championships<\/li>\n<li>2001 NCAA West Regional<\/li>\n<li>2006 NCAA West Regional<\/li>\n<li>2013 WWC Championships<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The above lists are not comprehensive and I am sure there are some Olympic sports (such as track and swimming) who have hosted championships but I wasn&#8217;t able to research those quite as well because their record keeping isn&#8217;t as robust. If you know of any events in other sports that should be added to this list, please send them my way.<\/p>\n<p>These events have\u00a0also created memories for many Cowboy athletes and fans alike. This evening&#8217;s game is going to provide those very same memories for a new generation of Wyoming fans and athletes and I can&#8217;t wait for the Cowboys to take the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; The University of Wyoming is hosting the Mountain West Football Championship Game for the first time in their history. It is the first appearance for the Cowboys in a championship football game since 1996 when Wyoming lost to BYU in the infamous safety game (and yes I&#8217;m still mad at Joe Tiller). Although this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[1045,35,292,1044,25],"class_list":["post-7205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wyoblog","tag-championships","tag-laramie","tag-mwc","tag-wac","tag-wyoming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyonation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}