Groups recognized at school board meeting

Thermopolis High School Director of Activities and Athletics Brandon Deromedi introduced the 2021-22 golf team and “our four-time boys state champion team” to the Hot Springs County School Board of Trustees on Oct. 21.

“More than any of the other years, they’ve overcome so many obstacles to get to this point,” Deromedi said.

“To go through the state tournament, the very first day, we came out tied with Kemmerer, and that was definitely not where we had projected ourselves.”

Deromedi admitted to some nervousness among both the students and himself, although he credited them with not showing it, even as he confessed “there wasn’t a whole lot of sleep going on” in his own household, as he considered the team’s next moves.

“Our theme, all year long, was being very intentional with everything we were doing,” Deromedi said.

“When we met Friday night, after the first round of the state tournament, I told them, ‘You’ve got to find a way to be intentional tomorrow. You know where your strokes were lost today. Let’s not make the same mistakes on day two.’”

Deromedi recounted to the board how he asked each member of the team who was competing at state to improve by two strokes, and “just be better than yesterday,” which he noted “they blew that out of the water,” to the point that “some of them came in, day two, and improved by 10, 12, 17 strokes.”

As a result, after day one, Deromedi noted the team was tied, and by the end of Saturday, his boys had won by 40 strokes.

“Our team improved, as a whole, on the boys’ side by 30 strokes,” Deromedi said.

“We had three all-state nominations, (and) next year, we’re going to be there.”

According to Deromedi, the Thermopolis High School boys golf team is the third such team ever, in the state of Wyoming, to win four in a row, “and next year, we’re going to win our fifth in a row. This was the seventh, out of the last 10 years, that the boys team has won state.”

Thermopolis High School Vo-Ag Teacher Britton Van Heule was joined by Career and Technical Education teachers Becky Martinez and Ranelle Hindman in presenting the school’s Future Farmers of America (FFA)Agriscience Fair national finalists to the Hot Springs County School Board of Trustees on Oct. 21.

“Last spring, they won their category division at the state science fair,” Van Heule said.

“We submitted their papers and all their research in the summertime, then found out in August that they were top 10 in the category division, which is about as far as we’ve made it in this process of the science fair.”

Van Heule acknowledged that “it was probably a little intimidating, having three teachers on at the same time, asking you every hard question that could quite possibly happen,” but he believes that helped them prepare, “because the three of them are top three in the country now, in our category division, and next week, we’re traveling to the national convention.”

“We’ll hopefully be coming back to tell you that they are winners, which will be so awesome,” Van Heule said. “They’re not nervous at all.”