Winter is coming

A
fter a rather beautiful and generous fall for these parts, it looks as though winter is coming. 
Buffalo had 17 inches of snow on the ground on Monday morning, while Gillette had 10, so the reality of the impending misery of cold weather has left me with mixed feelings.
I dread the temperatures, the prospect of having to shovel sidewalks, and the unpredictability of the roads that we are going to be facing for the next six months. However, as the colder weather begins to set in, it also means that the excitement of post-season play for the fall sports is upon us. 
The Dogie and Lady Dogie cross country teams are running in their conference meet already on Thursday and will finish up at the state meet next weekend.
The swimmers are just a week away from conference and only three weeks away from state competition.
The Lady Dogie volleyball squad has only two more weeks of the regular season before they make their state run at the regional tournament, and Dogie football is still in the running for a playoff berth.
For cross country and swimming, you can get a pretty good idea how the culminating events will play out, but with team sports like football and volleyball, it’s not as cut and dried.
Especially this year.
After a rather gloomy start to the season where a chance at the playoffs seemed like a long shot, the Dogies have turned things around on the gridiron and are currently embroiled in a complicated final season scenario where they have a chance to secure a spot in the playoffs. 
Things would have to come together perfectly for it to happen, but the possibility has leveled up
the excitement surrounding the
Boys of Fall.
And then there’s volleyball. 
The 3A East conference — the northeast and southeast quads — are so evenly matched this year that it is anyone’s guess as to who will be taking the top four spots at the regional tournament to advance to state finals. 
Buffalo and Wheatland hold the No. 1 spots in the northeast and southeast quads respectively, having won all their conference matches so far, but even they aren’t untouchable. 
After Wheatland, the remainder of the southeast is tied with 1-2 records. In the northeast, Douglas holds a slim one-game advantage over Newcastle for the second seed while Thermopolis remains without a win in the quadrant.
However, there are still two weeks remaining in the season, and rematches within each quadrant are still to come. With the teams being all so evenly matched, it will come down to whichever squad shows up and wants it more, as to who will walk away with the W.
If that happens, it’ll get interesting to see how seeding comes out.
All of this uncertainty and potential makes the chill in the air a little easier for this summer-loving, sports-obsessed writer to take. I
can’t wait to see how everything plays out, and then there’s the other bonus of winter — the hoops season is on the horizon and growing closer every day!