Written by: Will Hoenike
The Wilder Wildcats come into the season looking to replace 11 graduated seniors. Those seniors accounted for 26 of the team’s 32 touchdowns in 2021 so head coach Kyle DalSoglio will be looking for some new faces to step into larger roles in 2022.
Fortunately, there are players who contributed for the five-win Wildcats. Sophomore quarterback Kyevan Gepford split time under center last season with Adrian Miramontes. With Miramontes gone, the job now belongs to Gepford, who completed over 50 percent of his passes and threw eight touchdowns last fall as a freshman.
The team also returns a pair of players who saw action in the backfield in senior Cristian Cuellar and junior Isaac Rodriguez. Combined, the duo ran for almost 600 yards and five touchdowns, providing much-needed experience and explosiveness for the Wilder offense.
Defensively, the team will be led by junior Noe Anguiano, who averaged nearly ten tackles per game last season en route to first team All-Western Idaho Conference honors. He also had a sack, an interception (which he returned 91 yards for a score), two forced fumbles, and two recovered fumbles in a season that caught a lot of people’s attention across Idaho. He’ll get help from Rodriguez, senior Raul Luna, and sophomore Gabriel Cuellar on the defensive side of the ball.
Each conference in the 1A Division 1 classification gets one automatic berth into the postseason with the rest of its teams jockeying for one of eight at-large berths. Wilder missed out on those berths last season despite going 5-3, something DalSolgio hopes to avoid this season with a non-conference slate that includes Division 1 opponents Murtaugh, Valley, and Butte County. It’s a challenging non-conference schedule (that also includes old rival and 1A Division 2 contender Horseshoe Bend) that should serve the Wildcats in two ways – first, games against Division 1 teams are counted differently in the mathematical equation that determines the at-large rankings. And second, they’ll provide terrific tests for Wilder going into conference play.
The Wildcats have every reason to believe they can earn the automatic berth by winning the Western Idaho Conference. Defending conference champion Notus is back with a strong roster, Idaho City and Rimrock will both provide strong challenges in the WIC as well. So a seasoned, tested Wildcat team should benefit from playing a tough non-conference schedule.
Wilder book-ends conference play with home games, opening WIC play on September 23 against rival Notus and then closing the regular season on its home field on October 21 against Idaho City.