2023 High School Football Preview: Glenrock High School

GLENROCK, Wyo. (Wyoming News Now) - It’s been 5 years since Glenrock made it to the state championship game, and since then it’s been a rocky road for the Herd.

In the past 3 seasons, they haven’t found a lot of stability as they have had a new head coach in each of those seasons, and since they’ve been to the state championship in 2017, they have only had one winning season and that came in 2018.

This year, they are now on their fourth head coach in four years, and this time it will be Zane Perez. This is his first time as a head coach for football, but he does come with some experience. He played college football at the Colorado School of Mines as a defensive back. He also served as an assistant coach to Glenrock’s wrestling team last Winter.

Coming into this role as a head coach, Perez knew that one of the first thing he needed to address was the culture in the program. He said, “We got together as coaches and our number 1 thing is building a culture. You know, that’s our goal for the season, and we’ve discussed different ways on how we want to evaluate that, and what we expect from the kids and they rose to the occasion and it’s been fun to watch.”

Even with the instability on the roulette wheel of different coaches, the players this year are buying in. Numbers for their offseason workouts have increased a lot more and they are seeing more players buying in than years past.

Two seniors on the team, Mason O’Brien and J.D. Holeman, both have been feeling the new breath of air that Perez has brought to Gelnrock.

Mason sung nothing but praises, saying “He brings a lot more physical energy, gives us all like a boost of confidence, without necessarily degrading your skill set. He gives us that... the mentality of how football is meant to be played,” while J.D. said, “It’s been really awesome, people are excited to play football, excited to learn the new plays.”

Holeman mentioned learning new schemes, which is something that Perez is working on with his team so far. He wants to expand their arsenal of plays and bring in some more diverse looks.

Zane said, “We’ll run a balanced attack, so at a base level a lot of what we’re doing as far as the movements are the same. Ya know, Glenrock has been a run heavy school and we’re going to run the ball, but ya know, we’re gonna line up in different formations, we’re going to be multi-formational.”

The Herders from Glenrock are focusing in on this season, as they believe it could be a major turning point to bringing the program back to its former glory.

“I want to see everyone not only grow and improve, but I wanna see the winning culture change around here from 1 game, to lets say 6 or 7 this year, playoffs, maybe a state championship,” said Mason. Holeman added, “I want to try and give people some hope, ‘hey we aren’t down in the dumps, we’re on our climb back to the top, right where we need to be.’ "

Glenrock will be getting ready for their Week 0 match up with the Natrona County sophomores on the 25th.

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