Bobby Thoman has always been a part of the wrestling world. His family has multiple state champions from Green River and even has a dual tournament in Green River named after his uncle.
From working around cattle all his life his life, and now even owning his own beef company with his brother, wrestling has always been a reprieve for his work on the farm. With that in mind, Thoman’s old wrestling coach gave him some leniency after finding out just what he did day-in and day-out on the farm, which helped.
“I would sometimes only make one or two practices a week,” Thoman said.
Despite balancing life and wrestling, success was in the blood of Thoman. He showed that when he won four state titles at Wind River in his weight class, a dominating example of strength and skill.
After leaving Wind River, Thoman didn’t want to get away from the sport that gave him so much success, so he promised to keep it close to him.
“I decided I wanted to give back to the sport that gave so much to me,” Thoman said.
Over the years Thoman has been the assistant coach of the Riverton Wolverines’ wrestling squad under head coach Jay Galey’s leadership. But, In the beginning of the summer, Galey announced that he was stepping down as the head coach.
In late June the school board announced that Thoman would be the new coach for the Wolverines.
“I am excited to be here,” Thoman said about being hired as the head coach before being brutally honest, “I still get nervous and that’s a good thing.”
Thoman has a lot of big plans for the wrestling program, especially since it was announced earlier this year that the WHSAA would recognize womens wrestling as a high school sport.
Thoman said that there is plenty of potential walking around but that not many students have become invested in the wrestling program.
“There is so much potential out in the halls of the school,” Thoman said, “we just need to pull them in and get them involved.”
Thoman said that even though the team is young they have a lot of good wrestlers that will only get better with time and hard work. He also said that this is much more to him than just getting students to state or getting them a bunch of wins, it goes beyond that.
“I want them to be big parts of society. I want them to be ready for life in 10-15 years down the road. That’s what I really want to instill in the program,” Thoman said.
Thoman’s upcoming season as head coach will be his first at the position but, hopefully, it will be the first of many good wrestling seasons to come out of Riverton High School.