RIVERTON – After an up and down season for the Central Wyoming College golf teams this past season, filled with emotion and anguish for some Rustler golfers, the team has finally landed on a new head coach to take over for interim head coach Jorden James.
James came in a little before the mid-way point of the season to help finish the job that former coach Greg Stimpson left at CWC and now it is time for local Riverton Country Club GM and head golf professional Collin Hopkins to take over the reins for the Rustlers.
He’ll come into a program that is already deep in its roots and has a strong core of players on both the boys and the girls side of the roster.
Aubree Johnson, a CWC lady Rustler golfer, made it all the way to the NJCAA Division 1 Women’s Golf Championship just a few weeks ago and will now be looking to do the same under her third head coach in two years.
The rest of the team will also be looking to get to some sort of championship through the leadership of new head coach Hopkins, but with tough teams like Eastern Wyoming in the way Hopkins has an uphill battle to climb.
“Eastern Wyoming seems to win a lot, especially in our region,” Hopkins said early Thursday morning, “they do it through bringing in some good foreign kids but I’m going to try and get to there by recruiting some good, local talent.”
In the end Hopkins knows what this team can be, especially after watching them compete at the Riverton Country Club he’s been managing for five years. He not only knows their talent level but he understands that the region CWC competes in is tough, but he’s not afraid,
“I want to see the team become extremely competitive in the region,” Hopkins said, “I know they can do it, I’ve seen them play.”
When Hopkins was hired by the Country Club in Riverton they described him on their website as “virtually a lifelong resident of Fremont County, Wyoming” due to the fact he spent two separate periods of time living in Jacksonville, Florida serving the US Navy and (later on) going to law school.
That law school paid off as he spent 15 years in Riverton as a practicing attorney before turning his sights on serving his local golf course and local community in a different way with commitment to “doing whatever he can to make it such that each member and guest gets the most that they can out of each round played”.
After being in the service, going through law school, spending one and a half decades in a courtroom, and managing a very successful country club it’s time for Hopkins to step into his new venture where he will surely succeed like he has in every other aspect of his life and career so far.
Shared from WYO Today Media
