LARAMIE – Gregg Sawyer is on the exclusive list of greatest dual-threat athletes in Wyoming history.
 
Jay Novacek (football/track & field, 1982-84), Jesseca Cross (basketball/track & field, 1993-98) and Erin Kirby (volleyball/track & field, 2011-2015) are already on the Mount Rushmore of dominant two-sport Cowboys and Cowgirls.
 
Sawyer, an all-Western Athletic Conference basketball player and record-setting track & field champion for the Pokes from 1994-99, will join them in the UW Collegiate Athletics Hall of Fame when the 2026 class is inducted on Sept. 11.
 
Amazingly, the three-sport high school star from Burns might have played football at UW if Joe Tiller had a scholarship available for Sawyer at the time of his recruitment.
 
"Maybe," said Sawyer, who was recruited by Mike Van Diest, one of Tiller's top assistants, to play defense. "I did love basketball. I was probably a little better at football, but I just wasn't quite big enough. I didn't have enough mass, I was a little bit of a late bloomer and I was pretty skinny."
 
Sawyer shared a couple of breakfasts with Tiller at the old Bunkhouse but believes his lack of size was too much of a concern for the head football coach to pull the trigger.
 
Fortunately for Cowboy fans, basketball coach Joby Wright decided to offer Sawyer – the 1993-94 Boys' Basketball Gatorade Player of the Year in Wyoming and the Milward Simpson Award winner as the state's top male prep athlete – a scholarship.
 
Otherwise, Sawyer would likely have taken his talents to Texas to compete full-time in track and field.
 
"I grew up watching all of the Cowboy teams. Obviously going to watch Fennis Dembo, Eric Leckner, Sean Dent and all those guys when I was in elementary school, I mean, getting the opportunity was a dream come true," Sawyer said. "It was Joby's second year, and I think there were eight scholarships available. That certainly helped my odds."
 
Sawyer stuck with his plan to complete his basketball career at UW and then use the extra year of eligibility to compete in track.
 
As a freshman, Sawyer only averaged 7.7 minutes off the bench in 18 appearances. Despite having senior Theo Ratliff average 14.4 points, 5.9 rebounds and 5.1 blocks per game before embarking on a 16-year NBA career, the 1994-95 Cowboys finished 13-15.
 
Sawyer also played sparingly during UW's 14-15 finish his sophomore season before cracking the starting lineup and averaging 12.6 points as a junior.
 
"It meant a lot, because a lot of people doubted it," Sawyer said of proving he could excel at the Division I level coming from rural Wyoming. "Being at a 2A school, being a skinny guard, pretty short … it meant everything. I always approach things with a chip on my shoulder, like I had something to prove, because there were a lot of doubters. Luckily, there was not social media, the internet, like there is today or I probably would have gotten a lot of skepticism."
 
The 12-16 finish for the Pokes in 1996-97 led to a coaching change with Larry Shyatt replacing Wright. When the highly respected assistant from Clemson took the job, he was told that the Cowboy cupboard was mostly bare.
 
"I was blown away," Shyatt said of his first impression of Sawyer and Jeron Roberts, the senior backcourt duo he inherited from Wright. "What I was told when I came to Wyoming, I'm not going to mention by who, was how bad they were, how disassembled they were. They said you've got to start from scratch.
 
"I was shocked when we started individual workouts, especially when I saw Roberts and Sawyer. I mean, they could have started in the ACC immediately."
 
The 1997-98 season rejuvenated the program and stirred the echoes of the "Dome of Doom" glory days from Sawyer's childhood when he watched the Dembo-led Pokes make it to the NIT championship and the "Sweet 16" of the NCAA Tournament.
 
UW opened the campaign 5-0, including a road win at Colorado. During WAC play, the Cowboys toppled No. 12 New Mexico, No. 5 Utah and BYU at home and also spoiled bitter rival Colorado State's senior night with an overtime win in Fort Collins.
 
The 62-56 victory over Rick Majerus' team was particularly impressive considering the Utes finished the season 30-4 overall with a loss to Kentucky in the NCAA championship game.
 
"It wasn't a sellout by any means, but it was so loud," Sawyer recalled of the rowdy crowd of 9,067 on a weeknight in the Arena-Auditorium. "We were down (11 points) and we ended up closing it and winning in a close one. We were in a huddle at the middle of the court yelling, and you couldn't even hear each other, it was that loud in there. That was very memorable."
 
The Cowboys notched their 19^th win in the regular-season finale at Air Force but were upset by San Diego State at the WAC Tournament in Las Vegas and lost to emerging national powerhouse Gonzaga in the NIT.
 
Sawyer averaged 14.4 points and was on the all-WAC defensive team. The biology major was also an academic All-American.
 
Over his final two seasons, Sawyer started all 56 games and scored 757 points (13.5 points per game).
 
"I love that kid," Shyatt said. "I had been an assistant coach for 24 years. This was my first head coaching job ever, and it was supposed to be an awful team. You know what? They knocked off some pretty doggone good teams. Roberts had ridiculous skill, and Sawyer had pretty doggone good skill, but he had a toughness and a competitiveness."
 
Shyatt left UW after one season to return to Clemson as head coach. However, the momentum created during Sawyer's final season on the hardwood continued into the early stages of the Steve McClain era as the Cowboys won two Mountain West titles with Josh Davis and Marcus Bailey leading the way.
 
"I took Josh Davis bowling on his (recruiting) visit," Sawyer said. "Most of that crew, including Ugo Udezue, Brett McFall, carried over what we started with McClain."
 
Sawyer, who was recruited by North Carolina, Stanford and Texas for track & field, won the pentathlon at the WAC Indoor Track & Field Championships and the decathlon at the WAC Outdoor Track & Field Championships in 1999. His 3,981 points in the pentathlon set the UW and WAC records. His 7,250 points in the decathlon ranks second in UW history behind Novacek (7,762 points, 1984).
 
"I had high expectations, or I probably wouldn't have committed to it," Sawyer said when asked if the performances surprised him after focusing on basketball for four years. "I came into my freshman year probably at just 6-2, 155 pounds at the most. I didn't lift a lot of weights in high school. I was a super late bloomer, and I put on 30 pounds of muscle over four years and was more athletic.
 
"I could do all kinds of things on the court that I couldn't in high school, so I had a pretty good idea that I had a chance to be halfway decent at it just based on my maturity."
 
Sawyer still owns the school record in the indoor pole vault (17-0 3/4, 1999) and is second all-time in the outdoor pole vault (16-6). He was also the leadoff man for the 4x400 meter relay team that posted the six-fastest time (3:12.04) in program history.
 
An untimely injury led to Sawyer just missing out on qualifying for the NCAA Championships and from competing at the U.S. Olympic Trials in 2000.
 
"I thought I had food poisoning, but I it was an ulcer in my stomach, and I spent three weeks in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in a hospital, because I had a hole in my stomach," Sawyer said. "It was probably due to taking too much Motrin for inflammation when I tore my oblique. After spending three weeks in the hospital, basically, I kind of decided to start my life after that."
 
Following his UW days, Sawyer experienced the other side of the Border War as track graduate assistant at Colorado State. That's where he met his wife, Anya Oceanak, a Cheyenne Central standout who ran track for the Rams. Their daughter, Sydni, runs track at South Dakota, and their oldest son, River, will be a freshman basketball player at CSU this year.
 
"Don't tell Kevin (McKinney)," Sawyer joked.
 
Shyatt returned to Laramie for a second stint as UW's head coach from 2011-16. Josh Adams, another member of Sawyer's 2026 UW Athletics Hall of Fame class, led the Pokes to the 2015 Mountain West Tournament title and the NCAA Tournament.
 
"Gregg Sawyer was one of the best competitors I've ever coached," Shyatt said. "I would throw him and Josh Adams in the same cradle as all of those great ones."

(Editor's note: This the first in a seven-part series profiling the 2026 UW Intercollegiate Hall of Fame class.)
 
Follow Ryan for more stories on Wyoming athletics on X at @By_RyanThorburn on Facebook at Wyoming Athletics and Instagram at wyoathletics. Also follow him at Pokes Insider at Gowyo.com/pokesinsider.
 
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