Community gathers to dedicate Gibbs Field

The bleachers were full at Riverside Middle High School on Friday, Oct. 17 as friends, family, students and colleagues of former coach Jim Gibbs gathered to witness the dedication of the school’s new athletic field in his name. 

“What Jim did for kids was amazing,” speaker Pat Neely said. 

Gibbs was an athlete before he was ever a coach, attending Rocky Mountain College with baseball and football scholarships and later being inducted into the Rocky Mountain College Athletic Hall of Fame for his participation on the 1963-64 championship baseball team. After graduating with a degree in physical education, he taught in Montana and Meeteetse before coming to Riverside in 1973. Over his 29 years as a Bobcat and a Rebel, he coached track, volleyball, basketball and middle school football and volunteered for Little League. 

Neely was one of his middle school football players before the pair became colleagues, with Gibbs coaching for Basin and Neely for Greybull. He recalled one game where their running back was sacked without any protection from the line and Gibbs had the boys switch positions – running back on the line and lineman out to catch – then sent them back to the field, with instructions for no one to move but the new running back. 

“The play happened, the running back got hit, went to the ground, and he’s shaking his head, and he looks up at Coach Gibbs and says, ‘That wasn’t fun!’ He said, ‘Exactly. Now you know how important everybody’s job is,’” Neely told the story. As he recalled, the lineman went on to become a star on their team. 

“Life lessons, I think that was what he was about.”

Neely later student taught under Pat Brown and Gibbs. He remembered Gibbs teaching a shotgun loading class – trapshooting was a passion for Gibbs – and offering the opportunity for students to shoot pigeons as a reward at the end of the class. 

“One of his students thought that it was their obligation to call PETA. PETA came into Basin, Wyoming and blew the whole thing up,” Neely said. Later, in the teachers’ lounge, Gibbs came out with a box of ball caps and tossed one straight in Neely’s face. When he picked it up, he saw there were pigeons on it. 

Gibbs was a tough advocate for athletics. In opening remarks, school board member Greg Gloy recalled that Gibbs was disappointed Riverside put in a six-lane track instead of eight. Even after his retirement in 2002, he continued to watch Riverside athletes compete. 

“He would cuss me out [over the track] every time we went to Casper, or when we would go to regionals, he would come and watch Riverside,” Gloy said. “He loved watching the kids, supporting kids.”

Track, especially, held a special place in Gibbs’s heart, with two boys track state championships (1986 and 1987), and one girls track state championship (1991). He was a super fan of discus and the 4x8 relay.  

“You watch those (athletes) who he really put through and challenged them, and he would give the shirt off his back to them, because that’s the type of person he was,” Neely said. “They knew that their competitive greatness came from him, he was a special person that way.”

If a kid didn’t have shoes or a coat, Gibbs made sure they were taken care of. 

“When I look back at what I modeled my career after, I saw hard work, dedication, professionalism, but to care for kids,” Neely said. 

Gibbs’s wife, Shauna, stepped up to the mic to thank the hundred-some attendees for coming to see the dedication and sharing their stories. 

“It’s been great to see old friends and old athletes,” she said. “I loved that the little children here came by, and I’m thinking, those are Basin’s future athletes. So now they know what the expectations are.”

The party moved outside under blue skies to see Shauna, with accompaniment from her daughter Jaime Hartt and sister-in-law Mary Jo Fowler, cut the ribbon on Riverside’s new Gibbs Field. A bench donated by the Class of 1995 will soon be placed near the entrance to the track with a commemoration of Gibbs. 

Lights and a scoreboard have yet to be installed on Gibbs Field, with brickwork around its new archway entrance also delayed. It is expected, however, that spring will bring its first track meet.