Daley & O'Connor Honored as Wyoming's Wooden Legacy Award Winners

Big Horn’s Mike Daley and Sundance’s Jim O’Connor are the recipients of the 2023 Wooden Legacy Award for Wyoming.

This award was started two years ago to honor coaches who have embodied many of the qualities that the great Coach John Wooden was passionate about. These individuals were selected because of their roles in educating our youth, their longevity in education and coaching, their character, their service to their communities and the State of Wyoming, and their successes as a coach.

Daley has served as a head basketball coach for the Rams boys’ and girls’ programs at his alma mater. He has had two stints with both squads and has been a high school head coach in Wyoming for 18 seasons. Daley is also the current Athletic Director at Big Horn High School. His girls’ teams won back-to-back Class 2A state championships in 2008 and 2009. Daley has led Big Horn’s girls’ squad to six appearances and the boys’ team to four appearances at the state tournament. He began his coaching career at Meeteetse High School.

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O’Connor has spent 24 seasons on the sidelines at Sundance High School. He coached the boys’ program for 22 years and has led the girls’ team for the last two seasons. His squads have qualified for the 2A basketball state tournament 11 times. That included a runner-up finish with the Bulldogs in 2008 and third-place finishes with the Sundance boys in 2022 and the Sundance girls last season (2023). O’Connor was also a boys’ track and field coach for 18 years and has served as the AD at SHS. He was inducted into the Wyoming Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2017.

The National High School Basketball Coaches Association Wyoming Representative is Allen Von Eye from Newcastle. He said in a release on Tuesday,