Standing on the synthetic red rubber track, the white stadium lights glimmer onto the football field behind him. Wyatt Thompson received loud applause from family, friends and the community of Solomon, KS.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Thompson said with a smile on his face and a plaque in his hands.

Thompson, the senior director of sportscasting and Voice of the Wildcats at Kansas State, was inducted into the USD 393 Solomon Gorilla Hall of Fame on Friday, Sept. 5. Returning to his hometown roots, Thompson was recognized for his distinguished career in broadcast journalism. His passion for sports and storytelling has made him a role model for Solomon High School students and athletes.

The Solomon Gorilla Hall of Fame, which is only in its fourth year, has particular procedures, such as a committee that reviews each application submitted by any member of the Solomon community.

“[The committee] gets together, and we go through those nomination sheets,” Solomon Board of Education, vice president and Hall of Fame board member Brad Homman said. “We discuss each one in detail, and then we score them. We’ve got a rubric we use to score each one, and then we make a final selection based on that or discussions on that scoring criteria.”

There are four classification requirements for the Gorilla Hall of Fame: student, team, staff member and service.

“I will tell you that he scored one of the highest scores on the rubric that we’ve ever had of the nominee,” Homman said. “So, that speaks highly of him.”

Thompson was active in FFA and livestock judging before he graduated from SHS in 1974.

“He was a very pleasant young man who would greet me at the door when he walked in each day,” former SHS science teacher Lawrence Strouts said. “He was a very pleasant person. I do not recall him ever causing any problems in the class at all. He was just a nice guy, just a good old farm kid.”

While that “good old farm kid” grew up in a small community and high school, that didn’t stop him from achieving his goals.

“He was telling stories of how he and some of his classmates would practice play-by-play,” superintendent of SHS Justin Coup said. “Just as kids dream of whatever they want to dream of, he dreamed of being a broadcaster. They would practice that, even when they’re in high school. I think that’s just one of the things — that he may not have had a broadcasting class at Solomon High School, but he had a great support group, great classmates that supported him along his journey and he’s very close with some of those classmates.”

Some people would have been discouraged by living in such a small town, but Thompson thrived in his community and created opportunities for himself.

“[During] my time here, it kind of gave me a foundation to get started,” Thompson said. “I did so many things, playing athletics, which I always loved, but the ag stuff, all of that kind of stuff, I thought was my first love — until I started getting into the broadcasting thing. But it all kind of meshed together. There are so many people here [in Solomon] who helped me kind of get a foundation underneath me.”

Despite Solomon being an hour away from Manhattan, Thompson expresses how many people in Solomon care about K-State and his journey to be the Voice of the Wildcats.

“I think that is in part why I’m here,” Thompson said. “With what I’ve had the opportunity to do there [in Manhattan], in terms of the longevity of the work — people here love K-State. They love Kansas, too, but there are so many K-Staters here with the ag and all of that. It just makes me proud.”

Although SHS was a crucial beginning to his career, Thompson continued livestock judging out of high school at Colby Community College, but was drawn to sports broadcasting. 

Thompson started his broadcasting career in 1976 as a sportscaster for various high schools, colleges and universities in Kansas, spending time at stations in Hays and Goodland. Early on in Thompson’s career, he was recognized with the Kansas Association of Broadcasters Play-by-Play Award in 1982 and the Oscar Stauffer Sportscaster of the Year Award in 1989.

“Wyatt has a high degree of integrity,” Homman said. “[He] is a very personable individual, which I think probably has been one of the really highly-standing reasons for his success.”

Moving out of Kansas, Thompson went to Colorado State, where he spent five years as the play-by-play commentator for the Rams’ men’s basketball and football teams. He was a successful broadcaster who won the 2000 Colorado Broadcasting Association award for best play-by-play. Along with his work at CSU, he was a sports reporter for Clear Channel Denver, the host of the Denver Broncos’ “Countdown to Kickoff” on KOA Radio and the host of the “Zone Sports Insiders” program on 760 The Zone in Denver.

Thompson made a difficult decision and decided to come back to Kansas because of his fondness for the Wildcats and for his family.

“A lot of things [brought me back], but the love of the ‘Cats first and foremost,” Thompson said. “At that time, when I left Colorado to come back, truthfully, my dad wasn’t in very good health at that point.”

It was a selfless choice that he would later be pleased he made.

 “I wanted to be a Big 12 play-by-play announcer, don’t get me wrong,” Thompson said, “It was a decision that was good for my career and good for my family, and I have no regrets in that.”

Beginning at K-State in 2002, Thompson has been the Voice of the Wildcats for 23 years. He hosts the Jerome Tang and Chris Klieman coaches’ radio and television programs. He also gets involved in many Catbacker Club, alumni and athletic department events, providing keynote speeches.

He is a six-time Kansas sportscaster of the year. With his experience, Thompson has received many awards, including the Hod Hummiston Award in 2011. His most recent award was in 2022, when he was inducted into the Kansas Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

“I’m honored by this, I’m humbled by it,” Thompson said. “You don’t start this and think,  you want to be in the Hall of Fame. So that just kind of happens, or at least that’s the way I see it.”

No matter where Thompson is or what he’s doing, he always takes the time to chat.

“One of my best recollections of Wyatt was when I was at a K-State football game a couple of years ago,” Strouts said. “I was in one of the boxes over on the east side, and I asked the host there if it might be possible for me to see Wyatt in action as he was broadcasting the game. The host took me around over to the west side, and we went through doors that said, ‘Do not enter,’ ‘No admittance,’ ‘Keep out,’ and so forth. Wyatt was sitting at his desk, and he looked up very quickly and he said, ‘Hi, Mr. Strouts, how’s the farm going?’ And he turned right back to broadcasting. He was absolutely on top of it.”

Considering his 23 years of broadcasting with K-State, Thompson still finds his passion when he is behind the microphone during every game.

“If you don’t like it enough to be excited about what you’re going to do, it’s probably time to walk away,” Thompson said. “And I don’t think I’ll ever have that.”