Tom Brown taught and coached in Big Piney from 1971 through 2000. Tom was a 1956 graduate of Rawlins High School where he was an athletic standout in basketball, football, and track. Following a number of years of work, Tom decided to pursue a career in the education field and eventually found himself employed by Big Piney High School. For the next twenty-nine years, Tom coached many of the sports that Big Piney offered to its high school and middle school students. It was his teams' successes in swimming that earned Coach Brown state and national recognition. He was named the Wyoming State Swim Coach of the Year on three separate occasions and was nominated for National High School Coach of the Year in 1983. He was inducted into the Wyoming Coaches Association's Hall of Fame in 1990, the first Puncher coach to receive such honor. Despite being a Class B school competing in the Class A division, Coach Brown and his teams had great successes. During the ten years from 1975 to 1984, his Puncher teams finished in the top three on nine different occasions including four state runner-up finishes and the 1980 State Championship. During more than twenty years as the head boys' swim coach, seventeen Puncher swimmers became State Champions and more than thirty-five of his athletes earned All-State honors.