Crazy is the right word to describe Trey Olsen’s story as a college football player, he says. Another wild, coincidental chapter is about to be added to Olsen’s biography this weekend.

Now the leading receiver for the University of Northern Colorado, the 20-year-old from Loveland and Loveland High will return to the place where his college story began: the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

“Wyoming not panning out, coming here, having a position change, coming back, I mean, it’s all been crazy, but I love it,” Olsen said. “It’s been awesome.”

Olsen and UNC meet the Cowboys at 2 p.m. Saturday at War Memorial Stadium. A match-up this year between two winless teams, the game is the 28th in a series dating to 1895. Wyoming has a 19-5-3 record against the Bears, including a victory in the most recent game in 2022. 

UNC (0-2) is looking for its first-ever win over a Football Bowl Subdivision program and first against the Cowboys since 1936. Wyoming plays its home opener after dropping the Border War game against Colorado State last weekend in Fort Collins.

The last time Olsen played in Laramie, he suited up at wide receiver in limited action in his only season two years ago. He’ll most likely see plenty of time on the field this weekend in a Bears jersey. Olsen transferred to UNC in early 2025.

Olsen has a touchdown catch in each of the first two games, best among UNC receivers. He’s also first with 105 receiving yards. One of Olsen’s touchdown catches went for 54 yards from starting quarterback Kenny Lueth last week against South Dakota.

Lueth, also a transfer to UNC, and Olsen were roommates last spring. The young men have developed a good on-field connection as quarterback and receiver. The Lueth-to-Olsen combination might not have happened if not for Olsen following his heart and confessing to Bears coaches late last season.

“He’s such a gifted athlete,” Lueth said. “Winning those one-on-ones, he’s done a great job of that. Just want to keep taking advantage of those. When we can get him the ball, great.”

Olsen joined the Bears program as a wide receiver. He was slated to play the position through spring practice and heading into last season. In fall camp, Bears head coach Ed Lamb asked Olsen to switch to safety for depth in the defensive backfield. Olsen backed up Cam Chapa and finished the year with three total tackles.

With the offseason looming late last fall, and top receiver Carver Cheeks putting up all-conference stats, Olsen went back to Lamb for another meeting. Olsen told the coach he wanted to return to wide receiver.

It was the same move Cheeks made before transferring to the University of Texas-El Paso. Cheeks came into UNC as a defensive back in 2023 and later asked to join the offense as a receiver. Cheeks gave up his scholarship on defense to move to receiver, where he re-earned the scholarship.

Lamb said Olsen told him that he wanted to bet on himself being an effective receiver for the Bears like Cheeks.

“That’s a phrase I respect,” Lamb said earlier this month. “He was willing to walk away, we felt like he had earned a scholarship as a defensive football player. It wasn’t in a starting role, but what we told him is ‘we’re not going to go out and recruit a freshman when we’ve got you sitting right here.’”

Olsen told Lamb his heart was as a wide receiver.

“Receiver is what I was born to do,” said Olsen, who is listed at 6-foot-2 and 208 pounds on the Bears roster. “I was glad to help the team last year, but I’ve been a receiver my whole life and it just feels great to get my groove back. I like to be explosive with the ball.”

About as long as Olsen’s been a wide receiver he’s been teammates with three other current teammates: linebacker Hudson Voggesser, wide receiver Garrett Harstad and safety Cody Lease.  They’ve played together since youth-level football, through middle school and high school in Loveland. Neither Voggesser, Harstad nor Lease were instrumental in Olsen ending up at UNC, he said.

Olsen went to Wyoming out of high school because it was the only school that recruited him. UNC contacted Olsen the day before he signed his letter to play at Wyoming, but he was then set on the Cowboys.

He said he felt stuck in a middle-ground as a recruited high school player. Bigger Division I schools and Division II programs weren’t interested. Olsen visited Wyoming multiple times and enjoyed the experiences.

He stayed only one semester.

“And then when I got there, I was just like, “man, Laramie, this is not for me.” I wasn’t just digging it, it just wasn’t my thing. Just wasn’t happy.”

Olsen was influenced to consider UNC by two former Bears athletes, who were high school coaches and mentors in Loveland. Chris and Greg Gebhardt operate Subaru of Loveland and Davidson-Gebhardt Chevrolet. Olsen connected with UNC coaches and felt the school and program were a fit.

The dealerships are partners with UNC Athletics.

“I just kind of liked what they were about, and I heard people that were coming here that I used to play with, and let’s do it,” Olsen  said.

The high costs and declining availability of homeowners insurance are having a negative impact on real estate markets.

Blame wildfires and hail — made more destructive by climate change — for the deteriorating insurance situation in the West. Add in hurricanes and other disasters elsewhere, and it’s a nationwide trend — one that a new report from the advocacy group the Insurance Fairness Project says is threatening home sales.

“Across the country, potential homeowners with approved mortgages and signed contracts are having their deals collapse because insurance coverage is unobtainable,” the report opens.

It pointed to recent survey data that found that roughly one in 10 homebuyers and sellers ran into insurance issues, many of which ultimately derailed deals. In 2024, one in seven California realtors had sales fall through due to insurance complications, up dramatically from 2023, according to San Francisco Chronicle reporting cited.

Realtors elsewhere in the West report similar issues, like Val Jones, who works in a rural Idaho county heavily impacted by rising premiums and policy cancellations. At a state legislator-organized forum in early 2026, she recounted a deal of hers that collapsed at the last yard due to unexpectedly high premiums.

“It was just sad to see that,” she said. “It’s affecting people that are here and affecting people that are trying to live in our community as well.”

At a press event for the report’s release, Douglas Heller, insurance director with the Consumer Federation of America, suggested how to respond.

“The havoc that climate change is wreaking across the country is hitting us all in different ways, to be sure,” he said. “But in the West, the wildfire burden has to be addressed.”

“We also have to make sure that the insurers are playing a part,” he added.

Moira Birss, a senior fellow at the Climate and Community Institute, said that wildfire mitigation on individual properties won’t be enough.

“It’s much more effective on the whole to do community- and landscape-level risk reduction than it is to do individual home risk reduction,” she said.

This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.

In 2025, public schoolteachers in Wyoming earned 13% less than other workers with college degrees, according to a new report but the “pay penalty” was the third lowest among all 50 states.

Colorado posted the nation’s top penalty, where teachers earned 60 cents on the dollar.

Sylvia Allegretto, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the report’s author, said as teacher pay falls further and further behind, many college graduates are considering other options.

“Other careers that they could choose and I think it has a lot of issues for teacher retention and recruitment. It’s not a new problem. It just keeps getting worse,” Allegretto reported.

The average starting salary for teachers in Wyoming is just under $52,000 a year, considerably less than the $96,000 a Wyoming worker with two kids needs to earn a living wage.

The average teacher pay penalty nationwide was 25%, more than six times higher than it was in 1996. Over the past three decades, weekly wages for other college graduates rose by 30% but teachers’ wages fell by more than 6% when adjusted for inflation.

The report found women hold 70% of all teaching jobs, a trend dating back to a time when women were barred from entering other occupations. Allegretto noted it is not the case today.

“Women have a lot more choices in what they do for a career and so you have to be thinking, ‘are we really getting the best and the brightest with these ever-increasing pay gaps to become public schoolteachers today?’” Allegretto asked.

The pay penalty is higher for men, which tracks with the nation’s persistent gender pay gap, where women earn just 81 cents for every dollar a man makes. The overall share of male teachers has remained static for decades and Allegretto pointed out it is unlikely to change if men can only make two-thirds of what other college graduates are getting.

“This, by the way, is at a time when everybody is talking about the need to have more male teachers because of the issues that boys are having, and the research is showing that it matters who’s at the front of the classroom,” Allegretto underscored.