Chadron State College Athletics

Sollars was one of a handful of traditional-age college students to play on the outstanding football teams that Ross Armstrong coached in the late 1940s. The others were World War II veterans who were at least five or six years older than Sollars.
A native of Riverton, Wyo., Sollars recalled in a 2001 interview that as a freshman in 1947, he was terribly homesick and might not have remained in college if his name hadn’t been on the list to travel to Rapid City to play South Dakota Mines in the season-opener. He said he had never practiced with the first-team during the preseason, but just before the game he learned that he would start at both offensive guard and either linebacker or defensive tackle, depending on which defense the Eagles used.
Sollars said his status apparently changed because a teammate was injured in practice just prior to the game.
That was the first of 37 consecutive games that Sollars started during his four years on the team.  He was the only Chadron State football player to earn first-team all-conference honors four times during the post-World War II era until Marvin Jackson and Danny Woodhead accomplished that in the 2000s.
As a senior in 1950, Sollars also was selected as the Nebraska College Conference’s outstanding lineman, was listed by Sport Magazine as one of the top 40 offensive guards in the nation regardless of the size of school where they played and was named to Tom Harmon’s Little All-American team.
For 52 years, Sollars also owned the CSC record for longest return of a fumble for 52 years after rambling 68 yards for a touchdown against Peru State as a freshman.
After graduating in 1951, Sollars spent 44 months in the Army, including two years as an artillery commander in Korea.  He then returned to Wyoming and taught, coached and was principal at Morton, was director of federal programs on the Wind River Reservation, director of instruction at Wyoming Indian High School and owned an insurance agency in Lander.