PRINCETON — Ultimate Mountaineer Fan Joe Riffe, a McDowell County native and Mercer County resident, was on hand at the Chuck Mathena Center in Princeton for Tuesday’s WVU Coaches Caravan. So was Ultimate Mountaineer Fan contest runner-up Krista Kessinger, yet another local resident enamored of the Gold and Blue.
Incidentally, so was West Virginia University head football coach Dana Holgorsen, WVU head men’s basketball coach Bob Huggins, Mountaineers women’s basketball coach Mike Carey, new WVU men’s wrestling coach Tim Flynn and West Virginia athletic director Shane Lyons.
To say nothing of musket-wielding Mountaineer mascot Trevor Kiess (65th of the lineage) and his spectacular beard.
West Virginia alumnus Jim Ferguson said 300 tickets were sold out for the 2018 local edition of the WVU Caravan. The meet-and-greet fundraiser has been held for 48 consecutive years in Mercer County.
“The football program is certainly the most popular and basketball is right in there beside it,” said Ferguson, a longtime chairman of the local event. “There are people out there that like baseball and follow baseball. Or the rifle team. I tell everybody we’re not just a one-sport school or a two sport school. West Virginia University offers an excellent education and we have excellent student athletes in all sports.
“But the bottom line is our two most popular sports are football and basketball, so that’s where we hear most of the talk,” said Ferguson, who said fans from all over the country are captivated by the charisma of the respective coaches of those successful WVU programs.
“Absolutely. And Huggins especially. I ran into some Iowa fans the other day and they said they love our coach,” Ferguson said. “So that just kind of tells you.”
If Huggins is the outspoken Elvis Presley of the West Virginia fan base, Mountaineers head football coach Dana Holgorsen may have, in the least, attained Neil Young status among fans these days.
Since he talked quarterback Will Grier to returning to Morgantown for the 2018 campaign, not even his decision to cancel the WVU Spring Game due to bad weather can dampen West Virginia fans’ growing enthusiasm for Holgorsen, who received a five-year contract extension in 2016.
The local supporters were clearly happy to see Holgorsen on Tuesday. He was happy to see them.
“There’s all kinds of good things going on right now. This is a very fun time of the year. All the coaches get to hang out a little bit. The administrators get to hang out at different parts of the state, see a bunch of people and tell them what they want to hear,” said Holgorsen, who led the 2017 Mountaineers to a 7-6 finish, including a trip to the Zaxby’s Heart of Dallas Bowl at the historic Cotton Bowl Stadium.
“It’s a fun, kind of relaxed Q&A-type deal. There’s a whole bunch of things we can talk about. It just depends upon what they ask,” Holgorsen said.
Lyons, who is wrapping up his third year as West Virginia Athletic director, said the WVU Caravans give the Mountaineers athletic department a means of keeping in closer touch with the university’s fan base — and as a means of expressing gratitude to those fans.
“Talking about the state of the department is one of those things that I always talk about at each of these Caravans and more or less to thank our fans for the ability to come out and support us each and every day. Now is our time to come back and support them ... to tell them ‘thank you’ for what they do for our student athletes,” said Lyons, who has been elbow-deep in numerous facilities upgrades since coming to Morgantown.
“This summer we’ll release a new master plan for our facilities and we’ll talk about the funding of that coming out, probably some time in mid-July. It does a lot of things to the Puskar Operations Center at the stadium as well as some things at the Coliseum for our Olympic sports. Those are things that we want people to be excited about when we roll it out in mid-July,” Lyons said.
“The department as a whole, we’re in a great situation, academically as well as athletically. We just finished up the spring semester and we had 13 of our 17 sports above a 3.0. Our team GPA for the entire department was a 3.2. So not only are we doing the work on the fields and courts, out student-athletes are doing work in the classroom that we should be very proud of,” Lyons said. “We’ve just got to keep the vision moving ahead and good things will happen.”
Kiess, who recently received his undergraduate degree in accounting at WVU, was served as last year’s alternate mascot behind 2017-18 mascot Troy Clemons of Greenbrier County. Kiess will pursue his MBA in Morgantown this fall — in addition to his much-coveted duties wearing the buckskins and firing off the musket at West Virginia athletic events.
It isn’t all just ballgames, said Kiess, who hails from Elkins. He noted that Tuesday’s WVU Caravan visit to Princeton was one of nearly 60 events he’s attended this spring since becoming the official mascot.
“Oh, it’s been awesome,” said Kiess, who visited a nursing home, three local schools and gave a speech at a local Rotary Club meeting even before he arrived at the Mathena Center.
Tuesday’s Caravan was the seventh that has been held in the Mathena Center, which has also been the site of Big Green Coaches Tour events in recent years. Any green Marshall regalia would’ve certainly stuck out like a sore thumb among all the unmistakable Mountaineers colors that flooded the Grand Hall — and an ubiquitous, if somewhat abstract, symbol emblazoned on various head coverings.
“The ‘Flying WV’ is one of the most-recognized logos across the USA. No matter where you go, if you’ve got a WVU cap on or wearing something that has that logo on it, someone will yell at you and say, ‘Let’s go Mountaineers!’ Yeah. We’re spread out,” Ferguson said
“I’m a dyed-in-the-wool West Virginian. I love our Mountaineers, I always have and I always will. But Marshall? I have no animosity whatsoever towards Marshall. I’ve got a lot of good friends that went to Marshall. We rib each other a little bit — but not that much,” Ferguson said.
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