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Jason Williams celebrates a sectional-tournament victory during his senior season when the DuPont Panthers advanced to the Class AAA state championship game, where they lost to Martinsburg 79-73.
Local prep stars have been a force
County athletes excelled through several decades
July 7, 1999
PREP sports in Kanawha County have come a long way since that first Charleston High School football team suited up in 1901.
Yeah, those guys. The team that ran plays toward the sidelines to use unwitting spectators as protection from tacklers.
In the nearly 100 years that have followed, Kanawha teams have won 168 official state championships in 13 boys and girls varsity sports, produced some of West Virginia's most talented and entertaining teams and sent scores of exceptional athletes on to college and the pros.
Dick Huffman. Hot Rod Hundley. Jerry West. Melvin Walker.
The list of Kanawha County's greatest high school athletes is as distinguished as it is long.
Mark Workman. Curtis Price. Mike Tyson. Robert Alexander.
The 1990s alone have produced four of our best athletes in DuPont's Jason Williams and Randy Moss, Nitro's J.R. House and St. Albans' Brett Nelson.
In a scenario worthy of motion picture consideration, Williams and Moss developed into first-round pro draft picks in their respective sports of basketball and football. Then, in just their rookie seasons, enthralled a nation that was mesmerized by the uncanny talents of two West Virginians.
Even as a sophomore at DuPont, Randy Moss also left the competition in his wake. He changed his jersey number to 3 for his junior and senior seasons.
All House did in football was become the country's most prolific high school passer ever. Then he signed a pro baseball contract.
Nelson, who's already drawing comparisons on the basketball court to West, ranks among the state's most heavily recruited athletes of the century.
But, as Roger Jefferson cautions, we shouldn't let the otherworldly accomplishments of four athletes lure us into assuming the golden age of prep sports in the county is upon us.
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't.
"We focus on those guys now because it's kind of unique that two of them were drafted in the first round," said Jefferson, who coached football in the county from 1965-96 at Stonewall Jackson, Charleston and Capital. "But you go back to those other decades and you're going to find some players too.
"If you start checking, I think you'll find that this area has been pretty good over the years in various sports. You tend to focus on what's happening now and tend to forget what happened in the past."
In addition to the 1990s, which has produced nine state champions in football alone, most agree the '60s and '70s were significant decades for county sports and athletes.
The powerful Kanawha Valley Conference, which formed in 1941 and disbanded in 1993, was in its prime. It included all county schools.
"That was a good era," Jefferson said. "When I went to Stonewall (as a coach) in 1965, there were about 1,600 kids. Those were big schools then. There were a lot more kids to pick from."
Charleston High's Lou Romano won 318 games to tie Stonewall Jackson's Don Stover for the most basketball victories in county history.
In boys basketball, Dunbar, Charleston and George Washington combined to win five state titles during the '60s and '70s. The '68, '73 and '74 Charleston teams of Lou Romano are considered among the best of the century and featured players such as Curt Price, Levi Phillips, Larry Harris, Denny Harris, Sammy Brooks and Mike Jones.
Charleston was the first county school to win back-to-back boys state basketball titles.
"I think there are much better players now, but there were great teams in the '60s and '70s," said 1967 DuPont graduate Jim Fout, who'll coach Riverside High School's first basketball team this winter. "They could play and beat any of the teams now. It was tough to win a state championship back then."
The Secondary School Activities Commission first sanctioned girls high school basketball in the mid-1970s and Dunbar and George Washington were immediate powers. The Bulldogs won the Class AAA title in '76 and GW won three straight from 1978-80. Charleston Catholic won a Class A crown in '79.
In football, Charleston and East Bank excelled in the '60s and '70s, combining to win six AAA titles. The '73 East Bank club, featuring the talents of running back Claude Geiger and a stifling defense, ranks among the all-time greats of the century.
Charleston, under coach Frank Vincent and behind the skills of Kennedy Award-winning quarterback Rick Hurt, speedy tailback Mike Tyson and Hunt Award-winning lineman Rick Katzeff, won three straight championships from 1968-70, going a combined 30-0-2. Included in that run were three victories over heated rival Huntington.
Keith Pritt, an assistant coach at Charleston then, said the '70 team was probably the best of the three.
Tailback Claude Geiger provided much of the offensive firepower for East Bank High School's undefeated state-championship team of 1973. Geiger later became the first 1,000-yard rusher in Marshall University history.
"The '70 team picked up and maintained it," Pritt said. "It was more a combination of the two."
Back then, Charleston's football teams didn't just play pretty. They looked pretty.
Mountain Lion players waxed their helmets and polished their shoes before every game. They even traveled to away contests in style, opting for chartered buses rather than the conventional school bus.
"We told them if you play first class, you'll go first class," Pritt said. "It's hard to imagine the pressure on those guys to win. We had some great leadership on those teams."
How good were the football players in these parts during the '60s and '70s?
This good. During a 15-year stretch from 1962-77, the Kennedy Award was presented to a Kanawha County player 10 times, including six straight years.
DuPont quarterback Danny Williams became the first player in West Virginia to win the Kennedy two consecutive years (1972-73). Then, South Charleston's Alexander did it again, earning the honor as a running back in '75 and '76.
"I remember the '70s as being real, real good," said Leon McCoy, a 1945 Charleston High graduate who coached football at Charleston and Winfield. "You could look around and find athletes everywhere."
Including on the baseball fields, tennis courts and tracks of Kanawha County.
DuPont High School quarterback Danny Williams became the first player in state history to twice win the Kennedy Award. He was named the state's best prep football player in 1972 and 1973.
South Charleston won back-to-back Class AAA baseball titles in 1977-78 and no AAA county team has won it since. Sissonville won Class AA titles in '91 and '96.
In tennis, county boys and girls teams combined to win 14 state championships during the '60s and '70s. Charleston's Steve Parsons went undefeated in three years and Stonewall's Sherry Shores won three straight singles crowns. Her father, Hoppy Shores, was the 1949 Kennedy Award winner as a Stonewall tailback.
GW has been the county's marquee tennis program, winning most of its combined 20 boys and girls titles in the 1980s and '90s.
In boys cross country, Charleston, Stonewall Jackson and St. Albans combined to win 11 state titles during the '60s and '70s.
On the track, Kanawha County's boys began out-running, out-jumping and out-throwing foes as far back as the 1920s. They haven't let up since.
County teams, in fact, have won 47 sanctioned state track championships, starting with Charleston's in 1924.
In 1929, Charleston High's Gordon Fraser set the state record in the 100-yard dash with a time of 9.8 seconds.
Perhaps the most impressive feat was turned in by Russ Parsons' track program at Stonewall Jackson. The Generals won eight consecutive titles from 1948-55, starting a string of 15 straight by county schools.
Hoppy Shores, who competed for Parsons in both football and track, said the coach put as much emphasis on 100-yard dash times as he did tackling techniques.
"If you didn't run track," Shores said, "then you didn't play football."
"We just had a lot of good kids and Russ Parsons was a good motivator," said Bill Jarrett, a former Stonewall football coach who also ran track for Parsons.
"Most football players would run track," Jefferson said. "Coaches would require it. But it got to the point where you couldn't require things like that."
Not everything interesting happened after 1960.
Still, it's difficult to find a decade of high school sports in the county as intriguing as the '90s. The 20th Century saved its best for last.
- In 1905, Charleston High football players had to bail drunken Ironton, Ohio, players out of jail following the schools' game in Charleston.
- In 1907, Charleston beat Davis & Elkins prep school, 28-6, in the unofficial first state championship football game.
- In 1930, Elkview, with only 25 players, played three football games in one week.
- In 1933, Malden District -- which later became DuPont High -- played Charleston for the mythical state championship. Malden's players wore old blue and gold Charleston uniforms, which didn't help. Charleston won easily, 60-0, and then donated the $150 gate toward new Malden uniforms. Ever wonder why DuPont and Charleston had the same school colors?
- In 1935, Sissonville's first football team included only two players who had ever seen a football game. Coach Joe Sawyers had to remind his troops to line up perpendicular to the stripes on the field.
- In 1948, Charleston basketball player Mark Workman scored a county-record 63 points in one game and was later named Amateur Athlete of the Year in West Virginia.
- In 1956, Jerry West led East Bank to a state championship in basketball, fouling out of the title game with five minutes left.
Among Kanawha County football coaches, Sam LeRose of St. Albans had the sixth-highest winning percentage in history. His won-lost record was 124-35-3 for .775. LeRose's Red Dragon track teams won state titles in 1969, 1970, 1972 and 1973. He is shown here with players Dwight Jackson, left, and Glenn Harris.
- In 1956, St. Albans football coach Sam LeRose was named the state's High School Coach of the Year and Dunbar track coach Stan Romanoski received the same honor the following year.
"No one has come forth in the decades previous to the '90s who has really taken their place in the professional leagues and made a name for themselves like these guys have," McCoy said -- for now -- of Moss and Williams.
There is no reason to think House and Nelson won't follow Moss and Williams into the pros.
"That was a great bunch of athletes that came through here," Jefferson said. "That's unusual to get four like that."
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