WVU coaches, players focus on the past to build the future
Tony Gibson knows a thing or two about West Virginia.
Naturally, the Van native has spent a large portion of his life, both personally and professionally, in the state. So it's easy for him to impart his knowledge of both West Virginia itself and the football program to others.
But it was actually somebody that grew up miles away from West Virginia that introduced a team-building exercise with a focus on teaching.
Around four years ago, head coach Dana Holgorsen introduced a new alternative teaching method to get the point across to a roster made up predominantly of players from outside the borders of West Virginia.
"We feel we are the state school and it's important to 1.8 million people and we try to instill that in them," Gibson said.
Out of the over 80 scholarship players on the roster, less than a dozen of those hail from inside the Mountain State. And while, there is a strong walk-on presence from West Virginia but overall the bulk of the roster didn’t grow up understanding the traditions and history of the football program.
And since the majority of the players within the football program are forged from the fires of other areas, that’s when a little history lesson proves useful.
Call it West Virginia 101 -- for both the football program and the state itself.
Both assistant coaches, and those student-athletes familiar with it, detail areas of the program to the rest of the team in an effort to teach not only about the core values of the football program but the traditions as well as what is expected of them on a daily basis.
The message also focuses on the history of the state of West Virginia in order to give players a perspective on the makeup of the people and the passion throughout it.
“We have to make a conscious effort to make sure that everyone that sits in those seats understands it,” Holgorsen said.
For Gibson he recounted his experience of going into a coal mine and what that meant for him just to see the hard work that goes into that profession.
The mission is two-fold. West Virginia can familiarize and acclimate newcomers to the program, but also embeds the significance and importance of it all to the players.
And it resonates, especially when players are the ones doing the talking to their teammates.
“We get guys that have been here get up and talk about what it means to them,” Holgorsen said.
The discussions are addressed both during the off-season and throughout fall camp in order to drive the message home to those players that didn’t grow up around the program. And it's gotten results as many players leave the West Virginia program with a strong sense of pride and embrace the same hard-working ideals, as state-residents.
"A lot of these guys stay here. They fall in love with the state and the people," Gibson said. "That's what makes a place special - whether it's a football program or business - it's about the people. And there are no better people than right here in West Virginia."
Gibson has never been around something like this during his coaching career that has spanned trips to Michigan, Arizona and Pittsburgh, among others.
"It's probably one of the best things we've done for the program," he said.
Senior center Kyle Bosch is one of those players that came from a different area altogether to join the melting pot in Morgantown. The Chicago native, who spent the first part of his career at Michigan, has found that West Virginia is simply just different.
Instead of being more like a cog in the machine in the football program, Bosch truly feels like a member of a family and has embraced the culture in the Mountain State.
"It's like being part of an extended family," he said.
It’s just another step in the team-bonding exercises that Holgorsen has implemented since taking over in Morgantown. Another was the housing policy which asks players to live within a certain distance from the stadium in order to ensure they are able to attend classes and meet their athletic requirements.
It’s been a formula that has been successful for the Mountaineers as the program is coming off a 10-win season, the first since joining the Big 12 Conference, and has seen improvement in its overall win totals every year since a 4-8 campaign during the 2013 season.
It's all part of a plan that winds down country roads.