Teams keep West Virginia spirit alive after summer floods in the state

Coach Bob Huggins’ departure from Kansas State to West Virginia left Wildcats’ fans bewildered and angry. He arrived in Manhattan in 2006 and immediately changed the program’s direction. K-State posted its first winning conference record in nearly two decades and made a postseason tournament first time in eight years.

Good times had returned.

But just like that, Huggins was gone. John Beilein departed Morgantown for Michigan, and Huggins could not resist the call of his alma mater, leaving after 378 days on the job.

What Huggins said at the time — “I had to leave some great people at Kansas State. They are the closest thing to West Virginians, solid down-to-earth people” — rang hollow at Kansas State.

K-State’s feelings were quickly soothed by the even more successful tenure of Huggins’ successor, his assistant Frank Martin.

And to hear Huggins describe what he saw this summer, as flooding devastated West Virginia, killing 23 people and destroying hundreds of homes, is to better understand the move and explains the compliment in his departing thought.

The mining industry has taken a huge hit. The Greenbrier, the luxury resort near White Sulphur Springs, closed for two weeks and canceled its PGA Tour stop.

Huggins took his team to a small town to help work a food bank, and Mountaineers forward Nathan Adrian, who is from Morgantown, called it an eye-opening experience.

“You saw a lot of stuff that was just depleted,” Adrian said. “There’s not much going on in the lower half of the state, just a lot of bad stuff.”

So much that Huggins said it’s difficult to know where to begin the aid.

“You do a deal, and I’m running around trying to think, OK, we’ll build somebody a house,” Huggins said. “Who do you pick? Who is the person? You go into a town of 500 people and you build one guy a house and there are 499 people not happy with you.”

Huggins mentioned a Pennsylvania-based pharmaceuticals company that donated $1 million to the rebuilt.

“That’s a lot of money,” Huggins said. “But it doesn’t touch the devastation that happened.”

The players made the trip because Huggins wanted them to know who and what their uniform represents. He recalled what Sen. Joe Manchin told his team about suiting up for the Mountaineers.

“Once you put that uniform on and you have that West Virginia across your chest and you run out there, people talk about representing your team and your family. He said it’s way more than that here.

“You’re representing your team, your family, your university and the entire state. And that’s a hell of a responsibility when you think about it. I try to just pound that in our guys’ heads all the time; that, man, you’re representing 1.5 million people. You’re just not representing yourself anymore. That’s the neat thing about it. It doesn’t happen at a lot of places.”

An underdog mentality has served West Virginia well over the years, and Adrian said the players buy in.

“Everybody doubts us,” Adrian said. “Some people don’t even know we’re a state. We kind of take that to heart and stick together.”

Teams are doing what they can to lift spirits. Dana Holgorsen’s football team takes a 6-0 record and No. 10 ranking into Saturday’s game at Oklahoma State. The men’s hoops team, coming off its best season as a Big 12 member with 26 victories, is the preseason second choice behind Kansas.

These are good times to wear a West Virginia uniform, but according to Huggins there’s never a bad time to play for the state that’s been hurting since summer.

“Every kid grows up wearing a hat that says WV on it, or they wear a shirt or pants or whatever that has the WV on it,” Huggins said. “And whether they go to the university or not, they’re West Virginia fans…

“It’s just a way of life, and they’re proud, proud people, proud people.

“But it’s hard. It’s been really hard.”

This story was originally published October 25, 2016 at 3:16 PM with the headline "Teams keep West Virginia spirit alive after summer floods in the state."