Even though it was the junior high team you got to wear the Red and Black colors, although rather than being called Red Devils as the high school team, the team was known by the much less truculent nickname, the Collins Junior High Imps.
I was fortunate enough to be the Co Captain, with the late Kenny Spann, of the 1965 version of this team. The team was coached Bill Baker who had been an outstanding quarterback at Concord College, with Coach Baker's able guidance and an unusual amount of size, speed and toughness for a ninth grade team we were able to defeat the team from Beckley, West Virginia which was tantamount to taking out Darth Vader. At that time most people around town could not recall the last time an Oak Hill team in any sport had beaten a team from Beckley, especially in football, in which the varsity team had suffered a long stretch of losing seasons.
The Varsity was coached by Nelson Bragg. Bragg was a native, and former coach at Beckley, West Virginia. His hiring was with the understanding that he would bring the Oak Hill Program to the level of the Woodrow Wilson team in Beckley. Bragg had been Captain of the 1938 Marshall College team, that was coached by the Legendary Cam Henderson.
Coach Bragg idolized Henderson and one of his two sons was named for the Coach that is memorialized in Huntington with his name on their basketball arena. He often made reference to him and how tough and brilliant he had been. This was the era when the epitome of football coaching was Paul "Bear" Bryant in college ball and Vince Lombardi with the Green Bay Packers in the Pros. Both known for their sour temperaments, training practices that were grueling at best and sadistic at worst.
Coach Bragg played this role with perfection. Mean, unlikable and proud of it, the problem was Bryant and Lombardi won championships, Bragg could not muster even a winning record.
He did look and dress the part though, His face was tanned crusty and his disposition was gnarled. He seemed to take great pleasure to make his players rankle. The rare times he would smile you noticed his diastema and sizable gaps between most teeth. He looked like he could eat a cob of corn through a picket fence. He chain smoked Camel Regular cigarettes. He would squint meanly at you and get nose to nose with you to chew you out; close enough to smell his bad breath which he proudly called his "houseatosis"
When our class became sophomores and members of the Varsity team which the previous year had not won a game 0-10. We thought we were going to be the saviours of the long struggling losing streak and that Coach Bragg would welcome us as his bright stars of the future. We would repair the school's tarnished football reputation.
We were wrong, Coach Bragg was determined that we were some how a fluke that had been coddled by the younger Coach Baker and his modern more humane and cerebral ways of coaching.
Oak Hill was not a rich school, but yet a Triple A Class, the largest class in West Virginia. The uniforms that Coach Bragg had us wearing during the era of Joe Namath breaking in white shoes on the gridiron, while we had to wear high top, boot like black shoes. The cleats on the shoes in that era were just that, hard plastic spikes with steel tips. The tips could be filed sharper, and though illegal, it was done on occasion allowing you to "cleat" someone.
The game and practice jerseys had long sleeves, which were far from the on field fashion at the time, by any other team but ours. Being a rather dapper high school sophomore in pressed khakis and button down madras shirts, I felt the the team that dressed well, played well. This was just one of the almost everything Coach Bragg and I disagreed on.
My soft attitude and sissy ways did not conform to the Coach's ideals of a football player. He liked the little tough guys. The hard scrabble guys from the surrounding old coal camps. He loved the saying" it isn't the size of the dog but the size of the fight in the dog." The proudest I ever saw him was when one of his tough little guys was able to fill his starting defensive back position the following Friday after being stabbed by a knife the previous weekend. That was the kind of grit Bragg wanted in his players and those of us coming from this soft, but winning background were not worthy of his team. Yet two or three of us had been listed on the second team. I was never quite sure because he wanted us there, or that he wanted us a scrimmage fodder for his much larger, stronger and experienced Seniors.
I remember lining up as a defensive player against the first team tackle a very big and strong black man, "Big Ben" Johnson. "Big Ben" was worthy of his name and took great joy in intimidating the newbies. As Ben came to the line and begin to bend down into his blocking position he pulled up the left long sleeve of his jersey to expose his extremely large black forearm, which he had written on with white chalk the word "BLACK" as he shifted down to his position he pulled up his other sleeve where he had chalk written the word "POWER" bringing both fists together to show me the completed phrase while glaring at me in the eyes and smiling big exposing his white mouthpiece. In the 90 degree August heat I begin to question my love of the sport and my mortality.
The summer preseason didn't become cooler or easier as realized as a sophomore and second team I was not going to be much more than a blocking dummy and a backup receiver.
As the regular season began the team continued to lose, but that was actually kind of good for playing time for a second team sophomore in that when the game was out of hand you would get a quarter of playing time.
As the losing continued it was evident that the Seniors on the team had basically given up. The next to the last game of the season was against the reigning AAA State Champion Bluefield Beavers in Mitchell Stadium on the Bluefield West Virginia Bluefield ,Virginia stateline. Mitchell Stadium is an impressive and large, for West Virginia high school standards stadium built during the CCC Great Depression era. West Virginia University had once played Virginia Tech there. The Beavers were undefeated, nobody had even come close to them. Rumor was they had not even broken a sweat, therefore and for luck had not washed there highly fashionable and short sleeved maroon uniforms.
In one of the more bizarre moves, even for Coach Bragg; as we topped the hill on the Turnpike at Flat Top which is one of the highest points in the State, he asked the bus driver to pull over on the shoulder. He then ordered us all off of the bus and pointed out the panoramic view of the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains that you can see at that elevation. He made some analogy that this is why we needed to win this game and that we would need to be strong like the mountains. This meant little to a bus full of teenage boys, but confirmed to us that the man was not sane.
The home stands of Mitchell Stadium were packed with loyal Homecoming Bluefield fans there to Wayne Davis, my friend who was also a sophomore and second team is excellent at math and after their second score turned to me on the bench and said " I just calculated the time and at this rate they may score over two hundred." Fortunately they were just leading at the halftime 36-0.
The locker room at halftime was bizarre. Even this team that was used to and accepted losing were shell shocked. It was freezing cold in early November and we were physically being beat up too. Bragg came into the dressing room late and was outraged and berserk. He screamed and cussed like never before and said none of the Seniors or starters would play in the second half. That the second team and sophomores would finish the game, that we couldn't do worse. At least he was correct about that, the final score was 56-7.
On the bus on the way home Bragg's tantrum continued. He threw several the Seniors off the team, There was only one game left in the season.
That night after we returned to our gym I had stayed late to have some attention paid to my aches and pains and I was the last one in the locker room. Not knowing anyone was there Coach Bragg came in through another door and laid down on a bench face down and began crying. Up to that point in my life I had wanted to be a Coach, after that experience I changed my mind completely.
Coach Bragg was fired as the Coach after one more losing season and finished his teaching career at another school in the County doing nothing but seven periods of study halls.
Shortly after his retirement he and his wife Jewel, who was also a retired school teacher, together died in a fiery car crash.
The first year under a new coach the team went 5-5, the first time in many years there wasn't a losing record at Oak Hill.
I liked Coach Bragg, though most could not figure out why; maybe it is a football thing or maybe something else. But there is not a time that I am driving south on I-77 on the West Virginia Turnpike that I don't admire that view. I think of him, and it seems the older I get the more I appreciate it. I still have the scar on my left hand as a remembrance too, it didn't kill me.
