Tag: sports
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Getting Over: The Disgraced W.Va. Gospel Music Promoter Who Found Redemption in Indie Wrestling
This story was published on 100 Days in Appalachia on July 30, 2019. The sound of twanging electric guitars fills the Madison Civic Center, a small gymnasium in the heart of southern West Virginia’s coalfields. It’s “Ride Stallion Ride,” the entrance music for WWE Hall of Fame inductee Cowboy Bob Orton. The 300 fans seated […]
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The Greatest’s First Foe
This story originally appeared in the Spring ’19 issue of WV Living magazine. In early October 1960, Associated Press teleprinters clattered to life in smoke-filled newsrooms across the United States. The harried editors assigned to monitor the machines couldn’t have known it at the time, but the rapid-fire hammers were pounding out words that would […]
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Coach Kellie: A Tiny West Virginia High School is Making Football History
This story originally appeared on 100 Days in Appalachia on Nov. 9, 2018. It took a few weeks for Hannan High School principal Karen Oldham to realize her school might have made history. She was so busy with the day-to-day grind of running the small, rural Mason County school that it didn’t cross her mind, […]
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Jackie Mitchell Couldn’t Win
This article originally appeared on Lapham’s Quarterly‘s Roundtable blog on March 29, 2018. Click here to read the full story. On the first pitch of that April 1931 game, Chattanooga Lookouts pitcher Clyde Barfoot gave up a double to New York Yankees outfielder Earle Combs. Then Lyn Larry singled to centerfield, bringing Combs home. Now […]
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Live from Oak Hill
This story originally appeared in the spring 2017 issue of WV Living magazine. Angel Acevedo was known to Saturday Nite Wrestlin’ fans as Assassin No. 1 of the tag-team duo The Cuban Assassins. Richie Acevedo did not doubt his father’s stories about being Fidel Castro’s bodyguard. To his young mind, the evidence was all there. […]
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A Boy and His Bird
This story originally appeared in the February 2016 issue of Wonderful West Virginia magazine. For more than a millennium, people in Japan and China have used aquatic birds called cormorants to help them catch fish. Fishermen tie hemp snares around a trained bird’s throat so that, when the animal dives into the water after its […]
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Logan County bat maker is fueled by his love of the game
This story was originally published in the Charleston Daily Mail on Oct. 22, 2014. MAN — Drive down Main Street, and it’s easy to tell what people in this small Logan County town have on their minds. Painted bedsheets and poster boards hang on fences and front porches, proclaiming support for the Man Hillbillies football […]
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Zac Jones to fight in Rough ‘n’ Rowdy Brawl
This story was originally published Jan. 9, 2014 in the Charleston Daily Mail. It won “Best Lifestyles Feature” at the 2015 West Virginia Press Association Awards. Fists wrapped and gloves tied, tomorrow night Zac Jones, the often-troubled son of Charleston mayor Danny Jones, will duck through the ropes at the Charleston Civic Center for his […]