A Long Ride North: Sheriff Raises Money to Get the Chargers to Pine Grove, WV

A Long Ride North: Sheriff Raises Money to Get the Chargers to Pine Grove, WV

By Danny Cardwell | Allegheny Mountain Radio

The Bath County Chargers are 3-1, and their next game wasn’t supposed to happen.

On Friday, October 2, Bath County travels to Valley High School in Pine Grove, West Virginia, a town of about 360 people in Wetzel County, better than four hours north of here. October 2 was a bye week. For both teams. Then Hancock Middle-Senior High School over in Western Maryland announced in late August that it didn’t have enough players to field a team this fall, and two schools were suddenly staring at a nine-game season.

“The reason why we picked them up was because they were scheduled to play Hancock as well,” Chargers head coach Jake Phillips said. “It kind of left everybody with nine games. So we almost had to scramble and just pick up — we had to pick up each other.”

The two schools signed a one-year contract and put the game on the board. Phillips wanted these kids to have a full season, all ten games. Valley’s athletic department wanted the same for theirs.

But a four-hour trip on a school bus is a long four hours. That’s where Bath County Sheriff Robert Plecker comes in. The sheriff is raising money to put the team on a chartered bus.

“You just want to make sure that the kids have a safe, comfortable trip over and they’re able to have some meals before and after the game,” Sheriff Plecker said. “That’s what we’re trying to do. It’s a long ride.”

There are three ways to help. “They can either send a check to me, call the sheriff’s office, or send it to the Bath County High School office, and they’ll know where it goes,” Plecker said. Mark your donation for the Charger football charter bus so it gets where it’s supposed to go. The sheriff’s office in Warm Springs can be reached at 540-839-2375.

Here’s what the day looks like.

“We’ll be leaving about 10:30 in the morning,” Phillips said. “We’ll stop about halfway, get out, get a little bit of food, do a walk-through just to get our legs under us, and then go another two hours to play them.” Kickoff is at 6:30.

As for what’s waiting up there, we have something to measure by. Both teams played Tygarts Valley this season. Valley opened its year on August 28 and beat the Bulldogs 20-8 at home. Bath County hosted that same Tygarts Valley team last Friday and won 20-0.

One more thing you should know. Allegheny Mountain Radio will not be carrying this game. The distance and the cell coverage in that part of West Virginia made it impossible for us to put a broadcast together. We tried to make it work and we couldn’t.

This game will be played because two small schools refused to let bad luck take a week away from them.