DeLayne Rhea Remembers The First Pocahontas Football Team

Dunmore, WV – DeLayne Rhea was an incoming freshman the year Pocahontas County High School opened its doors for the first time ever. Rhea was a also a member of the first Pocahontas Warriors football team, a team that, minus the freshman players, was made up of ex-Marlinton, Green Bank, and Hillsboro High School students. Rhea talks about that first team.

“When we were doing football we were there months before everyone else,” says Rhea. “In those months we got to know everyone really well. All the kids got a long great together much more than the older people who held on most to the rivalry.”

Rhea makes the point that the rivalry among the three schools was kept most alive by some of the parents, who went as far as to withhold their children from team sports.

“Many parents kept their kids off the team no matter how good of athletes they were,” says Rhea, “because they didn’t want them to play for a coach who was from Marlinton.”

But Rhea and his teammates were able to put the rivalry on the backburner and play as a unit completing a winning season. Rhea fondly remembers that team and the friends he made.

“We did really well and I made a lot of friends,” says Rhea. “In fact I still have a lot of friends from that team.”

And as someone who never had the pleasure of experiencing high school let alone life in the 1970s, I had to ask DeLayne Rhea what teenage life during that time was like.

“Well it was different,” says Rhea. “Everyone did their own thing but we did what teenagers do. We got along pretty good.”

On Friday October 1st, following the Bath County Chargers and Pocahontas County Warriors football game, there will be a 70s themes Homecoming Dance at the Pocahontas Opera House, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the school.