“Now It’s Football Season”: Coach Jake Phillips Previews a Full Fall at Bath County

“Now It’s Football Season”: Coach Jake Phillips Previews a Full Fall at Bath County

HOT SPRINGS — The lines are down on the field at Carl F. Williams Field at Bath County High School.

“You don’t really know what to expect,” the Chargers’ head football coach and athletic director said, “but as soon as you line that field, you know now it’s football season.”

Phillips joined me in the WCHG studio on August 10, just a little over two weeks from the season opener. He enters his fifth year back at his alma mater, where he serves as athletic director, head varsity football coach and — as of the last two seasons — varsity baseball coach as well.

It starts with the little ones

Before the high schoolers ever reported, roughly 40 children between the ages of 5 and 12 came through the program’s youth football camp, held the week before the high school opened practice. Phillips said the entire Charger coaching staff worked the camp, along with 10 current players and a long list of community volunteers.

That overlap is deliberate. Phillips’ assistants also coach in the county’s Little League program, and the terminology and skill work the youngest players hear there is the same language they will hear as eighth and ninth graders.

“It is paramount. It really is,” he said of building that pipeline.

There’s a second benefit he pointed to: when high school players run camp drills for the younger kids, they have to teach the drill, not just do it — and teaching a thing is how you find out whether you actually know it.

A small school that asks a lot

Phillips is an unapologetic believer in multi-sport athletes, and at a school the size of Bath County, that belief is also a necessity. He said coaching football and baseball in the same year gives him a different feel for the same kids, and that the vocabulary crosses over more than people think — he caught himself in the first week of football practice telling a player to grip a football the way he’d grip a baseball.

More than that, he said, the bond a player builds with teammates in an off-season sport is the same bond that shows up in his own season.

The fall slate

As athletic director, Phillips has a hand in every fall sport, and he ran down what listeners can expect:

• Cross country is back under Coach Fry and opens in a couple of weeks with a schedule built around Saturday invitationals. One of the closer meets will be at the Jackson River Sports Complex in Covington.
• Golf is back after a one-year hiatus, with growing numbers and close to a full schedule. Bath County will host four or five matches at The Omni Homestead Resort, with the season’s first match held Wednesday, August 12. Phillips did not hedge on the home course: “That’s the best home course in Virginia. We are spoiled, to be honest — truly blessed to have that as our home course.” He credited the Homestead’s staff and golf professionals for the range time and instruction they’ve extended to the team. Brett Kampf will run the golf program.
• Volleyball fields three full teams — varsity, JV and middle school — with a full schedule that again includes a trip across the state to the Endless Summer tournament in Virginia Beach, where the Chargers played five or six matches in a single Saturday last year against teams from up and down the East Coast.
• Cheer wrapped a camp this past week and will work both sidelines and competition.
• Football will field varsity and JV squads.

For a Class 1 school, offering that much is not a given. “We’re fortunate to be a small school and offer all these sports,” Phillips said.

The blacksmith

Ask Phillips about coaching and he gets to the X’s and O’s last. He’d rather talk about what it takes to walk down the hill in full pads when it’s 95 degrees and you’re already sore.

“One of these days you’re going to have a job and a career for 40-plus years,” he said. “You’re going to have a marriage, a family, people who depend on you, a community that’s with you.” The point of the hard days, he said, is learning to meet the standard on the days you don’t feel like it.

He reached for a blacksmith to explain it: metal in the hottest flame, beaten on an anvil, and out of all that heat and pressure comes the hardest blade imaginable. That, he said, is the work — shaping young men who are ready for what comes after Friday nights.

What he’s seeing on the field

Phillips said the Chargers have actually simplified the playbook this fall, because a lot of players will line up in multiple spots. The terminology and the core concepts stay the same; the pieces move to fit the roster he has.

His “aha moment” came last Friday during team drills. A receiver missed a route on the backside of a play. Before Phillips could correct him, veteran offensive lineman Hernan Malpica spoke up and told the receiver exactly what route he had.

“My starting offensive lineman, telling a receiver what route he had,” Phillips said. “That’s a testament to those guys being in the system.”

Saturday at Greenbrier East

The Chargers open with the Battle of the Border scrimmage against James Monroe at Greenbrier East High School on Saturday, August 15, at 11 a.m. — the fifth straight year Bath County has made the trip.

For fans who’ve never known quite what they’re watching at a scrimmage, Phillips explained the format: no score is kept, the ball is spotted at the 40-yard line, and teams alternate roughly 10 plays at a time off a script written in advance. Coaches then work situations — third and long, red zone, and overtime.

Overtime gets rehearsed for a practical reason. Virginia starts overtime possessions at the 10-yard line; West Virginia uses the 20. With West Virginia opponents on the schedule, Bath County plays by whichever state’s rules apply that night — and Phillips said it never fails that a player asks how overtime works.

After the scrimmage comes the evaluation: what the Chargers do well, what needs work, and which chess pieces move where.

2026 Bath County Charger Football Schedule

Charger football will be carried on WCHG, with the Pocahontas County Warriors carried on Allegheny Mountain Radio’s West Virginia stations. The September 11 border matchup between the two will bring both crews together.

Listen to our full interview below: