Kingsport Spirit

Rye Cove, located 27 miles north of Kingsport in Duffield, Virginia, will play for the Virginia High School Football Championship this Saturday.

For many in our region, home is on both sides of the state line. I hope they know their friends, family, and neighbors in Tennessee are pulling for them!

“Wednesday afternoon, Collier and his assistant coaches — including two former Emory & Henry teammates — ran the War Eagles through play after play under a slow, steady, chilly rain, with temperatures in the mid-40s and a threat of snow.

They practiced roughly 40 minutes south of Rye Cove at Dobyns-Bennett High School, across the Tennessee line in the industrial city of Kingsport, also a hub for regional health care and retail businesses.

There’s a lot of money in Kingsport, population 57,000-plus. And a lot of the city’s manufacturing largesse is on display at D-B. With enrollment approaching 2,400 students, the school is swank, featuring a big stadium that many small college football teams would envy.

The War Eagles’ home field is regular grass turf. They’re practicing on D-B’s artificial turf because it’s closer to the conditions players will experience in Salem, Collier explained. 

When asked how Collier and colleagues have brought this team so far in four years, he said there is no magic formula. It comes down to hard work, with a focus on strength through weight training, he explained.

Rye Cove likes to run the ball, protected by a wall of big linemen. 

Collier began building this team with freshmen in his first year. Many of them have played football almost as long as they can remember. In a school with fewer than 300 students, he has managed to assemble a team of 42 players. A lot of them started playing as young kids in Little League, he said.”