Unique coal touch inside the Mountaineers’ locker room

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen isn’t big on pregame speeches, figuring even the best speech is no match for the previous six days of preparation.

However, this year Holgorsen will give his final remarks in front of a shiny wall of black bricks made from West Virginia coal. The display came about during a chance meeting with former Beckley resident Mike Peters, who now lives in Charlotte.

“Down in the Bahamas I ran across Mike cold turkey and he told me they had a product they wanted me to look at,” Holgorsen told MetroNews “Talkline” on Wednesday. “Him and his wife were down there. About six months later they show up in my office.”

Peters’ company, Coal Stone, claims access to a rare and unique vein of coal prized for its beauty as a naturally artistic design component. He wanted to bring his product into the Mountaineers locker room.

“I thought it was a pretty good idea,” said Holgorsen. “It’s a pretty good reminder about what we’re about here in the state of West Virginia.”

The shiny, black wall is fashioned with the Flying WV logo.

“It’s a pretty good remembrance tool for our guys to look at before they put in their hard work out there on the practice field,” said Holgorsen.

“When we first got here, of course, I put in the Mountaineer Mantrip where we walk in and touch a piece of coal as we enter the stadium. We’re going to have to reroute it this year due to construction, but we’re still going to be able to make a shorter trip and touch the piece of coal before we go to work.”

Even the Mantrip itself is a symbolic tip of the cap to the state’s mining heritage, named for the machine that carries coal miners from the surface to the face each day.  Peters saw the value in the symbolism the coal wall will mean to the team.

“He’s a fifth-generation coal miner down in Beckley,” said Holgorsen. “He really can’t mine much anymore, but he has access to a lot of good, healthy coal so he started making some things out of it.”





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