— By Shawn Rine
WHEELING, W.Va. — Being first is nothing new to Wheeling Central’s Adam Murray. The junior is generally one of the first Maroon Knights on the field for practice each day and it’s rare that anyone beats him to a ballcarrier.
Last season Murray became the first sophomore and first Class A player to be recognized with the Sam Huff Award, which has been presented since 1994 to the state’s premier defensive football player. Today, Murray becomes the first so bestowed with the honor twice by the West Virginia Sports Writers Association.
“Are you serious?” was Murray’s initial reaction to winning the award, moments after Wheeling Central defeated Williamstown, 44-15, for its second consecutive state title. “It’s just a blessing. If it wasn’t for my teammates putting me into the positions I’m in, I wouldn’t be able to do this.
“Half the tackles I make are because of them. They do their job and the coaches do their jobs to free me up.
“It’s all a credit to those guys.”
But the honors this season don’t stop there for Murray. In addition to the Huff, the 6-foot-1, 225-pounder is also the winner of the Chuck Howley Award. Named after the Warwood native who played for the Dallas Cowboys and is still the only Super Bowl Most Valuable Player from a losing team, the Howley Award signifies the state’s top linebacker.
“Chuck Howley’s wife grew up in the alley behind us and I used to laugh because I thought he could pick up a lawnmower and cut the hedges,” Central coach Mike Young joked. “There’s a lot of connections that I have with the name Chuck Howley.
“(Murray) reads well and we actually scheme so he is free to make those tackles. He doesn’t stay in the hole, he comes up into the hole and it’s huge in terms of linebacker play.
“You can sit back, you’ve got to attack.”
That’s the only way Murray knows how to play — fast and physical. He’s a sideline-to-sideline force that never takes a play off, as the stats will attest. Playing injured for a large chunk of the season, Murray recorded 172 tackles including 35 behind the line of scrimmage for the 13-1 Maroon Knights. That’s a two-year total of 326 tackles for a player that still has a year of high school eligibility remaining.
“With a broken hand and a separated shoulder he was still able to do that,” Young said. “We moved him off offense because of the broken hand and pulled him a little bit on defense ä we pulled him in the first quarter of the Tyler Consolidated game (opening round of the playoffs) because of the shoulder.
“I can’t say enough about him. He’s a great kid, a great student-athlete and is a pleasure to coach. He plays hard and he’s relentless.”
What makes this story all the more remarkable, is that Murray was essentially double- and triple-teamed from the first kickoff of the season until the final seconds ran off the clock at Wheeling Island Stadium. Each week the opposing team’s offensive game plan was devised in hopes of eliminating Murray’s impact on the game.
“I know (the team) expects a lot of me, but when they’re yelling at me I just have to kind of zone them out,” Murray said. “It’s just about having fun and enjoying being out there with your teammates.
“I don’t really think it’s putting pressure on me. It’s just that they rely on me and trust me, and I trust them back.
“My role … I’m the one that sits back and reads the guard’s feet because that will take me to the ball every time. I rely on a bunch of other guys like Vinny Mangino, Luke Duplaga and Dom Mills to make plays, too.”
The fact that it’s normally difficult for a Single-A player to win an award of this magnitude, let alone twice, was not lost on Young and his coaching staff.
“We know that,” Young said. “That not only says a lot for Adam, but also for our program.
“I think people respect the schedule we play even though they don’t like us, so to speak. We have to deal with a lot of stuff about do we or don’t we recruit, but these kids have played together from junior high until now.
“That’s hats off to everybody who is a part of the Wheeling Central program.”
For a guy that doesn’t know anything but being first, Murray now has his sights set on becoming the first three-time winner of the Huff and two-time recipient of the Howley, which was initially awarded in 2014.
Murray will be awarded with both the Huff and Howley as part of the Victory Awards Dinner on May 5 at the Embassy Suites in Charleston.