In August of 2019, Coach Neal Brown his Mountaineer football team joined “Fly Rod Chronicles” Host and Bridgeport resident Curtis Fleming for an up-close-and-personal visit to Leer Mining Complex – Arch Coal, Inc. in Grafton. Last month, former WVU/NFL quarterback Jeff Hostetler and administrators of WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital followed suit.

 

“They loved what we did with the football team, so these administrators who are working on the new WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital wanted to see how our steel is made and how the lights are kept on. They wanted to see how a 10-story hospital is built from the ground up,” Fleming said.

 

Hostetler, co-chair of the new hospital’s $60 million capital campaign, along with Amy L. Bush-Marone, Chief Operating Officer at WVU Medicine Children’s and Darin Rogers, WVU Medicine Vice President of ambulatory operations, went deep underground to grasp the mining concept.

 

“We watched how the coal longwall worked and how the coal was brought out of the ground. We went back four and a half miles and got to watch within 25 feet how the coal came out of the earth,” Fleming said.

 

Back in August, the mining company presented Brown and WVU President Gordon Gee with mining hats - complete with head lamps WVU stickers. The company subsequently donated 25 of the same hats to the Mountaineer football team, with the intention that each would be autographed by Brown and each member of the squad.  

 

“At an event held at the MAC, they auctioned two of those hats off, one going for $600 and another for $900,” Fleming said.

 

Some of the signed hats were returned to Leer Mines/Arch Coal, ultimately gifted to Fleming, Leer/Arch Shift Supervisor Paul McKinney, Leer/Arch General Manager Gaither Fraser (of Bridgeport), Larry Gore and Steve Antoline, key players in organizing the mine visits. Antoline, a longtime financial supporter of WVU athletics, also serves as co-chair of the hospital’s capital campaign.

 

Each month, Leer Mines/Arch coal donates to a noble cause and it was decided that the new WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital would be the recipient of their most recent donation.

 

The relationship between the coal mines and the Mountaineers continues.

 

There are plans to build a coal wall in the Mountaineer locker room and coal picks provided by the mining company will be incorporated into the team’s “Trust the Climb” mantra.

 

“It’s cool to see Coach Brown adopt this West Virginia, hard-working theme and recruiting under this,” Fleming said. “That’s what the team is about.”

 

Read the August story and see dozens of photos of the Mountaineer football team’s visit to the coal mines HERE.