From the Bench: After More than Two Decades, Coach Critical to Bridgeport Football Success Steps Down
By Jeff Toquinto on July 26, 2026 from Sports Blog
There are a lot of titles Bridgeport’s Bubby Swiger has gone by and continues to go by. He’s a dad, a husband, a son, a friend, and a proud Bridgeport High School graduate and probably a few more titles.
On the sports front, one of his favorites is state champion. There is also another one that he relishes on the sports front. And that is being called coach.
“Having one of your players, particularly years later, call you coach always makes you smile,” said Swiger.
It is the last moniker, “Coach,” leading to this blog. After 22 years, all but one involving youth football in Bridgeport, Swiger is stepping down. The man who has played a key part in the machine that produces winning season after winning season for BHS by keeping the pipeline full of ready-to-play athletes is calling it a career.
“I’m going to miss it,” said Swiger. “The interaction was always special, but it was particularly special watching the kids leave us and go on and succeed in middle school and high school. That was our goal, and I feel pretty good we helped with the success.”
It would be safe to say that he did. Before we get to the end, a rewind to the beginning of Bubby Swiger’s decades-long run on the sideline at Wayne Jamison Field is needed.
Swiger, even without the coaching title, would be a well-known commodity in Bridgeport football circles. The 1989 graduate was the starting quarterback on the 1988 Class AA state championship team that beat Winfield in what is arguably the greatest game in West Virginia playoff history.
After graduation, Swiger eventually got the itch to coach. And it was an itch with bloodlines that came in 2002.
“A lot of dads get involved to coach when their kid is playing,” said Swiger. “That was the case with Gordon. I got involved with flag football and coached him through all the youth levels. I understood football, but I had to learn about coaching. I looked back on some of the people that coached me.”
Lessons were learned back in the day when Swiger was coached as a youngster in football, basketball, and baseball playing in his old stomping grounds of North View in Clarksburg.
“I matured as a coach over the course of 22 years. When I was young, I didn’t have that father figure so guys like Jack Moore (who coached him in football and basketball) and Gary Greynolds (baseball) served as the father figure,” said Swiger. “I remembered I needed a little extra attention because of that, and those guys understood that you stay true to what you want to do, but young kids have different
needs. Those guys were excellent at that.”
needs. Those guys were excellent at that.”
There was another mentor in coaching after graduation. Bob Williams, whose son is golf standout Mason Williams, pounded in that lesson when Williams was the coach to Swiger’s managerial roll during a run coaching baseball.
“I leaned on him as a mentor. He let me know you must adapt to different kids in different ways to reach them,” he said. “I understood what he meant. I realized you could be true to coaching, but balance things out by knowing there are kids that need that pat on the back. I really evolved in coaching because of those with me, and to be honest, I continued to evolve every year.”
He said he leaned on others he coached with as well. Bobby Marra, Shawn Marshall, Jarrod West, Terry Cole, and he said plenty of others, and apologized for not naming them all, were all friends and mentors. It was football class from day one to the end.
The lessons came early while starting out coaching flag football. It came as a Pee Wee coach. It came as a Midget coach. It came during his one-year as an assistant at Bridgeport Middle School.
“I think as a coach you realize you probably will never reach every kid you have, but you start out with the goal of reaching one. The idea of trying to reach every single kid is what drove me to keep coaching,” Swiger said. “Even if you don’t win, if you reach the kids you still get 
a victory.”
a victory.”
Swiger’s teams did more than develop players — they won. Over his 22 years, his teams captured double-digit championships and reached title games with remarkable consistency.
Along the way, his teams collected a lot of trophies. Almost none of them are currently in Swiger’s possession.
“I can reveal it now, but I didn’t keep any trophies but one. I would pick a kid out on the team who may have been dealing with a bad family situation or facing a hardship and they would get it,” said Swiger. “The only trophy I kept was a runner-up trophy.”
That trophy came when his son was 10 years old. And he did not keep it to prove a point to his son or anyone else. Rather, it served a purpose all coaches need.
“I kept it because it motivated me to do better,” he said. “I saw the devastation in the faces of the kids and didn’t want to see it again.”
While Swiger knew his coaching journey was closer to the end than the beginning even before making the decision to step away, he said the ending point came with a recent decision by the league his team plays in.
“Mountaineer Youth Football did away with the 5-year-old and 12-year-old divisions,” said Swiger. “That was the final shove because, to me, eliminating those divisions is a problem. A youth organization should never do away with youth sports, particularly such a high
percentage…We’ve already seen numbers take a hit and now you do something that will run more kids to play soccer. That just clinched it for me.”
percentage…We’ve already seen numbers take a hit and now you do something that will run more kids to play soccer. That just clinched it for me.”
The last 13 years of coaching have been in Bridgeport as part of the Mountaineer Youth Football organization. And as much as he loved winning, working with kids, and his coaches, he loved another thing that happened each year.
“Bringing back past players to talk to the kids was always special. You had these kids you kind of remember being a bit goofy and then they come back, either as a middle school or high school student, and would speak to a locker room full of young kids and motivate them,” Swiger, who credited Marshall for doing it while he observed the impact, said. “It became a tradition for a lot of players that moved on knowing they would have a chance as a junior or senior to come back and talk.”
As might be expected, Swiger – like most Indian players from his era – could not talk about the game without talking about the late Coach Wayne Jamison. He said everything that is deeply embedded in his coaching DNA is a result of Jamison.
“The strange thing is the lessons he was teaching, the discipline, I didn’t see it or know it was happening when I was there,” said Swiger. “When I got out, you understood what Coach Jamison was doing. Every detail, every player, was set up to be prepared for every situation. That is how Coach Jamison won.
“Jamison would get on us, and that took me a while to understand. Parents, more today than before, don’t understand it either. Sometimes that the butt chewing isn’t personal,” he continued. “It’s development and the reason it’s done is to make them a better person. They learn to trust you as part of a process. I did it just like Jamison. That meant getting on you in the beginning of game week and slowly building you back up.”
Like any good coach, they have mentors, good assistant, and good players. For those who are married and invest time in it, they usually have a good spouse. Swiger does not dispute that for a minute.
“I can’t say enough about my wife (Alicia). She traveled with me, she filmed every game, she listened to me complain, she was there whenever I needed someone,” said Swiger. “If you’re going to coach a long time and have success, the recipe needs to include a wife that’s by your side every step of the way.”
It is safe to say the recipe worked. And it worked for more than two decades.
Enjoy your retirement from youth sports Bubby. You have earned it.
Editor's Note: Coaching photos are from various times during Bubby Swiger's time on the sidelines. Bottom photo shows Swiger with his family during a recent beach trip. Shown, from left, in the family photo is son-in-law Chase Goldsmith, daughter Fallyn Goldsmith, Alicia Swiger, Bubby Swiger, son Gordon Swiger, and daughter-in-law Emily Swiger. All photos courtesy of Alicia Swiger.
