A West Virginia coaching icon has passed away.
Roger Jefferson, a four-time state championship coach between tenures as head football coach at Charleston High School and Capital High School, died at 84.
Mountain State Athletic Conference Commissioner Jim Hamric recalls Jefferson fondly.
“It is terrible news, but something we kind of expected, because Roger really hadn’t been doing well for quite a while, months,” Hamric said Monday as a guest on Startwide Sportsline. “It’s one of those things that’s part of life. We’re very sad, but he had a heck of a life he gave to the state of West Virginia and all the football players and athletes he touched.”
Jefferson was a decorated athlete in his own right, and went on to play football as well as wrestle at Marshall after graduating from Barboursville High School.
With the Herd, Jefferson played both ways and saw action at center, guard and tackle along the offensive line, as well as at linebacker and tackle defensively. He was also a plenty accomplished wrestler at Marshall and finished second in the Mid-American Conference Wrestling Championships in 1961 as well as fourth in 1963. Jefferson was co-captain of the Herd wrestling team as a senior.
He was inducted into the Marshall Athletics Hall of Fame in 2003.
Before achieving all sorts of success as a football coach, Jefferson was the first wrestling coach at Stonewall Jackson High School and helped produce seven individual state champions and seven state runner-ups as well teams that finished runner-up in 1966, 1969 and 1972.
Jefferson helped guide Charleston High School to the 1988 Class AAA football championship. The next year, Charleston and Stonewall Jackson consolidated to form Capital High School, and Jefferson led the Cougars to the Class AAA state championship in the school’s first year of operation.
Jefferson was also head coach of Capital’s state championship teams in football in 1991 and 1995, as well as squads that finished runner-up in 1993 and 1996 — his final year as head coach.
“He popularized the Wing-T and had his own stretch to it,” said Hamric, himself a state champion football coach at Spencer High School who later became the athletic director at Parkersburg. “Everyone in the ‘80s and ‘90s wanted to run the Wing-T because Roger Jefferson was popular with it. It wasn’t that it was such a great offense as much as it was that Roger made them discipline. No matter what offense or defense he ran, he was going to be successful, but he sure made that Wing-T look good.”
For all his success as an athlete and coach, however, Jefferson may best be remembered for his work off the gridiron and mat, according to Hamric.
“Bryce Casto told me after he became head coach at South Charleston, of all the coaches in the Kanawha Valley, Roger Jefferson helped him more than anybody in the state,” Hamric said. “That’s the type of guy he was. He had a big heart.
“There was a guy named Tony Harris that didn’t have much of a home life. He was the most popular guy at Capital and Charleston High, and Roger took him under his wing. He took him home about every day. He lived in Institute right next to West Virginia State. I know that, because I ended up taking him home a few times myself. But he was the ball boy and ended up being a lifetime ball boy for Capital High. He’s a beloved figure and I’m sure he’s probably sitting up there waiting on coach Jefferson and he’s going to probably say, ‘what took you so long, man?’”