By Tom Bragg
For Lootpress.com
FALLING ROCK, W.Va. – Herbert Hoover will be making its Super Six debut on Friday, but the Huskies have a coach with a wealth of big game experience to guide them.
Joey Fields is just 32, but has been involved in coaching high school football in West Virginia for more than a decade. In that time, the third-year Hoover head coach has won state championships, been in the middle of plenty of high-stakes, high-spotlight games and been around some of the most successful head coaches the state has ever seen. He’ll lean on all of that experience Friday as he takes his No. 9 Huskies into Wheeling Island Stadium to take on unbeaten No. 2 Independence in Friday’s Class AA state championship game.
“You want to enjoy the week and seize every minute of it,” Fields said. “I have such great memories and I’m [in the state championship] game for the third time, thankfully. But when the helmet is on, you’ve got to practice well and you’ve got to prepare well. These guys have done that so far and they understand that.”
Fields played at Matewan High for veteran coach Yogi Kinder, then jumped right into coaching under Kinder after graduation. He followed Kinder to Mingo Central and became the offensive coordinator there when the school opened in 2011, winning a Class AA state title with the Miners in 2016. He then spent one season as the head coach at Mingo Central in 2017 following Kinder’s retirement, leading the Miners back to the state semifinals.
From there it was off to Class AAA powerhouse Martinsburg, where he was the quarterbacks coach for the Bulldogs’ state championship team in 2018 under longtime – and very successful – MHS head coach Dave Walker. Fields took over as the head coach at Herbert Hoover in 2020 and has been quick to find success in Falling Rock.
The Huskies are in the playoffs for the third consecutive season for the first time since the 1990s. In 2021 Fields led Hoover to its first unbeaten regular season since 1977. Now in his third season, he has the Huskies one win away from the first football state championship in program history.
When Herbert Hoover went unbeaten in the regular season last year, the Huskies went into the postseason as the No. 1 team in the Class AA bracket. Hoover promptly lost at home to No. 16 Fairmont Senior – who went onto win the state championship – in the first round.
Now the role is in a way reversed. Last season, everyone heaped praise on a Hoover team that couldn’t deliver in the playoffs. The Huskies still opened the 2022 season with high expectations, but lost their first two games. It would have been easy to count Hoover out, and some certainly did, but since dropping those games to Scott and Winfield – both playoff quarterfinalists this season – the Huskies haven’t lost a game.
“We told them last year that everyone was patting you on the back, saying you’re the best team and you’re going to win it,” Fields said. “Then we found out that wasn’t true. This year you go 0-2 and those pats on the back quickly become knives and a lot of people give up on you. That wasn’t true either. We’re a good football team, especially when we have everybody and that has come into play.”
That stretch of victories includes three consecutive wins on the road this postseason. Hoover opened the playoffs with a victory at No. 8 Clay County before knocking off No. 1 Winfield in the quarterfinals. Last week Hoover made the long trip to take on No. 5 Frankfort, beating the Falcons 17-10 to punch its tickets to Wheeling.
Sophomore quarterback Dane Hatfield – who is now 21-3 as a starter for Hoover – could not get much going through the air, but ran the ball 36 times for 185 yards while running back Randy Hughart carried for 112 yards on 12 attempts. Hatfield’s two second-half touchdown runs brought the Huskies back from a 10-3 hole at halftime before Andrew Rollyson’s interception deep in Frankfort territory secured the win.
Fields said that experience – going on the road, winning in hostile environments and in last week’s case traveling multiple hours to do so – can help his team on Friday in the state title game.
“We talked about how you’ve got to travel well,” Fields said. “This ain’t going to Disney World. We want to give you a good experience, and it is different, also, hey, you’ve got to prepare well and there is a football game that is going to happen. Our guys did a very good job of that last week. We’re in a lot of the same routine [this week]. We’ll do a couple of little events for them, but it’s a lot of the same routine from when we traveled to Frankfort.
“I think [last week’s long road trip helped]. Hotel, food, preparation, time of practice and so on. I think that definitely helped and our kids did so well at understanding the task at hand. These kids are very motivated. Last week they wanted to continue playing, and I’m sure we’ll have more of the same as far as travel and as far as preparation.”
