[Varney3]

Clueless. You've bought into the myth. Have there been transfers? Sure have. But the 87-88-89 teams were built around these players (by year):

1987: Blair, Hackney, Wright, Mcnamee, and Deramus. Of those, Bobby Deramus was the transfer, his family moved all the way here from Texas for his dad's job. This ain't Belfry poaching from Matewan. All the others went to school at Pikeville all their lives, practically. I think McNamee started out at St. Francis (in Pikeville), which only went up to 6th grade (Catholic school), then went to Pikeville. That's it. Matt Blair's dad was a PHS alumni, as well as the rest of his family. Same for Robbie Wright, and Greg Hackney. Pikeville natives, all.

1988: Deramus, Howard (Hillard's son, Jason), Hackney, Honaker (Teddy, whose family was from Pikeville and his father played there too), Cox (Freddie Cox, whose father was a doctor here, also legit), Lance Rose, ditto. Jody Brown, ditto. Again, all homegrown except for Deramus.

1989: Steve Bailey (transfer from WV, featured running back, that's all I know about him, but I do know he legit moved here, family had housing over here), Allara (son of Bill Allara, coach for years at PHS) Lance Rose (see 1988), Chad Helvey (family from Pikeville, mother was an alumnus as I recall, went to Pikeville all his life), Blair (Matt's younger brother), and Jason Justice (whose family was all from Pikeville, born here and raised here).

Your arguement is hogwash. Those were all Pikeville boys on those teams, at least the mainstays and featured players. As for the linemen, etc., as I recall, ALL were homegrown boys. As I said before, I don't deny there were transfers, etc. But the state's first ever 3peat champion in football was homegrown talent in 98% of the case.

A little side note, if you go to the KHSAA site and look up the stats from previous state championship games, the 1988 play by play is HILARIOUS. Here is the link to the page, then after there, select "1988 stats/results" then game stats. It is about halfway down, Commentary included in the play by play is hilarious. http://www.khsaa.org/football/

You're such a hipocrite. You're bashing someone else for saying Pikeville's teams were made of recruits and then going on to say this person doesn't know what they're talking about. Well, neither do you. Coach Haywood's coaching staff HAS NEVER AND WILL NEVER recruit any player(s) from other schools. Yes, players from WV go to Belfry, but that's just because Belfry has a rich tradition and very few places in the world can provide the kind of atmosphere that Belfry can. Furthermore, many of the WV residents that attend Belfry came through Belfry Middle School. I know many of them personally who went to Turkey Creek, Runyon, etc. before going on to the high school simply because they're parents went to Belfry. No need to assume that every kid that lives in WV and attends Belfry is a recruit.

I assume you're referring to such players as David Jones ('03/'04 state champ team) and possibly Jeffree Pruitt from last year's team. David left Matewan his sophomore year due to maltreatment from Matewan's coaching staff. Belfry's coaching staff had never even heard of him, nor had they seen him play. If third-party person(s) affected his decision, then that's his business, but FYI that is completely legal. The same situation goes for Jeffree. I know the kid personally, and he loved Belfry, even before he trasnferred. After his first game I personally heard him say he had never felt a feeling like that before, because there were 3,000+ fans in attendance.

Don't throw rocks if you live in a glass house.