Sunday Sit Down: Craig Kellar

WEST UNION, W.Va (WDTV) - Longtime Doddridge County coach Craig Kellar joins this week’s Sunday Sit Down.

Kellar spent 27 years as the Bulldog’s head girl’s basketball coach, highlighted by two state titles, the first in 1985, one of Kellar’s best memories, “I think of Susan Robinson, the girl that wound up going to Penn State and was an All-American there, so when she was a sophomore, we made it to the state tournament, but before we went down somehow she got with me when no one else was around and she said, coach do we really have a chance? or what do you think, question something like that, and I said Susan, I’ve never been there but lets just go give it our best shot and I think we’ll be okay and we wound up winning but I didn’t know much about the state level of girls basketball at the time, I’d watched it some but then she didn’t know either and she said okay and we went down and sometimes people think its easy to win the state championship but I have a saying that you have to be good enough to win and you have to be good enough that particular day and that’s kind of a double whammy and we were, we only, that first championship, we only won by three points, we beat Athens 48 to 45, it was really exciting,” said Kellar.

Kellar has also spent over two decades at the head of Doddridge County Cross County and is in his 41st year as girl’s track and field head coach. Throughout the years, Kellar says one of the biggest things he’s learned is patience, but credits the community as a reason for success for the programs he’s coached, “it’s not just us coaches, there’s a lot in our success in our Doddridge program is not just the coaches, obviously it’s the kids number one but you got parents, you got grandparents and we have good ones, you know a real blessing for me, they pretty much let me coach, very few people come in mad and if they did come in mad and had a question, it was cordial and I really appreciate that,” said Kellar.

Coach joked that Bobby Burnside, the boy’s track and field head coach is who has been keeping him going these last few years on the track, but Kellar reflects on his last few decades with a smile, “Its just been really special I guess, I’ll miss the coaches a lot, the other schools and our own... it’s just so many stories and things that are kind of coach to coach in a way and then most of all the kids, they make it, I mean they make me younger than I really am.”

Kellar also noted his religion as something that has carried him through the years, “I’m a Christian, a believer in Jesus Christ and there’s a lot of times that you go into things and we hope God will help you and I don’t know if he intervenes or changes the outcome of a contest nut I know my reliance on him as helped me to do better, now whether that was a win or next, but you know, reading the bible and praying and so on, I felt like he’s always been with me and helped me.”

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