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Nov 11, 2022
MORGANTOWN — We are a starstruck nation.
So much so, that being a star no longer is good enough. You have to be a superstar, be it an athlete who thrills us, a performer who entertains us, a politician who espouses the values that we believe in.
We, the media, feed into this. Athletic heroes, celebrities, politicians dominate the news of not the day but every day. They do good, they do bad, we write about it, talk about it, post about it and argue about it, but they dominate our waking hours.
Yet there are stories out there far more gripping, far more entertaining, far more soul satisfying.
We just don’t look for it. Talking media, yes, but also the public.
In a career that reaches back to bell-bottom pants; a psychedelic world where Dr. Timothy Leary, Janis Joplin and a country split over a war in a far, far away land known as Viet Nam the lesson was driven home that the best of stories are not in those who are at the top but in those who are trying to get there.
And, on Veterans Day, the point is driven home again, right here in Morgantown and West Virginia and in a football locker room in Milan Puskar Stadium that involves one of our own, a player who celebrates his time in the military.
It was a detour on his route toward fulfilling his dream, an adventure in which he had to find himself before he could find his way to accomplish his lifelong goal, that of being a West Virginia University football player.
His name is Wil Schoonover and he’s a former three-sport star from Moorefield High.
You won’t find his name on the depth chart that WVU puts out but you will find his name on a locker in the locker room. Look quickly and you may see him on the kickoff return team or on the sideline, signaling in the defensive calls.
On Tuesday of veteran’s week he brought his story to the public, of a kid lost coming out of high school, sideline into the U.S. Army where he could grow up and learn himself, a kid constantly foiled in his attempts to live out his dream, a kid who reached up to his local here, Reed Williams, the one-time WVU linebacker, who guided him through the maze until the day he was able to come down the tunnel and run out onto Mountaineer Field as a Mountaineer.
“Speechless,” he said when asked to describe the moment. “It was a dream come true. I was getting to live out a childhood dream. I worked to get here.”
Indeed. he did.
At Moorefield he was a running back and safety in football, a catcher and center fielder in baseball, a wrestler and he was good enough to get offers in all three sports.
He eventually decided he’d take an offer from Glenville.
Suddenly, it became an obstacle course as difficult to transverse as any he would counter in the military.
He was playing safety in fall camp but learned he had issues with the NCAA clearinghouse.
“They said I had a red flag. I knew I had an issue, that I had failed this class. They said I was a non-qualifier in high school so I couldn’t play that fall.”
Rather than sit around, he joined the military.
“I contacted multiple schools, but for me I wanted to serve my country,” he explained. “I was all patriotic growing up, so I joined up. My mom was not happy with that.”
He was sent to Fort Benning for basic training and went through jump school.
“Then, in September, I went to Alaska and right before Christmas I was deployed to Afghanistan,” he said.
That is not almost heaven.
In June, 2018, he returned home.
“I grew up real fast, especially when you have six or eight drill sergeants yelling at you,” Schoonover said of the military experience. “It was a great experience and the structure and organization of the U.S. Army molded me into the guy I am today.
“It gave me a great perspective on life, how to lead people, how to treat people and just life in general.”
He always was into working out, but in the military the goals are different than in sports like football.
“It’s long distance in the Army. It’s how far can you go and how much can you carry, especially as a grunt. You are carrying a lot of the basics, radios, batteries,” he said.
He asked about carrying a 30-pound backpack and quickly offered a correction, putting it at 120 pounds.
“Here in football, what’s a play last? About 8 seconds? There’s a lot of power in this world.
I tell people we evaluate people here. We track their sleep. There’s a nutrition staff. Players are hydrated properly, fed properly, monitored. Then they grade you.
“In the Army they’re taking your food, your water, your sleep …. then they see what you’re about. That’s the big difference.”
They pressure you because when you go to Afghanistan you face pressure every day. And it carries over to football in its own way.
This isn’t games.
“Here, you lose a football game, everyone wakes up the next day, you prepare, you eat.,” Schoonover said. “In the military if someone dies, that’s serious. Having someone die and have them shipped back across the ocean in a box. That’s terrible. I hate thinking about that.
“I’ve had friends die. I’ve had friends die from suicide after coming back after dealing with what’s happened.”
He returned home and tried to play at Glenville again but didn’t qualify and he wasn’t qualified to go to WVU, either.
It was 2020, the COVID year.
“I worked for the Region 7 work force. I was a supervisor the youth development group,” he said. “I had kids 14 to 24 years old. Some were good kids who were looking for a good working environment for their first time working. Some were not as good, maybe didn’t go to school, had a bad home life, had drug issues.
“I got to teach these kids career skills. We’d go to rivers, wildlife management areas and pick up trash. I’d give them power point presentations on things like saving money, the difference between what you want and what you need.
“I really take pride in that. They probably learned a lot from me, but I learned a lot from that and teaching these kids as their role model and their boss.”
All the while he stayed in touch with his role model, Reed Williams.
“He’s been like a big brother to me, a mentor. ‘What are you going to do next?’ Mostly on education and how this is just a stepping stone in my life and my journey to what’s going on next.
“I probably couldn’t have done it without him.”
Schoonover knew he had to move on with his life.
“I was kind of bored with my life. I was just working and was eager to play football and couldn’t do that,” he said.
His boss at Region 7 told him he might be able to play baseball for Doug Little at Potomac State, so he made the call and joined the team.
He figured now he’d be able to meet the requirements and walk on at WVU, but was told he needed one more thing, a science class credit, so he took biology and was ready to go in fall camp.
But the clearance didn’t come until the first day of classes.
It took him a year to get back into football shape, but that was not much of a challenge with what was ahead of him. It wasn’t football that was the real goal.
“It wasn’t that I was just trying to get back to playing football. It was football at WVU,” he said. “Growing up, I watched Reed Williams play. I wanted to play here. I wouldn’t play anywhere else except the old gold and blue.”
Now, he’s closing in on the end of his career. He knows where he’s going.
“This is my final season. I’ll intern under Mike Joseph and then work for the Department of
Defense at either Fort Bragg or Fort Campbell training military personnel. It doesn’t matter what branch,” he said. “I want to give back. I love working out. I love the sports science side of it and the human body and how far can you push it.”
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