Tony Caridi speaks to the crowd at Saturday’s Inside the Huddle event at Buzzie Dils Park in Vienna.
(Photo by Aaron Lee)
VIENNA — Mountaineer faithful gathered to give back on Saturday at Buzzie Dils Park at the annual Inside the Huddle event put on by the Boys and Girls Club of Parkersburg. Attendees enjoyed food catered by the North End Tavern and the opportunity to win raffle items. After the meal, Tony Caridi, the voice of the Mountaineers, talked to the audience about the state of college athletics, both across the country and particularly at West Virginia University.
“We’re expected to meet our goal of $40,000 this year. I think we’ll pass that tonight,” said Lynn Reins, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Parkersburg.
The event provided the organization with the opportunity to earn unrestricted funds that are crucial to the organization’s upkeep, “Anything that we raise tonight goes wherever we need it to go to. A lot of the grants that we write, which are incredible and we’re so grateful for, but those go towards specific programs… Whereas this money can go to anything we need, whether that’s a pool repair or replacing our roof or paying our staff members to go to professional development. Anything that we need, this money can go there.”
“When you look at what’s available for youth development in our area, there’s not a lot. Private daycare is really expensive, and that’s where the Boys and Girls Club comes in. We charge $20 for membership, and that goes from the first day of school to the last day of summer the next year,” explained Reins on the role that the Boys and Girls Club of Parkersburg plays in the community.
Reins and the organization have their eyes set on continually expanding their impact, with new projects on the horizon, “We’re expanding our services to try and serve more kids. We’re going to be opening up another site in Mineral Wells Elementary School, we’re going to be opening up a site in Athens County, Ohio and hoping to increase our footprint even more just to be where the kids need us, because more kids more often is what we’re going for.”
She discussed how the Mountaineer culture lends itself to a caring community, “I’m a transplant here, so my first year I didn’t know who Tony was and didn’t know what it meant to be a Mountaineer. You always hear about the pride of people from Texas. I think that West Virginia has that topped ten-fold. The people here are just so loving and giving. They help each other. It’s a big party and a big family, and we have the same people come out every year and celebrate and have a good time with us, and it’s all part of the Mountaineer culture.”
Ryan Fitzer of Intrastate Insurance Agency, the title sponsor of the event, explained how the Boys and Girls Club’s impact creates a ripple effect, “I believe organizations like the Boys and Girls Club are foundational building blocks for our community. The work they’re doing today is going to make this area a great community 20 years from now, and it provides a generational impact too. We’re not just affecting one kid, we’re affecting their kids and their kids’ kids. The work these people do is just phenomenal and it’s our job to provide them with the resources they need to accomplish their goals.”
Caridi talked to the crowd about how much has changed in college athletics in such a short amount of time, “If I came to you and said ‘I wanna bet you $500,000 in monopoly money that West Virginia and Arizona are in the same conference in a decade,’ you would’ve said I am the dumbest guy in the world. Well I’m dumb because we are.”
In addition to conference-realignment, NIL and revenue sharing have transformed the landscape, “Fifteen years ago, NCAA rules said that you could give a breakfast treat to a student-athlete, you could give them a bagel. It was an NCAA violation to put cream cheese on it. It’s funny, but it’s true. Now look at what we’re doing. Kids are making hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in some cases over a million.”
Going into his 41st year as the voice of the Mountaineers, Caridi has learned to not give a number when asked how many games WVU will win in the upcoming year. He does, however, have a much more optimistic viewpoint than years past, “Here’s the reality: I have no idea. After doing this for 40 years I know this: I can guess. This is what I do know, that for the first time since Neal (Brown) got here, we now have enough ingredients in the pantry that we can cook the meal. In the past five years, we’ve had to pretend that 2% milk was buttermilk, and we had to smoke and mirror things. We just had to. There’d be some games going into it like, ‘I hope the opposing team doesn’t get bad food poisoning, but a little food poisoning wouldn’t be bad. Or if the quarterback could roll his ankle a little bit, not a high ankle sprain, that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.’ I don’t think we have to do that anymore. I think we’re just gonna line up and play football on Saturdays.”
Caridi ended his remarks by discussing how the Mountaineers have always managed to represent the state of West Virginia well no matter the circumstances, “In its history, West Virginia has always found a way to be successful no matter how far back you go. As we get ready to go to the 16-team Big 12 Conference, now that Texas and Oklahoma are gone, West Virginia University has the most football wins of all 16 schools. I think that says to us that through the years, we’ve always found a way.”
Contact Aaron Lee at alee@newsandsentinel.com
Read More
