Barr

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Walter Barr mostly used his own examples of being organized, believing in fundamentals, maintaining a work ethic and using practice habits to achieve his many football successes.

He didn’t have to do any arm-waving preaching or resort to theatrics to get results from his players — whether they were high school-age athletes from the 1960s, late 1980s, 1990s or college players at Shepherd from 1971 through the 1985 season.

Barr had the respect given to a truthful man whose football acumen meant he was going to give his players a real chance to win at whatever level he was coaching.

His players knew he had given them his energy, knowledge, caring and conditioning to carry out their on-field missions.

They had been given the ways to win. No secrets were needed. No short cuts were wanted. “Take the game to the opponent.” “Let them know and understand this game will be won by the team that is still driving forward at the end.”

Barr’s players knew they had the football weapons to succeed. They trusted their coach, and they could see by his “waste no time or chance to outwork somebody” that Barr had their welfare in mind.

They were his players. He had been responsible for bringing them to Shepherd. Much of their success or failure could be placed at his feet.

The players knew that any wins, praise or media attention paid to the team would ultimately be wrapped in articles, headlines and notoriety heaped on their shoulders.

Walter Barr didn’t own any brass horns or trumpets. He never drew attention to himself. Any accolades being tossed in his direction missed badly. It was his teams that lit up the scoreboards. Not the coach plotting the strategy.

Barr took the football maxim that tried to trivialize the positives of running the football that said “Three yards and a cloud of dust” and changed it to “4.5 yards and another first down after three rushes.”

He didn’t believe that “Two of the three things that can happen when you pass are bad” (incompletion, interception or completion). But he didn’t fill the windy afternoons of November with 30 or 40 passes either.

In 1971, his first Shepherd team marched out to a 7-1-2 record, and the tone was set for his following 15 Ram seasons that had Shepherd wading through only one losing fall campaign.

At the beginning of his years at Shepherd, it was not unusual to find the Rams practicing three times a day. It also wasn’t unusual to see them featured on frosty November evenings vying for the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championship in the Coal Bowl in Summersville.

Shepherd enjoyed some measure of football success under Don Fouss and Jesse Riggleman before Barr came to a Ram Stadium that had no bleachers on the west side, used the bottom reaches of Sara Cree Hall as its dressing room for its few scholarship players and still bussed their way over the narrow two-lane roads of West Virginia to places like Salem, Bluefield, West Virginia Tech and Institute.

But after Barr (who had been a quarterback for Shepherd teams) returned to the college that churned out polished school teachers and coaches from its Education School there was a previously unseen parade of respected and torch-carrying teams. The Rams of Walter Barr carried seasons into late November in reaching the Coal Bowl in 1976 and 1978. There were three conference championships as well as a string of visits to the NAIA and NCAA Division II postseasons.

After the 1985 season was chronicled in the record books, Barr had achieved an overall mark of 104-48-4.

His high school moments crested at James Wood, with a state championship, and at Sherando, with appearances in two consecutive state championship games.

Now that bleachers have been added on the west side of Ram Stadium, a plaque with Barr’s accomplishments has been placed on the plaza. He is enshrined in the university’s Athletic Hall of Fame, as well as three more such Halls in the state of Virginia.

A slew of Barr’s players became high school and college coaches. Another lengthy list of former players joined him as assistant coaches at Shepherd.

Such All-WVIAC players as Perry Hubbard, Anthony Crenshaw, Chris Mack, Mike Coyle and Wayne Wilson were influenced by the coach who didn’t waver, cut no corners, believed in the lasting value of hard work and spurred a keener interest in Shepherd football than had ever been seen before.

Walter Barr came through Shepherd as a student before the school ever proclaimed on its mailed correspondence that “Shepherd students succeed,” yet he made that declaration ring true for his 85 years. He passed away last month, on Oct. 29.