Vaughan takes the helm at Greenbrier West

charmco – Greenbrier West assistant coach Kelly Vaughan was named the head coach at his alma mater during a meeting of the Greenbrier County Board of Education Friday afternoon.

Vaughan is the school’s fifth head coach and replaces Toby Harris, who retired in mid-June. Harris had two stints at the school (1968-77 and 2019-2022).

“I’m excited,” Vaughan said Friday evening from his home in Rainelle. “It just felt like the timing was right. We have a bunch of hard-nosed kids here and they work hard. That’s why they have been successful.”

Vaughan was an all-state player who played the quirky combination of quarterback/nose guard before graduating from West in 1984.

He inherits a program that went 35-8 under Harris in his second stint, and made four straight playoffs, three times going to the second round.

Vaughan coached with three of the school’s previous four coaches and all three of those coaches won over 100 games at the school — Howard Hylton, Lewis McClung and Harris. Vaughan was on the coaching staff on teams that advanced to the state championship game twice (Hylton in 1991 and Lewis McClung in 2013).

“I got to coach with a bunch of great guys,” Vaughan said. “We had a great team, we had a lot of great kids and I learned a lot of football over the years.”

He said coaching was his calling.

“I’ve always wanted to be a high school coach,” Vaughan said. “It’s just what I wanted to do and I always knew it was what I wanted to do. I was reading something the other day about Ryan Mallet (a former NFL QB who tragically died in a drowning accident earlier this week). I think he was coaching in Arkansas. He had told people he wanted to be a high school coach. That’s the way I feel. I think high school football is the purest form of football.”

After graduating high school, he played football at Wake Forest for four years.

“I was blessed,” Vaughan said. “I had offers from Virginia Tech, West Virginia, but Wake Forest just felt right.”

He was a starter on special teams his redshirt freshman year and then was a three-year starter at defensive end.

His first coaching job was with his former high school coach in 1991 when his brothers Chris and Steve helped lead the Cavaliers to the Class AA state championship game, where they fell to Spencer 31-22.

“I’ve coached a lot of football games over the years, and I still have not seen two scoop-and-scores like they had in that game,” Vaughan said. “That one still hurts. We were up 16-0 in that game.”

He doesn’t foresee any changes offensively and defensively.

“What we have done has worked over the years and I don’t see any reason to change what we are doing,” Vaughan said.

He said job one is keeping the current coaching staff together.

“I’m praying that we can do that,” Vaughan said. “We have a great staff, great guys and I’d like to keep that continuity we have with the coaches and the players.”

The new head coach will have something none of the other coaches at West had when the Vaughan Era kicks off against Pendleton County Aug. 25.

Field turf.

“I’m going to take you back to the 80s,” Vaughan said. “When I was at Wake Forest we played teams like Michigan, UVa, and they had turf. It was like playing on hard carpet. I hated it. That turf today is nice. We played Shady Spring last year and that turf was soft. Rained the whole game and there were no problems. I’m looking forward to it and the kids will like it.”

Vaughan and his wife Marcie reside in Rainelle and the couple have one son, Lawson, a former Cavaliers player, who will be a junior at WVU.