Four years ago, things could not get worse for Rye Cove High School’s football program.
In game five of the 2021 season, the War Eagles suffered multiple injuries — so many that the team couldn’t continue the contest. There just weren’t enough players.
“They folded,” current head coach Gary Collier said Wednesday. “They shut down.”
Rye Cove suffered eight losses and didn’t win a game that year.
Oh, how far the War Eagles have come.
With 11 wins and only three losses in 2025, the team will travel to Salem on Saturday and play in its first state championship game, fighting for the Class 1 title against Rappahannock, with 12 wins and two losses. Kickoff at Salem Stadium is set for 5 p.m.
This is the first state title shot for both teams.
How did Rye Cove — a tiny school amid rural Scott County’s foothills — come so far in four years?
The secret is that there is no secret, says Collier, who was hired in 2022 — this milestone is the result of work, work, work.
Good things come in small packages
The community of Rye Cove rests on a long, rolling plain of farmland and patches of forest, surrounded by the foothills of the Cumberland mountains and accessible only by two-lane and smaller roads. The nearest four-lane, U.S. 23, is miles away. The closest town, Duffield, is a wide spot at the intersection of 23 and Route 58 with a couple of dollar stores, a grocery store, several factories — and a population of 69 in 2024.
Until now, Rye Cove has been known to history beyond Scott County only because of a tragedy memorialized in a song — and centered on a community school.
On May 2, 1929, a midday tornado ripped through the Rye Cove School, killing 12 students and a teacher. It was the deadliest such storm in Virginia history.
Legendary country music pioneer and Scott County native A.P. Carter volunteered to help clean up after the disaster and captured the tragic scene in his song, “The Cyclone of Rye Cove.”
The site of the terrible event is marked by Cyclone Circle, a quick walk from Rye Cove High School.
See our previous coverage of the 1929 cyclone.
The school serves fewer than 300 students in grades 8-12, drawn from the hills, hollows and pasturelands of Scott County’s northwest corner.
The community is not wealthy. Far from it. According to the Virginia Department of Education, more than 78% of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
But Rye Cove does a lot with its limited resources, consistently scoring above both the school division and state averages in math and science.
Football fortunes turn
When the Rye Cove football program could not get any deeper in the dumps, along came Gary Collier.
A native of Lee County’s Pennington Gap, Collier was a star quarterback at Emory & Henry College, graduating in 1988. The year before, he was ranked second in the nation among college quarterbacks for his passing record. He was named a First Team All-American by the Associated Press and player of the year by the Old Dominion Athletic Conference. Collier graduated with seven national passing records and was inducted into the college’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1994.
But Collier didn’t pursue a career in sports or education. After graduation, he served on the Emory & Henry coaching staff for a couple of years, then started working in law enforcement. He served as a Virginia game warden — a job that took him to the Richmond area — then started a 24-year career as a Virginia alcoholic beverage control investigative agent, often working undercover.
His ABC career brought Collier back to Southwest Virginia, settling in Gate City, the Scott County seat and home to the largest of its three high schools.
Collier retired in May 2021, but he stayed busy doing private investigative work, he explained Wednesday.
Then, in 2022, Rye Cove persuaded him to return to the gridiron as head coach.
After shooting blanks throughout the 2021 season, the team finished the 2022 regular season under Collier’s leadership with eight wins and three losses.
In 2023, the War Eagles racked up 11 wins, with two losses.
In 2024, the team won 14 games, losing only once.
The War Eagles won the regional title that year and again this fall.
“Football in Rye Cove has always held a special place in the DNA of our school and community,” Principal Michael Berry explained in a Thursday morning email. “We are so proud of the accomplishments earned by our football team. Playing in this game doesn’t happen by accident, this has been a goal our coaches and players have had for some time now, and to see them reach this point is something that I will never forget.”
Collier says the community embraced the revived football program eagerly. After so many disappointments, “they were hungry.”
Running in the rain
Wednesday afternoon, Collier and his assistant coaches — including two former Emory & Henry teammates — ran the War Eagles through play after play under a slow, steady, chilly rain, with temperatures in the mid-40s and a threat of snow.
They practiced roughly 40 minutes south of Rye Cove at Dobyns-Bennett High School, across the Tennessee line in the industrial city of Kingsport, also a hub for regional health care and retail businesses.
There’s a lot of money in Kingsport, population 57,000-plus. And a lot of the city’s manufacturing largesse is on display at D-B. With enrollment approaching 2,400 students, the school is swank, featuring a big stadium that many small college football teams would envy.
The War Eagles’ home field is regular grass turf. They’re practicing on D-B’s artificial turf because it’s closer to the conditions players will experience in Salem, Collier explained.
When asked how Collier and colleagues have brought this team so far in four years, he said there is no magic formula. It comes down to hard work, with a focus on strength through weight training, he explained.
Rye Cove likes to run the ball, protected by a wall of big linemen.
Collier began building this team with freshmen in his first year. Many of them have played football almost as long as they can remember. In a school with fewer than 300 students, he has managed to assemble a team of 42 players. A lot of them started playing as young kids in Little League, he said.
Sixteen players are starters, each of them taking both offensive and defensive roles.
Standing heads above his teammates, one of the leaders is junior Ethan Lawson, hailing from the Pattonsville community near Duffield.
An offensive and defensive lineman, Lawson already topped six feet, five inches and more than 300 pounds as an eighth grader.
A lot of great schools want Lawson’s talents, Collier noted proudly. Five Division I universities are looking at him, along with Division II’s University of Virginia’s College at Wise, about 30 minutes to the north in Wise County.
“I’ve played my entire life,” Lawson said. “I started in kindergarten. I just love the game.”
Collier acknowledged that some players come from households that often get by with limited means. Coaches serve as mentors and supporters beyond sports, he said. They offer a hug and encouraging words to help kids get through their troubles. Sometimes, Collier finds himself asking to make sure a student has gotten enough to eat that day. “Being a coach is more than Xs and Os.”
The community at large steps up as well to support the team, often overcoming meager resources. Collier said he expects a significant contingent of fans to show up Saturday in Salem.
There was a plan in the works to arrange bus travel for fans, he said, but there wasn’t enough interest to go forward. That’s because plenty of people will take it upon themselves to make the three-hour journey to Salem on their own, he believes.
In fact, more than a third of Rye Cove students, about 100 kids, will make the journey as part of their duties, including players, cheerleaders and the school band, Collier noted.
Berry shared Collier’s faith.
“The support for this team is unwavering, and I know our fans will show up for them in Salem,” he wrote. “There have been countless individuals and groups who have reached out and offered support to ensure our kids have everything they need for this trip. For that, we are so thankful and so blessed.”
As the rain soaked them and the chill seeped into their bones, the War Eagles quietly pushed through play after play Wednesday, with plans to practice at D-B again Thursday. No chatter. No distraction. These young men are on a mission to rewrite Rye Cove history.
The rain and chill are no big deal, said fullback Will Rollins. It will be cold at game time Saturday as well. Knowing the team carries the hopes of a community on its shoulders, he intends to maintain a singular focus. “I’m just going to treat it like any other day of the week.”
Lawson, too, wasn’t bothered by the cold rain and refused to let his attention waver. “I just take what the Lord gives me.”
What matters is making the community proud. “The atmosphere is amazing,” Lawson said, with fans, family and the school rallying around the team.
Family extends to the field, he said. “I’m playing with my brothers.”
