Sang Memorial Unveiled On Sept. 19
The legacy of football giant Coach Bob Sang will forever be etched in tri state football history.
A sculpture of the coach-educator will be unveiled on September 19 when Huntington High plays Capital.
Sang, whose playing and coaching career spanned eight decades, died in 2002. He began as a multi-talented player for the Barboursville High School football team that won the 1942 West Virginia state championship and was elected captain of that squad. He closed out his distinguished career with five seasons as head coach of the "new" Huntington High School.
Sang spent some forty of his 50-year coaching career as a head coach and served schools in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. His collegiate playing career had a delayed start because he enlisted in the U. S. Marine Corps as a 17-year-old high school graduate and he saw extensive combat in the fierce battles on the Pacific islands of Iwo Jima and Guam during World War II. Sang enrolled at Marshall University after being honorably discharged from military service.
There, he worked his way through college while playing football for another legendary figure, Cam Henderson. Sang was primarily a tailback at Barboursville High but at Marshall was called on to play virtually every position, though his specialty was as a lineman.
Sang told family and friends that the two men who most profoundly influenced his life were Willis Hertig, his coach at Barboursville, and Cam Henderson. One of his prized possessions was a letter he later received from Coach Hertig, addressed "To my greatest athlete."
"And I was the last of Coach Henderson's players to still be actively coaching." Sang said shortly before he died, "so I always felt that in a way I was carrying the torch for him."
At Marshall, Sang played on the Tangerine Bowl team in 1948 and was elected captain the following season. But his playing career, and indeed his life, were nearly snuffed out when he was in college. To make ends meet, Coach Sang, by then married and the father of two sons, worked as a security guard at American Car and Foundry in Huntington. One night, he caught a man trying to steal a car and in the struggle that ensued, the would-be thief shot Sang. The stomach wound left Sang in critical condition and caused him to miss an entire season.
Sang coached at Ashland and Gallipolis before becoming head coach at Huntington East High School, where he remained for 29 years until the school closed in 1996 because of consolidation. The coach was by then 70, past the time when most coaches have settled into retirement, but he was still vigorous with a great zest for working with young people. And so he was named head coach at Huntington High School and spent the last five years of his coaching career in the stadium that bears his name.
When asked what hobbies he had, Sang was fond of replying: "Just football. It's kept me busy and interested and the only time I worry is the time between the last game of the season and first practice the next summer."
Dink Allen was a schoolboy chum of Sang's and they played together as young men, and later often butted heads as rival coaches. When asked to comment about their long association, Allen said:
"We were friends first and foremost, but we were friendly rivals and competitors. We were together in elementary school and even though we dueled each other, our friendship outweighed all else. He was a great coach, a great friend and truly a great man. You won't see the likes of Bob Sang again."
The statue will be prominently placed within the stadium and will be dedicated to his players, and to those with whom he served - fellow coaches and teachers.
