NC High School Football: ‘It’s a family,’ and family has a home again at West Charlotte

The opponent was first-class, the game was great, and the home team won a thriller.

But for fans of West Charlotte High football, Friday night would have been a success, no matter how everything else turned out.

Lions fans had a home again.

“It’s a family,” Anthony Wright said of West Charlotte High supporters. “And we’re back home again.”

A long road trip

Friday night’s 43-29 victory over Monroe was the first game on the West Charlotte campus since Nov. 1, 2019, when the Lions lost to Mooresville.

That’s a span of nearly 1,400 days, as the West Charlotte public address announcer reminded fans before Friday’s game.

Construction of a new stadium and field house — part of a larger project that included, essentially, a new high school — began after the 2019 season.

During the 2020 season (played in spring 2021, because of COVID) and in the 2021 and ’22 campaigns, West Charlotte’s football team was, for all intents, without a home. The Lions played most of their “home” games in southwest Charlotte, at the old Waddell High site.

The situation became particularly annoying to some Lions’ fans last fall, because the stadium renovations had been finished. The Lions were forced to play away from home because the new parking lot was still under construction.

“You can’t imagine what an impact that has on everyone,” said Lions’ head football coach Sam Greiner, who was hired in 2020 and has never coached a game on campus until Friday. “For three straight years, the people involved in this program had to travel.”

“You’d get on the bus, play the game, get back on the bus, and drive home,” he added.

For Greiner and other coaches, that also meant cleaning the bus late on Friday nights. Players weren’t able to enjoy postgame celebrations on campus with their families.

It’s a party

“West Charlotte football is an experience,” said Tim Gibbs, a Lions’ alum.

Lions’ fans know how to throw a party. Despite 95-degree temperatures and 105-degree heat indexes, West Charlotte supporters were tailgating in force before Friday’s game.

And even though the contest didn’t end until 11:10 p.m. (thank to a 8 p.m. start, an hour later than usual due to the heat, all the scoring, nearly 20 penalties, and a lot of officiating summits), fans celebrated afterward. At 11:30 p.m., picnic tables outside the stadium were full of fans, enjoying barbecued ribs and chicken.

“It’s very exciting, to be back on campus for football,” said another West Charlotte alum, James Jackson.

Jackson, a standout wrestler at the school, joined Gibbs and others in celebrating the 45th anniversary of the Class of 1978.

“We thought this would be a good weekend for the reunion,” Jackson said.

Gibbs said Lions’ fans were put to the test in recent years.

“We did a lot of traveling,” he said. “West Charlotte fans are pretty loyal, but all that traveling had an effect. Just imagine having no home games for several years.”

Mecklenburg County, with its explosive growth over the past four-plus decades, doesn’t have a lot of tradition at many of its high schools.

There are exceptions, though — Myers Park and East Mecklenburg, for example, have well-supported alumni groups.

Generational support

West Charlotte is in the same category. The school dates back to segregation days and was an academic leader during the 1970s and 1980s, in the days of busing.

It was a national model of integration, with alumni like Kelly Alexander, Anthony Foxx, Jeff McInnis, Maureen O’Boyle, Ruth Samuelson and Anne Tompkins.

The school won the 1995 state football championship and was a state power from the 1970s into the 1990s. Tom Knotts coached there before moving to Independence and then to Dutch Fork (S.C.).

School officials and community leaders are working hard to get alumni back on campus, to help support the school.

Greiner said the new stadium and playing at home help bring that alumni base back together.

And he said playing on campus means a lot to his players.

“It makes Game Night a lot better,” he said. “They can get home earlier, and it means something to be able and play before a real home crowd.”

Anthony Wright is a counselor at West Charlotte High. He stood in the parking lot before Friday’s game, chatting with arriving fans and getting excited about the night ahead.

“There are generations of excellence at this school,” Wright said. “This is West Charlotte. We have a history of excellence. And now we’re back together.”