MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Five Fairmont Senior graduates were featured on the WVU football roster during the 2020 season. The group, dubbed by FSHS head coach Nick Bartic as the ‘Mountain Bears’ was started by members of the 2017 graduating class. Darius Stills and Jake Abbott were the first through the doors at the Milan Puskar Center. Dante Stills, Rhett Heston and Zach Frazier soon followed.
While Darius Stills is gearing up for the NFL Draft, Abbott is preparing for his post-football life. He is majoring in marketing and will graduate in May. Although Abbott could have returned to the football program for another season of eligibility in 2021, he is in the process of building a resume to enter the insurance business.
“I needed more experience with internships that would make me have to stay away from football,” Abbott said. “I am interning for an insurance agency right now, which has me working 8 to 5, five days a week. Playing football at the same time, I didn’t really feel like it benefitted me in the long run.”
Abbott capped a stellar high school career with the Polar Bears in the fall of 2016. He led FSHS to the Class AA state championship game and won the Chuck Howley Award as the state’s top linebacker. Abbott accepted a walk-on opportunity to join the Mountaineers, completing a life-long goal.
“West Virginia is the only place I wanted to go. I didn’t have anywhere else in mind. It is something I have always wanted to experience and I wasn’t going to settle for anything below that. I am not demeaning any other kids choices for going to a smaller school.
“Growing up, when they remodeled the locker room, my dad (J.L.) was friends with one of the contractors. He actually got me Owen Schmitt’s locker. That was in my room from the age of 7 to 15. I have always had West Virginia on my mind.”
Abbott redshirted in 2017 and appeared in four games a year later. While playing time was difficult to come by early, Abbott stuck with the path of other walk-ons who stayed with the program and had success in later years.
“There was always the idea in the back of my head that I was a walk-on, these kids belong here and I basically felt like I asked to be a part of the team. But then another side of me said that there have been kids that succeeded in my position way before me. You have Justin Arndt. You have Shea Campbell. You have Shane Commodore. Those are the guys I looked at and said, ‘I want to be at that level’.”
Halfway through Abbott’s college career, Dana Holgorsen left for Houston and Neal Brown came aboard in January of 2019.
“When Coach Brown came in I was very, very nervous. I was finally stepping into a special teams role. My redshirt freshman year, Dana’s final year, he actually was the first one to place me on scholarship right before he departed for Houston. I was nervous Coach Brown wouldn’t see the same things in me that Coach Holgorsen did.”
Months after Brown was hired, Abbott earned one of the program’s annual honors. He was presented with the 2019 Tommy Nickolich Award, given to WVU’s top walk-on player. Nickolich was a Fairmont native.
“When I heard Coach Brown announce my name at the spring game, it caught me off guard to be honest with you. My parents have a video of me standing around when they were announcing awards. I didn’t have my helmet on, I really wasn’t locked in. I heard my first name and in the back of my head I thought there was no shot. And then he said, ‘Jake Abbott’.”
Abbott settled into a role as a reliable special teams player in addition to getting snaps as a reserve linebacker. He played in 20 games during his junior and seniors seasons.
“Everyone has their own one-eleventh job. You are assigned that job, basically to a position. It is exactly like defense. There are linebackers out there. There’s skill players built with speed to go and cut off a vertical return from a returner.
“On the flip side, everyone on kickoff return has the exact same job every play. We might have a field return, a boundary return, the positions flip. But for the most part, kids in my position were handling double teams. Then you have speedier guys on the back side like (Dante) Bonamico or Reese Smith that would beat a guy downfield to get in position to let Winston (Wright) run off their back.”
Abbott and the Stills brothers have maintained their lifelong friendship by playing various sports while growing up in Fairmont.
“I have played sports with Darius probably since I was six years old, including Dante too. But Darius and I, in the Little League regional game we played against (Buffalo Bills quarterback) Jake Fromm on ESPN when we were twelve. We played basketball together throughout middle school. Then it was football and all offseason we would train together. So Darius and I have been around each other almost every season since we were six.”
While Abbott was joined on the Mountaineer roster by familiar faces from Fairmont, he also teamed up with some of his fiercest high school rivals from Harrison County.
“The Bridgeport guys, I hated them in high school. I hated Dante Bonamico. I hated Dylan Tonkery. I hated Noah and Elijah (Drummond). But those four guys are some of my best friends I have had on the team. On weekends, we would watch Steelers games together.
“It is weird that I hated them once, but now I realize how great people they are.”
Neal Brown has been a proponent of sideline energy throughout games, bolstered by a group called the ‘Juice Squad’. It is a group where Abbott has been a clear leader.
JUICE SQUAD BAND #CHAMPS @iJakeAbbott @Drewjoseph34 pic.twitter.com/0Ntfi0MFPY
— JP Hadley (@jphadley18) January 1, 2021
“On juice squad, you just have to lose your mind. Coach Brown pretty much came up with it. We kind of got one going in Holgorsen’s last year. You just have a bunch of us acting like idiots on the sideline. But it really brings juice to the game. It makes the crowd get into the game a little bit more when they see how excited the rest of the team is to watch us play. If you get the right amount of energy to it, it is quite the feeling.”