Published: July 03, 2009 10:37 pm      

Long-time coach Jack Riffe remembered in death

GRUNDY, Va. — Jack Riffe either saw or he played or coached, with or against, every star athlete in the area in a span of over half a century, from Bill Dudley to Billy Wagner, from Smiley Ratliff to Thomas Jones, and then some.

One of the great sports legends of Buchanan County and southwest Virginia, Jack Riffe, passed away last week at the age of 82.

A native of McDowell County, Riffe's family moved to Virginia when he was a child. He was a star player at Grundy High School in the early 1940s, helped Ratliff start the football program at Hurley and coached briefly in southern California, and was there for most of Garden High School's glory days on the gridiron.

The personable Riffe was an assistant coach on the unbeaten 1959 Garden football team that allowed just two touchdowns all season, and was athletic director in 1986, when the Green Dragons reached the state finals.

Riffe, the head football coach at Garden from 1961-74, retired as athletic director at Garden in 1991. He was remembered at a memorial service last week for his legacy as a coach, and as a person.

"He was just a good human being," said one of his former students, Jim Grizzle. "You didn't have to play sports to be treated well by Jack. To him everybody was special."

Danny Rasnake, now a teacher and volleyball coach at Council, began his coaching career under Riffe at Garden in the 1980s.

"Jack was like a mentor to me when I started coaching," Rasnake said. "I could go to him with any problem, whether it had to do with coaching, or at school or something personal.

"It seemed like he always had a joke or story to tell, about every situation. He could tell some great stories, especially about the early days of football in the area. I always enjoyed listening to him. He was always concerned about his students and his athletes. He touched a lot of people in the community."

Riffe starred on the 1942 Grundy football team that won an unofficial title in the old Southwestern Virginia Conference, which would later become the Southwest District. Riffe was Grundy's team MVP the following year, in 1943, and went on to play college football at both Emory & Henry and Milligan.

He was also a standout in the famous Coalfield Baseball Leagues in the 1940s and 50s. He played against future and past major league players, including Vic Janowicz, the 1950 Heisman Trophy winner from Ohio State.

Janowicz didn't play college baseball, but he honed his diamond skills in the summer playing for a coal company baseball team based in the Hurley area of Buchanan County. The company owner was from the Columbus area and brought in a number of Ohio State athletes as "ringers" each summer.

After serving in the Navy in World War II, Riffe began a 41-year coaching career that included a brief stint in California, where he tutored future NFL kicker Danny Villanueva, and jobs at Whitewood, Hurley and Garden. He spent 35 years at Garden, which was later consolidated with Whitewood to form Twin Valley.

Riffe coached a number of great athletes, including Benny Coxton. A three-sport standout at Garden and a two-sport standout at Davidson, when the North Carolina school was in a conference with West Virginia and Virginia Tech, Coxton, whose career was cut short by injury, was, said Riffe, the greatest athlete who ever hailed from Buchanan County. And, for some seven decades, Riffe saw them all.

"He was the most well-connected person ever in Buchanan County sports," says his longtime friend and colleague, Roger Rife, the winningest basketball coach in county history. "I've known about Jack since I was six years old. He was a good one. We're all going to miss him."