Patriots playing Friday with heavy hearts

Sep. 15—Thursday was a fairly normal September day. Maybe a tad warm, but ...

On the cusp of the fall of 2023, brilliant blue skies loomed overhead as The Midland Trail Patriots — like most of their contemporaries around the state — went through their final walk-through before facing their high school football foe the following night.

The two days behind them had been anything but normal — or brilliant — for the Patriots, local families and the greater Midland Trail community.

As yet another example of the fragility of life, 16-year-old Damon Grey Mooney, a sophomore member of the Midland Trail High football squad, died Tuesday, Sept. 12 when his automobile crashed as he was on the way to school.

It was a week when the Class A Patriots, riding a 3-0 start to the season, found themselves in the No. 4 spot in the first installment of the WVSSAC's Class A football ratings, digits that eventually determine postseason playoff positioning. Didn't really matter.

Midland Trail senior lineman Levi Pritt admitted Thursday that it's been a rough couple of days.

"He was pretty good friends with everybody, honestly," Pritt said of Mooney. "He was always here to cheer everybody on. If I came out of the game, he was always there to help. Even if we were down, he was there to boost our confidence and get us right back in there."

"It's destroyed the entire team," Pritt said of Mooney's passing. "We're really sad, but we're also ready to play for Dame."

Hearing the news was a jolt, Pritt said. "They called the whole football team up here in the locker room. We were all just sitting around; we kind of already knew a little bit, but everybody was just crying and trying to lean on each other to help each other out. It was difficult for all of us."

Did it get any easier as the week went on? "No, not really," he said Thursday. "Everybody's still struggling, but I think we know Damon's in a lot better place now, and we're ready to play.

"He would want us to play for him, and give it our all."

Pritt can find some solace in fond memories of his younger teammate. "Ah, he meant the world to me," he said. "Every day after practice, he would joke around and pick on me, and then he'd turn around and tell me that he loved me and give me a hug."

Pritt didn't have to go back too far to find a memory of No. 66 to share. "On Monday, actually, he was telling me that he knew he wasn't going to get to play very much, but he just wanted to be here to support the team.

"He told me that he really looked up to me. I loved him ... like a brother."

"Damon was probably one of the best teammates on this team," said Midland Trail head coach Jeremy Moore. "He never complained about not getting to play a ton.

"He loved football. And if you knew Damon, he hated conditioning, so for him to come out through August and withstand August camp and run sprints and stuff like that and still be happy to be here, you knew he loved football and he loved being around his teammates."

Moore recalled sharing the tragic news with Mooney's teammates.

"The first day was rough," he said. "We brought all the football players up here (fieldhouse) and we broke the news to them away from the school.

"We preach family around here, so we thought that was the thing to do. When you play sports, you're closer to those guys you play with than with the general population of the school."

"We didn't practice the first day," Moore continued. "We told the kids to go home, hug their parents, hug their brothers, sisters, grandparents, and tell them they love them.

"Yesterday (Wednesday) we practiced, and it was a good practice. The kids were upbeat. I think they were glad to get a little bit of normalcy. A couple kids struggled, but everybody grieves differently."

Moore said there was no consideration of not traveling to play Friday's scheduled 7 p.m. game against Wheeling Central Catholic.

"Never," he said. "Damon lived for these trips. He hated the bus drives, but he loved going and seeing new places. He loved being on the bus with his teammates.

"I joked in an earlier interview, he loved the pregame meal, he loved everything about it. He was excited to go, so not for a second did we think we weren't going to go."

Moore said he has received texts or calls from football coaches "all across the state. I don't think any coach wants to go through this, but there is a brotherhood there."

As to the local community, he said, "It's hard to live in West Virginia sometimes, with the jobs and the poverty and everything going on, but when stuff like this happens, that's when you remember why you stay here and that's why you love it here, because the people here are so phenomenal. They started a GoFundMe, and people who don't have a dime to their name are donating to that.

"Oak Hill supported us. Meadow Bridge. All the local schools, here and afar. You couldn't ask for a better support system."

Besides a sincere thank you, his message to those who have shown support is to "keep praying for that family, keep praying for my boys.

"We do a Patriot prayer at the end of practice that says day by day we get better and better, and they're going to have to live by it. Everybody's going to have to live by it around here.

"You can't replace Damon, so they're going to have to get better day by day."

Nick Mooney, Damon's uncle, understandably has experienced a gamut of emotions this week.

"It was hard to get that call that morning," said Mooney, a veteran captain with the Fayette County Sheriff's Department and the coach of Midland Trail's middle school football team. "I've been involved in a lot of the tragedies we've had here just because of my job in the last six, seven, eight years, but then, you get the phone call that says, 'Hey, buddy, get down here. Whatever you're doing, just stop and come down here.' And then you get there, and it's family.

"It's bad enough when it's a student or a student-athlete or one of your athletes, but to have it be one of your athletes that's also family, it's devastating."

"But, like I posted on social media earlier this week, I'm not surprised with the support (of the community). That's just what we do. We're a faith-based community that the goal is not what we get to do today, or what we've got to do in the last 16 years with Damon. The goal is eternity.

"Through our faith in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, I know I'll spend eternity with him. So all the games that I got to coach him in, all the championships we got to win, all the big plays he made, I'll get to watch him do that for the rest of eternity, and I know that. There's no doubt in my mind.

"He was a young man of conviction and faith, and he was not ashamed of it. I think we're all better for knowing him. ... He was definitely a leader, not a follower."

About the community support, Mooney said, "You know, I'm around a lot of people. I coach a lot of kids at many different levels. You kind of forget how many people you know.

"Just the people that's reached out to me, and that's not counting the rest of the family, his mother and father — my brother, or my family, it's unbelievable. We're lucky to live where we live, and we're lucky to be able to raise our kids where we raise them."

He called his nephew "really good, honest and hard-working."

Nick reached deep into his memory bank for one of his favorite memories of Damon.

"I've coached football for a very long time, and I started out at the youth level, and I'm still there," he said. "I started out with a group and they were five years old, and they were playing flag. Damon's dad, Nathan, my brother, he was always a really good football player, and we were a big football family. That's kind of what we did, me and him.

"I started talking to Damon about playing football, and he wouldn't play. He would not play for a couple years. And I finally talked him into it.

"He was always the biggest, strongest kid on the football team. He was a horse, he was a monster. He was as soft as the other side of the pillow when he first started.

"His whole life he'd been told 'Be easy, don't hurt nobody.' And then we get him on the football field, this big old giant, and he wouldn't hurt nobody.

"But I remember the first time it clicked at the youth level. He was playing defense, and I remember this like it was yesterday. Two kids came out to block him, and he just grabbed them and shed his block, pretty much just threw 'em 2 or 3 yards away. Instead of going and making the tackle, he just got a big smile on his face and he turned to the sidelines and looked at me like 'Look, Uncle Nick, I did it.'

"I'll never forget that. I cherish those memories."

Damon Mooney's arrangements are being handled by Wallace & Wallace Funeral Chapels & Crematory.

According to his obituary, the funeral service will be at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 16 at Lighthouse Worship Center, 1175 Smales Branch Rd., Hico, with Pastor Pat Gray officiating. Visitation will be from noon until time of service at the worship center. Mooney will be laid to rest at Restlawn Memory Gardens in Victor.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial contributions be made to Lindsey Raines Memorial Scholarship, 132 James River & Kanawha Turnpike, Rainelle, WV 25962

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