They Aren’t Called Sissies Anymore : Sistersville High School Is Setting West Virginia Records

The name, Sistersville High School, hardly seems menacing, and for a long time the Tigers football team was justifiably called “The Sissies.”

Nobody calls them that anymore.

From 1980 to 1984, the Tigers won three West Virginia Class A championships and became the first school in state history to appear in five consecutive title games.

Their worst record during the span was 12-1, they outscored opponents by nearly six touchdowns to one in winning 61 of 65 games, and they reeled off a 42-game winning streak.

Hardly the sissy stuff they played in the mid-1970s when Sistersville won only four games in three years.

The Tigers have continued their success this season with a 9-0 record. And prep powers such as East St. Louis, Massillon, Cincinnati Moeller and Mount Lebanon, Pa., may be surprised to know one of the nation’s top scholastic football programs may be right in this tiny Ohio River town.

Doug Huff, a Wheeling sportswriter who has charted high school sports records the past 20 years, says he knows of no other school winning as many games this decade.

How do the Tigers do it? With the Grimm brothers, Erik and Craig, a pair of 260-pound linemen. They also have a swift tailback with track sprinter speed, a 118-pound free safety and 130-pound inside linebacker. Remember, this is small school football.

“Do the kids have a perception of what has gone on here?” asks assistant coach Chuck Heinlein. “No. And we don’t want them to. We just go out there and prepare for this week’s game and then go on to next week. We don’t want them worrying about what has gone on in the past. We don’t want them to bear that pressure.”

Sistersville had a fine athletic tradition when Coach Lou Nocida arrived in 1977, but football had fallen on hard times. Interest had diminished, victories were infrequent. The school where former Syracuse Coach Ben Schwartzwalder began his coaching career, where state titles were won in 1939 and 1953 and 1964 was on the verge of dropping football when only 14 upperclassmen dressed for the final two regular-season games in 1977.

One season later, the Tigers were 11-1 and the top-ranked team in the state. There have been only six defeats since.

“As bad as things were for awhile, I realized when I got here that most of the kids had the attitude they wanted to play, and very badly,” said Nocida, 42, who built winning programs at two larger schools before moving to 300-student Sistersville.

Nocida’s success formula is simple: be prepared. And it has paid off. His winning percentage in his last nine seasons of coaching is an amazing .945.

“He is the most prepared individual I have ever known,” Heinlein said of Nocida. “Everybody talks about how disciplined we are. It comes from him. He doesn’t have to ask for it because the players just give it to him naturally.”

“None of us wants to be on the Sistersville team that lets down,” says senior co-captain Mark Swartzmiller, a 145-pound wide receiver and safety. “We all want to win for Coach Nocida as much or more than we do for ourselves. I don’t think a lot of us could look in the mirror if we lost a game for him.”

Yet even a loss likely wouldn’t lessen the respect Nocida has for his inexperienced 1985 team.

“A lot of coaches at big schools have four right tackles, and they can choose the one who practices the best,” Nocida said. “We have one right tackle and he plays no matter what.

“But when I watch other guys coach, I say, ‘I can’t do it that way.’ Every boy has a personality. If a boy knows he has to play and he has to do it right and if he doesn’t, we might not win, his personality comes out. We try to find each kid’s limit and teach him to reach that every week.”