New West Virginia football coach Dana Holgorsen speaks during a June 10 news conference in Morgantown, W.Va. The Mountaineers coach did his first skydive on Tuesday, jumping with members of the Army Golden Knights parachute team. (David Smith / The Associated Press)
Dana Holgorsen may have wanted to double-check his straps and chute before taking his initial skydive on Tuesday.
Holgorsen is West Virginia University’s new football coach. He was supposed to be a coach-in-waiting for this year, working with incumbent Bill Stewart, then taking over in 2012. But tensions boiled over and Stewart resigned at the end of last week.
So, four days later, after the university pulled the plug on a pretty bad situation, Holgorsen found himself skydiving over West Virginia’s New River Gorge with members of the Army Golden Knights parachute team.
A chance meeting at a boosters’ event over the weekend with West Virginia State Police Superintendent Col. Jay Smithers, who was planning on jumping with the Knights, set up the jump.
“I’d never done it, but I always wanted to,” Holgorsen told the Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail.
He also had high praise for the Golden Knights team. “Obviously, you get the opportunity to do it with the Army, you do it. Those guys are professionals. They’re the same guys that did it with George [H.W.] Bush and Tiger Woods.”
