39 / 48
inside.hokiesports.com
37
Continued on page 38
County, a secluded chunk of acreage
north of Charleston, the state’s capital.
He dabbled in football as a kid and
only got into wrestling after watching his
older brother, Jacob, take up the sport in
middle school.
“There is not a whole lot to do where I’m
from, so I just came and watched practice
and played around,” Haught said. “I shot
basketball. I didn’t really do much. I just
watched him, and that’s when I started
thinking about wrestling.”
He decided to attempt the sport, and it
quickly became a passion that rivaled fishing.
He excelled at it, and his father, Tracy, saw his
youngest son’s potential. More importantly,
he invested in it.
Tracy Haught enrolled his youngest son
into a youth wrestling club in Parkersburg, a
town roughly an hour and 10 minutes away
from the family’s home. The opportunity
provided Jared with better coaching and
better competition.
Of course, it came with a sacrifice. Tracy
Haught makes the drive to Parkersburg
every day to the chemical plant where he
works. He was used to driving, as most in
rural communities are, but getting Jared to
practices meant he and wife Patricia needed
to coordinate logistics. That, in turn, meant a
lot of late evenings.
“He’d drive to work in the morning in
Parkersburg, and then once I got out of school,
my momwould drive me halfway,” Jared said.
“He’d drive back from Parkersburg halfway,
pick me up, take me back to Parkersburg for
a 6 o’clock practice. We’d finish around 8 and
come home. We’d get back around 9:15.
“It wasn’t too bad. I guess I got used to it. It
was kind of tough at the beginning, but I was a
kid. Whenever I was going to the youth stuff,
I had a Game Boy, and I’d play it in the car.
That kept me busy.”
The Haughts gradually tired of the
commuting. In the summer before Jared’s
junior year of high school, they decided
to enroll Jared at Parkersburg High. They
rented a small house, and Jared stayed with
his father during the week, while his mom
lived in the family’s home. She came over on
weekends, or they returned to the family’s
house in Calhoun County.
Most teenagers balk at the idea of switching
schools and leaving their friends behind. But
Jared showed maturity beyond his years,
taking a long-term approach.
“I knew why I was going,” he said. “It
was a good change for me. I needed it. I
knew, just in general, that if I was going to
go to college, I needed to be in a different
atmosphere anyway. Calhoun is really small.
I went to having more [students] in my class
than I did at my [previous] high school. So it
was a lot different, but I just knew that it was
something that was good for me, and I wanted
to do it. It wasn’t too bad.”
Haught won state championships both his
junior and senior years, and he made himself
into a college prospect. He received interest
from Binghamton, a school in New York with
a prominent wrestling program, and his home
state West Virginia University.
Virginia Tech got into the act late in the
process. In the fall of Haught’s senior year,
head coach Kevin Dresser secured some tape
of Haught wrestling and liked what he saw.
He knew the Parkersburg coaching staff well,
having competed against that crew when he
served as the coach at Christiansburg High.
So he made a few calls.
“They just gaveme a really good recommen
dation on this guy,” Dresser said. “I watched
him on tape enough to know that he was a
good competitor and a big, strong guy. The
thing that sold me the most was what the
high school coaches told me, just about how
he lived his life and how he trained and his
wrestling spotlight
jared haught