Former Radford High assistant gets head coach job at school in West Virginia

Love brought Chris Vicars to the Mountain State. Independence High School football in Coal City, W.Va., will keep him there.

The veteran former Radford High School assistant coach was named Tuesday as the head coach at Independence, a school of about 600 near Beckley. Vicars, whose last season with the Bobcats was 2011, spent this past season as an assistant coach at Summers County, W.Va. H e had moved to West Virginia after being married.

"For the past four or five years I've thinking about being a head football coach," said Vicars, who had also previously served as head Radford wrestling coach.

Vicars also played for the Bobcats before moving on to become a 2001 graduate of Virginia Tech.

The Independence job came open suddenly July 3 when Chuck Cooper was fired for what WVNS-TV's website called an "inappropriate texting relationship with a female student." Cooper only had the job since being hired after Scott Cuthbert retired in January after 25 years at the post.

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