Meet the West Virginia Mountaineers — from Country Roads to a growing WVU Tucson connection

The Star's Big 12 Blitz is presented by Tucson Appliance Company.

A native West Virginian who’s made four or five trips to the desert over the last decade as part of her role as a broadcast journalist covering West Virginia athletics, Anjelica Trinone had nothing but rave reviews for her time following the WVU Mountaineer baseball team to Southern Arizona in May and June, as it won the NCAA Tournament’s Tucson Regional at Hi Corbett Field.

“I absolutely love the ‘juice box,’” she said of the unofficial nickname of the Arizona Wildcats’ home stadium.

“I will say, if I never hear it’s a dry heat again a day in my life,” she added, not needing to finish the sentence.

In all fairness, while the weather was certainly more than warm that week as record-setting attendance still packed Hi Corbett, it was nearly-retired WVU coach Randy Mazey’s club that was clearly the hottest thing going, rolling through that Tucson showcase to earn the program’s first-ever trip to an NCAA Super Regional.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg for what those who follow West Virginia regularly saw in the last year.

In men’s soccer, the Mountaineers made the College Cup (think “Final Four”); in football, sixth-year coach Neal Brown had his best year to date with a nine-win campaign and bowl win. And WVU’s co-ed rifle team (yes, rifle), winner of 19 national titles so far, hosted the sport’s NCAA Championship, finishing runner-up behind fellow Big 12 program TCU.

Trinone saw most of those up close from her previous gig at Gold and Blue Nation, a WVU-centric sports news outlet operated by WBOY-TV, a regional NBC affiliate out of nearby Clarksburg, West Virginia, that also serves Morgantown.

This season, Trinone is embarking on her own new adventure, but she’s not leaving Morgantown. She's shifted into higher education, teaching classes on sports media starting this fall at WVU’s Reed College of Media.

As part of our “Big 12 Blitz” series, the Star spoke with Trinone before the start of the 2024 football season. Trinone dished about that historic WVU baseball week in Tucson, what UA fans who eventually travel to West Virginia can expect when they make it to Morgantown for a game, and more.

Here’s a portion of that conversation, which has been lightly edited.

First, tell us about your new role (in Morgantown).

A: “I’ve been in the broadcast industry for 10 years. Almost all of them were at my previous job, Gold and Blue Nation, where we covered exclusively West Virginia athletics. I mean, rifle, swimming — not just the main sports, every type of every sport that was happening.

“So I was pretty entrenched in all the things that were going on with WVU. But I’m from West Virginia. I’m from about an hour and a half north of Morgantown. Went to school (at WVU), graduated from what was the Reed School of Journalism in 2013 — it’s now the College of Media — which is where I will be teaching sports media. It’s one of the fastest growing majors now at the university.”

You were in Tucson just a few months ago when West Virginia was winning the Tucson regional of the NCAA baseball Tournament. What did you think of Hi Corbett that weekend?

A: “It was even more special because coach Mazey, it was his last year, and he is somebody who I’m incredibly close with — him and his family. So watching what had happened out there, I will say we were all very shocked. We were anticipating a West Virginia-Arizona matchup there at some point.

“It was nice to be out there. A lot hotter than we’re used to.”

“But we really enjoyed our experience. The field was great. The people were great. It was some great baseball out there as well. We even took some time, went to the (Reid Park) Zoo whenever we had a couple free minutes out there.”

What can fans expect who want to make a trip to Morgantown and see whenever basketball, football — any of the other sports end up playing out there.

A: “At my previous job, I was very fortunate that for football, I got to fly on the team charter. So I was a little spoiled flying in and out of those private airports. But we obviously (flew commercial) to Tucson (for baseball), and then we just went to Vegas for Big 12 Media Days.

“There is an airport here in Morgantown, but it is (mostly) very, very small private planes.

"Normally, when the teams fly (charter), they go 30 minutes south to Clarksburg.

“You have to drive about an hour and 10, hour and 15 minutes up to Pittsburgh to get on your flights there. And there’s all kind of construction happening at the Pittsburgh airport. They’re building a new terminal, so it has kind of been a pain.

“But I would say (WVU teams) have traveled the most distance of anybody in the Big 12. I mean, those trips to Lubbock (Texas) have been some long nights for us. So I think West Virginia fans are finally like, ‘Yeah, somebody else has to get on a plane and fly across the country to see their teams play!’ But I will say it’s a very easy drive from the Pittsburgh airport to Morgantown. I mean, you just stay there on 79 — very easy drive. But it does get a little kind of complicated because of that that unfortunately, you’re flying in to Pittsburgh, then you have to rent a car and drive down here. I’m sure an Uber would be very expensive, but it is one of those things that, especially for football, I think maybe when you get here and you experience the atmosphere, then you’re like, ‘Okay, that was absolutely fine.’”

You’re from West Virginia, but what made it somewhere that you wanted to go to school … and obviously wanted to stay for a while in a professional capacity?

A: “It’s one of those silly sayings that people always say: Morgantown is a place that gets in your blood and stays there forever. And, I mean, it is so true. ... Being from West Virginia, I did have a moment in time to where I was exploring some other options. Maybe I’d go out to Colorado for college; but my brother came to school here, my cousin came to school here, and then I was like, no, what am I doing? I’m going to Morgantown, right?

“So I went to WVU, and I remember my first ever West Virginia game was a Backyard Brawl (the rivalry game against Pitt). But it was in Pittsburgh. … I was young, didn’t really know much about sports. And I was like, ‘OK, this is pretty great.’

“I think what makes Morgantown and WVU so special is — I know people always say they obviously think that their fan base lives or dies with their college team. But that really is what happens here, because there’s no professional team. West Virginia is essentially our professional sports team. So if you want to see an NFL game, anything like that, you have to go out of state. So I think that that makes the people of West Virginia be so passionate about it. ... They are kind of everything that we have to root for.

“And I know a bunch of people who have come from out of state and (say) ‘I’m just going to go here for college because I thought it was maybe a cheaper option.’ And (they) have never left. So it’s kind of one of those things to where people think of it as just the typical college town, and it is, in a sense, but there is a lot more here to where even if you’re not in that 18 to 22 year old range, that it’s still a place that has a lot to offer, and people have really nothing but great things to say after they leave here as well. So hopefully that will be the case for (Arizona’s) fan base too.”

In game traditions — fans singing (John Denver’s) Country Roads — are things that we’ve seen from afar, but that we’d probably have to experience up close to really get a feel for what it’s like there on game day.

A: “So the team actually will enter the stadium on this thing that we call the ‘Mantrip,’ which is a nod to the coal heritage of the state. … The mountaineer leads them in. You know they’re coming whenever you hear the musket fire off.

“But when it’s a (WVU) win is when everybody will stay in the stadium and play and listen to Country Roads. I think even more recently it was some of the BYU fans who had said that, obviously, when you’re coming to this venue, you don’t want to hear Country Roads, because that means your team has lost. But at the same time, it’s just so it’s such a neat experience, because all of the football team will line up in front of the student section. They’ll all sing … They’re jumping up in the stands with people, but then they walk the perimeter and they high five people who are, you know, down there, and they stay down there for most of the song, and especially at night, when you just have, you know, we like to say 60,000 of your closest friends singing Country Roads together. It is just so it is such a neat experience to where, even if, again, you’re not a West Virginia fan, it’s one of those things that helps, helps really showcase how passionate people are, and really just what it means.”