Fan Story: Country Roads on a Saturday Night

At College Football Dawgs, we all work and write for the love of the game. Our own Forrest Stiles and his wife Tarah are two of many who are helping lead us to the next level in sports journalism. Forrest is President of Internal & External Affairs, while Tarah is co-head of Photography, in addition to their full-time jobs.

Forrest and Tarah work hard as EMTs in Fairmont, WV. Forrest is the captain of north central West Virginia and Tarah serves as a lieutenant. They sometimes work 24-48 hours at a stretch, and yet still devote their spare time to making College Football Dawgs the best it can be.

As die-hard West Virginia Mountaineers fans, they travel north 25-30 minutes down those country roads to Morgantown on Saturdays in the fall to cheer on WVU.

Forrest cultivated an appreciation for football in high school, playing 2 years at Fairmont Senior High School as a linebacker and tight end. He also played 3 years of basketball. A broken ankle kept him off the court his senior year and forced him into the coaching ranks. That year, he coached in the cut-throat, live on the razor's edge world of 6th-grade basketball.

Tarah was a talented athlete in her own right, playing softball and being the only girl on the boys' wrestling team in middle school. During her high school years, Tarah was home-schooled.

Forrest attended his first and only Backyard Brawl in 2005 when West Virginia demolished those pesky Panthers from Pitt 45-13.

When it comes to WVU football, Tarah hates when they play Texas, but she hates Pitt even more. Nothing like a backyard brawl to get a Mountaineer fan’s blood boiling.

That passion for West Virginia football runs in Tarah’s family. Her father James was passionate too. Very passionate. He worked in the coal mines and loved WVU football. So much so that when he watched them on TV and they made a bad play or they lost, the area around the family TV set became a shooting gallery as James hurled anything that was not nailed to the floor or on the wall in that direction.

When asked what their favorite WVU game of all time was, they answered with the 2012 Orange Bowl when a QB Geno Smith-led Mountaineers team beat the tiger stripes off a star-studded Clemson squad 70-33.

Forrest and Tarah Stiles are hard work, devotion to family, service to their community, and passion for football personified. They travel those country roads on a Saturday night to a place they belong, to cheer on their beloved West Virginia Mountaineers.