McGuffey’s Whipkey earns preferred walk-on offer to WVU
Observer-Reporter
McGuffey’s Marshall Whipkey makes a tackle on a ball carrier from Mt. Pleasant.
Observer-Reporter
Marshall Whipkey
Observer-Reporter
McGuffey’s Marshall Whipkey tries breaking free of a tackle in a conference game against Washington in 2018.
Not many quarterbacks have the same mindset on the game of football as McGuffey’s Marshall Whipkey, so it was no wonder Highlanders coach Ed Dalton tried to use him sparingly on defense.
With Whipkey’s no-holds-barred attitude and a willingness to hit, Dalton was looking to preserve the main cog in executing the Highlanders’ triple-option offense.
“I don’t want to say violence wins football games,” Whipkey said, “but that video of Marshawn Lynch saying about how others don’t like contact echoes in my head over and over again.”
The video Whipkey is referring to is Lynch’s appearance on a “60 Minutes” episode and the NFL running back said, “It just clicked in my mind that if you just run through somebody’s face, a lot of people aren’t going to be able to take that over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. They just aren’t going to want that.”
For nearly all of the past year, what Whipkey was doing over and over is trying to get in contact with football coaches at West Virginia University. It was within the last couple months that contact was reciprocated and Whipkey recently accepted a preferred walk-on offer to join the Mountaineers this fall.
“I’ve been working for it my whole life,” Whipkey said. “I was really praying for it to come, and it’s surreal that it did. I get to pursue an engineering degree, play football and do it with one of my best friends.”
He is referring to teammate C.J. Cole, who also is headed to Morgantown as a walk-on after being a three-sport standout at McGuffey.
The innate nature of Whipkey as a physical football player was restricted to a mostly offense and one of the least physical, but most important, positions on the field. A quarterback offense, Whipkey played about 25% of the defensive snaps for the Highlanders.
“We didn’t want to lose him on offense,” Dalton said. “He would play in key situations and in key games on defense, but when you run the triple option, he is the guy you have to be a little more protective of.”
Rightfully so, as Whipkey was named the All-Century Conference’s first-team quarterback, one year after being named to second-team all-conference. For his career, Whipkey threw for 2,893 yards and ran for 1,482 yards in the Highlanders’ run-heavy offense. He scored 55 total touchdowns.
When Whipkey goes to West Virginia, he will swap playing offense in high school to defense for the Mountaineers, who could play him in a hybrid linebacker/safety role. When he did play on defense for the Highlanders, Dalton used him as a strong safety with the ability to play at the line of scrimmage.
“He’s twitchy, explosive and instinctive,” Dalton said. “He is football smart and will be able to run and do all the things they need him to do. He was explosive and violent and made giant plays when we used him on defense.”
Whipkey was considering opportunities at Division II schools to balance his engineering major and the ability to play football. Other schools that were interested included Fairmont State, Glenville State and West Virginia State.
“I didn’t want to sacrifice an engineering degree to play football,” Whipkey said. “I had to take some time and decide if I wanted to try both.”
Whipkey is comfortable for his upcoming move to defense, saying that when he played on that side of the ball in high school, it was “a way to relieve some stress.”
“I enjoy defense because I can see the look in my teammates’ eyes and I know what they expect me to do,” Whipkey explained. “You still have a big role but you have one job. I’m pretty confident at the second level because from playing quarterback I can get my reads pretty quickly and sense some things. Contact is probably my favorite part (of football), actually.”