Font ResizeThey plan to attend Alderson-Broaddus College, a school that hasn't fielded a football program in 82 years. Bunner wore a shirt during his signing ceremony Monday that poked fun at that fact. It read "Undefeated since 1930" on the back.
When asked to describe his future team, he had to correct himself.
"It's a great program," Bunner said before a slight pause. "It's a great up-and-coming program. (Coach Dennis Creehan) said we're going to start in a tough division, and that is true. But he just said we're going to start from the ground up and work our butts off."
The school -- located in Philippi, W.Va., which is about an hour from Morgantown -- restarted the team in an effort to increase enrollment. Construction of the football field will start in April, and Creehan believes the field will be finished in time for next season.
Both Bunner and Ringrose have seen drawings of what the field will look like.
"I like that it's on top of a mountain," Ringrose said. "I can't wait for next year. Me and Gage are good friends. We've always played football together. We should have a lot of fun up there."
They'll be joining two players who were already enrolled at Alderson-Broaddus last fall and 10 more who transferred in for the spring semester. Recruiting hasn't been a challenge.
"It's been the exact opposite," Creehan said in a phone interview. "The amount of interest has been incredible, the opportunity to start a program from scratch, to come in and play right away. They're really excited about it."
The Battlers will play college junior varsity programs and prep school teams for the first year before joining the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference for the 2013 season. It will be an NCAA Division II team.
"I think there's a lot of excitement on campus and throughout the community," said Creehan, also the school's athletic director and a former coach at Pittsburgh, Rutgers and Duke. "I think it's something the campus has needed for a while."
