By Tabitha Evans Moore | EDITOR & PUBLISHER
It’s Thursday afternoon and several Raider faithful buzz around Doug Price Field preparing for Friday’s home opener against the Fayetteville High School Tigers.
Members of the Blue Helmet Club place large industrial fans along the home sidelines and busy themselves in their merchandise booth. Head Coach Kris White oversees. The players are nowhere to be found. Thursday’s are for walk-throughs anyways and in this unbearable heat, the team practices have moved to the cooler morning air.
It takes a lot of unsung heroes to build and continue a successful single A football program. Today, The Times is meeting with two of them, former Raider players Greg Guinn and Scott Fruehauf, who’ve been instrumental in stadium and facilities upgrades for this year’s team.
Once a Raider, Always a Raider
Greg Guinn and Scott Fruehauf both graduated from Moore County High School and played on Raider teams.
Guinn owns Greg Guinn Construction – formerly Brickworks – and lives in the Smith Chapel community of Moore County. He graduated from MCHS in 1990 and played football for the Raiders in both junior high and high school. He played under Mac McCurry and Doug Price as a defensive guard for the 1989 Clinic Bowl team.
Fruehauf lives near Goosebranch Road and comes from a long line of Moore County alumni. His mother, Teena Cunningham McKenzie, is a Moore County native. His grandfather, David Cunningham, graduated in 1953 from Lynchburg High School and his great grandmother, Trixie Groce, graduated from Moore County schools in the 1930’s.
Fruehauf also played for MCHS from 2007-2011 as a center and linebacker under coaches Steve Matthews and Scott Smith. Area coaches named him to the All District Team his senior season.
An Expanding Team Needs More Lockers
Guinn and his company spent part of their summer building new lockers in both the home and visiting locker rooms at the Field House at the football field to accommodate the Raiders’ roster expansion. Guinn says he learned of the project from his Building Superintendent Jimmy Hammond, who serves as The Blue Helmet Club President. Hammond’s son, Tripp, plays both offensive line and defensive line for Moore County.
“We learned that the team had grown at both the high school and middle school level and the program didn’t currently have enough lockers so that each player could have their own. So we decided to fix that,” Guinn says.
Guinn and company built 12 new lockers in the high school and another 10 in the middle school locker room, which doubles as the visitor’s locker room on varsity game days.
“We mimicked what was already there and built them out of some waterproof plywood, so they’d hold up over time.”
Adding long needed new handrails
Fruehauf works for Lee Adcock Construction, a company with a long history of partnering with local schools over the decades. Not only did they construct the press box at Doug Price Field but also the new digital sign installed just this week at Lynchburg Elementary School.
He says school officials approached him about the handrail project at the football stadium after another area construction company submitted a bid way outside the school’s capital project’s budget.
“They needed the projects completed before football season, so the handrails could be ADA compliant,” says Fruehauf, who serves as the Lee Adcock Construction General Superintendent. “So we decided to help out by doing the project at a more reasonable bid.”
The project involved removing the old steps, pouring new ones, and then adding the new handrails. They removed eight inches of bleacher from either side of the new handrails to give Raider fans plenty of room to move up and down – especially older fans and those with disabilities.
Fruehauf says that Lee Adcock retired and sold the company but the new owners, Gippie Rangle Jr. and Kent Holt, felt passionately abount giving back to the Moore County community.
“They want to be community partners. They asked me to specifically look for opportunities to donate back to Moore County.”
Paying it Forward
Both Guinn and Fruehauf say it’s important to them personally and their companies to give back to the Moore County community and especially the athletic programs and schools whenever they can.
“We’ve given whenever we can throughout the years. We also helped build the dugouts at the Raiderettes’ Softball Field,” Guinn says. “This is my community. I went here. My kids attended school here. My grandkids will go to Moore County schools. I feel it’s important to give back.”
“I try to catch most of the home games, and a couple of buddies come into town several times a year to attend games with me. It’s a tradition,” says Fruehauf. “Anyone who attends games knows we’ve needed new hand rails for a long time. I feel like if you get an opportunity to help, you should help.”
Both former Raiders say they are excited about the home opener against Fayetteville High School on Friday and an opportunity to beat their former Class 1A rivals for the first time in four years.
Officials pushed back the game kickoff to 8 p.m. based on the high heat index forecasted for Friday night. If the heat keeps you from watching in person, you can watch live on the NFHS Network or The Times will post live score updates on our Facebook page during the game. •
{The Lynchburg Times is a nonpartisan community newspaper serving Lynchburg, Tennessee and the surrounding counties. We also provide news and information for the 350,000 folks who come to Lynchburg to visit The Jack Daniel’s Distillery each year. We are dedicated to public service journalism for the greater good of our community. You can support us, by clicking here.}