Photo by: Katie MacCrory
WVU's Sills On Target In The Great Outdoors
June 28, 2019 11:42 AM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - They say the best two days in boat ownership are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. West Virginia University junior offensive guard Josh Sills admits he's currently somewhere in between those two days.
"Trust me, it's a money pit," he said Thursday afternoon between summer football workouts with Dr. Pain, otherwise known as WVU's strength and conditioning coach Mike Joseph. "It's the smallest, simplest things that go wrong with boats, and it just irks you like no other."
For example, a couple of weekends ago Sills was about halfway back to port at Senacaville Lake near his hometown of Sarahsville, Ohio, when his boat completely shut down.
Sills' middle-of-the-lake repair job consisted of pulling some smoldering wires out of a smoking radio, and the boat engine magically coming back to life, sort of like Ruby Sue once falling into a well and her eyes going crossed and then getting kicked by a mule and them going back to normal.
Sills says the more complicated repair jobs fall to his dad, John.
"It's got a Ford motor in it. Some things I'm familiar with and other things I'm like, 'Hey dad, can you help me?' He will say, 'What are you doing?' and I will say, 'It's on the boat' and he will just roll his eyes," Sills laughed.
In the interest of full disclosure, Josh said Papa Sills wasn't too thrilled about his son getting a 300-horsepower boat capable of producing 12-foot rooster tails at the local lake.
So there was some internal deal making that needed to be done in order to complete the hefty purchase.
"He just kind of accepts the fact that maybe he will say no and mom will say yes and then I'm good, or they'll both say no or they will say they will think about it knowing I'm still going to do it," Sills laughed.
In this instance, Josh first got to his mother, Kim, before getting dad involved.
"Mom approved it before he did so I knew the hook was already set," he explained.
The boat, the name of which Josh is unwilling to reveal, is going to get plenty of usage this weekend. He's planning on taking about half of Neal Brown's starting offensive line over to Senacaville for some water skiing.
What that basically means is Josh is going to drag a couple of 300-pounders around until they can't take it anymore. Boat gas isn't cheap, but Sills says it's money well spent watching his buddies getting faceplanted in the water.
"That pays for itself," he laughed.
As for boat's name, he said it was inherited from the previous owner and not something he would have picked – kind of like that first tattoo you got when you were 18 and later realized didn't look so good at 35 when your children start asking questions about it.
"The sticker was already on there before I got it (airbrushed out in order to keep this a PG-rated operation). The funny thing was I got it from a guy who was like 65," Sills recalled. "We got out of the car and looked at it and he immediately apologized to my mom as soon as we saw it. It's stuck to the windshield so I can't get it off to take it off.
"Now I'm kind of like, 'Okay, whatever.'"
Sills' three-hour excursions back to Sarahsville, located about halfway between Cambridge and Marietta right off of Interstate 77, are becoming extremely popular with his Mountaineer teammates.
Earlier this spring, Josh took quarterback Austin Kendall back to Ohio for some turkey hunting. Kendall is good in the shotgun, and it turns out he's also pretty decent with a shotgun, too.
Kendall's turkey calling? Well, that's another story.
Sills said he asked Austin to practice his call in the truck while they were driving out to the hunting spot, listened to it and then told him that he was officially retired from doing any more turkey calling in the state of Ohio.
Turkey hunting is tough enough with a good call, and Sills didn't want to run the risk of the biggest ones hearing a bad call and high-tailing it off to nearby Kentucky or Indiana.
"Turkey season in Ohio was rough this year," Sills admitted. "A couple of turkeys would cooperate and the next four or five wouldn't. You'd wake up one morning and it's like, 'Oh, yes, perfect morning, pretty warm, pretty quiet' and you wouldn't hear a turkey gobble.
"Then you'd go out the next day and it would be pouring rain, 40 degrees, and they'd gobble all day … hit or miss."
Therefore, the last thing Sills wanted was to have some rank amateur like Kendall messing with turkey karma by making sounds that didn't represent any animals he'd ever encountered in the Midwest.
Sills has also teamed up with Mountaineer football's other top outdoorsman, offensive tackle Colton McKivitz, to do some duck hunting near Colton's hometown of Jacobsburg, Ohio - approximately half the size of Sarahsville with no stoplights and just one stop sign.
Duck hunting is kind of like Terry Bradshaw's passing when he was throwing to all of those great Steelers wide receivers back in the 1970s – you don't have to be too accurate to be on target – and Sills says McKivitz is usually on target.
"He kind of got me into that," Sills said.
Last year, West Virginia's digital media team went on a duck-hunting expedition with McKivitz. Perhaps it's time they do another episode, this time with Sills and McKivitz.
Those two might be capable of knocking off Michael Bane's Shooting Gallery to win a Golden Moose Award for the best hunting show in 2020.
Regarding Josh's planned boating trip this weekend, it's probably best to keep the department cameras away from that one.
"Trust me, it's a money pit," he said Thursday afternoon between summer football workouts with Dr. Pain, otherwise known as WVU's strength and conditioning coach Mike Joseph. "It's the smallest, simplest things that go wrong with boats, and it just irks you like no other."
For example, a couple of weekends ago Sills was about halfway back to port at Senacaville Lake near his hometown of Sarahsville, Ohio, when his boat completely shut down.
Sills' middle-of-the-lake repair job consisted of pulling some smoldering wires out of a smoking radio, and the boat engine magically coming back to life, sort of like Ruby Sue once falling into a well and her eyes going crossed and then getting kicked by a mule and them going back to normal.
Sills says the more complicated repair jobs fall to his dad, John.
"It's got a Ford motor in it. Some things I'm familiar with and other things I'm like, 'Hey dad, can you help me?' He will say, 'What are you doing?' and I will say, 'It's on the boat' and he will just roll his eyes," Sills laughed.
In the interest of full disclosure, Josh said Papa Sills wasn't too thrilled about his son getting a 300-horsepower boat capable of producing 12-foot rooster tails at the local lake.
So there was some internal deal making that needed to be done in order to complete the hefty purchase.
"He just kind of accepts the fact that maybe he will say no and mom will say yes and then I'm good, or they'll both say no or they will say they will think about it knowing I'm still going to do it," Sills laughed.
In this instance, Josh first got to his mother, Kim, before getting dad involved.
"Mom approved it before he did so I knew the hook was already set," he explained.
The boat, the name of which Josh is unwilling to reveal, is going to get plenty of usage this weekend. He's planning on taking about half of Neal Brown's starting offensive line over to Senacaville for some water skiing.
What that basically means is Josh is going to drag a couple of 300-pounders around until they can't take it anymore. Boat gas isn't cheap, but Sills says it's money well spent watching his buddies getting faceplanted in the water.
"That pays for itself," he laughed.
As for boat's name, he said it was inherited from the previous owner and not something he would have picked – kind of like that first tattoo you got when you were 18 and later realized didn't look so good at 35 when your children start asking questions about it."The sticker was already on there before I got it (airbrushed out in order to keep this a PG-rated operation). The funny thing was I got it from a guy who was like 65," Sills recalled. "We got out of the car and looked at it and he immediately apologized to my mom as soon as we saw it. It's stuck to the windshield so I can't get it off to take it off.
"Now I'm kind of like, 'Okay, whatever.'"
Sills' three-hour excursions back to Sarahsville, located about halfway between Cambridge and Marietta right off of Interstate 77, are becoming extremely popular with his Mountaineer teammates.
Earlier this spring, Josh took quarterback Austin Kendall back to Ohio for some turkey hunting. Kendall is good in the shotgun, and it turns out he's also pretty decent with a shotgun, too.
Kendall's turkey calling? Well, that's another story.
Sills said he asked Austin to practice his call in the truck while they were driving out to the hunting spot, listened to it and then told him that he was officially retired from doing any more turkey calling in the state of Ohio.
Turkey hunting is tough enough with a good call, and Sills didn't want to run the risk of the biggest ones hearing a bad call and high-tailing it off to nearby Kentucky or Indiana.
"Turkey season in Ohio was rough this year," Sills admitted. "A couple of turkeys would cooperate and the next four or five wouldn't. You'd wake up one morning and it's like, 'Oh, yes, perfect morning, pretty warm, pretty quiet' and you wouldn't hear a turkey gobble.
"Then you'd go out the next day and it would be pouring rain, 40 degrees, and they'd gobble all day … hit or miss."
Therefore, the last thing Sills wanted was to have some rank amateur like Kendall messing with turkey karma by making sounds that didn't represent any animals he'd ever encountered in the Midwest.
Sills has also teamed up with Mountaineer football's other top outdoorsman, offensive tackle Colton McKivitz, to do some duck hunting near Colton's hometown of Jacobsburg, Ohio - approximately half the size of Sarahsville with no stoplights and just one stop sign.
Duck hunting is kind of like Terry Bradshaw's passing when he was throwing to all of those great Steelers wide receivers back in the 1970s – you don't have to be too accurate to be on target – and Sills says McKivitz is usually on target.
"He kind of got me into that," Sills said.
Last year, West Virginia's digital media team went on a duck-hunting expedition with McKivitz. Perhaps it's time they do another episode, this time with Sills and McKivitz.
Those two might be capable of knocking off Michael Bane's Shooting Gallery to win a Golden Moose Award for the best hunting show in 2020.
Regarding Josh's planned boating trip this weekend, it's probably best to keep the department cameras away from that one.
Players Mentioned
Cam Cook | March 30
Monday, March 30
Coach Jay Boulware | March 30
Monday, March 30
Coach Rich Rodriguez | March 30
Monday, March 30
Rick Trickett | March 24
Tuesday, March 24
