Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country | Founded 05-05-05

January 4, 2007 issue

A (Second) Year To Remember: ASU Gets Two

Story by Sam Calhoun

For the second time in two years, on a dark night in December in Chattanooga, Tenn., hordes of black and gold fans rushed the field at Finley Stadium celebrating a feat only a handful of universities have ever achieved. After capturing the first national championship in the school’s history in 2005—also the first national championship for any college in North Carolina—ASU football reached for the impossible in 2006 and came away victorious again. Conquering a schedule of daunting foes in the 2006 regular season, the Mountaineers clawed their way through the brackets of the NCAA Division 1-AA tournament to finally face off against the University of Massachusetts Minutemen in the national championship game on December 15, 2006. The 14-1 Mountaineers defeated the Minutemen with ease, 28-17, and joined the few and the proud among the minute number of universities that had done the same—redefining western North Carolina as not only the High Country, but also as Football Country.