UPDATED: 11:09 p.m. CT, July 14, 2008
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Rivers' bright path started at Ogle

Friday, July 11, 2008

Huntsville Times

Chargers QB doesn't forget his roots in the Valley

Before there was officially a Philip Rivers Drive, there was unofficially a Philip Rivers Sideline.

Philip Rivers Drive - technically, it'll be called Victory Drive for one more day - is beside Athens High School. Philip Rivers Sideline is at Ogle Stadium in Decatur.

Athens football coach Allen Creasy, who will be driving across Philip Rivers Drive on his way to the Golden Eagles' fieldhouse each day, vividly recalls the days of walking Philip Rivers Sideline while he was an assistant at Decatur High in the early 1990s.

"I just remember Philip running up and down that sideline," Creasy said. "He was always thinking about the game, always working the officials. When I was a kid and my dad was a coach, I was in the end zone playing cupball."

The 26-year-old Rivers, of course, is now playing NFL football in San Diego. The former Pro Bowler begins his third season as the starting quarterback for the Chargers later this month, having led them to 25 wins in the last two years.

On Saturday at 11 a.m., his high school alma mater will name one of its campus streets after him.

For his father, Steve, who coached Decatur while his son wore out a brown patch between the between the 30s - and beyond - and also coached him at Athens, it's simply another surreal experience from the last decade.

"It's all kind of been hard to believe," Rivers said of Philip's rising star, which began in 1998 when he started at QB for Athens, continued through four banner years at N.C. State and culminated with his being the No. 4 overall pick in the 2004 NFL draft.

"As a father, you have a lump in your throat during all of these experiences he's had. To come back to Athens and have them do this for him ... you just can't believe it."

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