Dr. Jim Casey

Taylor especially remembers playing against Boyce High School, whose football team included James Casey, who went on to become James Wood High School's athletic director and now owns and trains racehorses.

Jim Casey: ,Master of Taylor Mountain'
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As a young soldier in the Korean War era, Jim Casey did his basic training at Fort Dix, N.J., a rather desolate military outpost located almost exclusively within the Garden State's equally desolate Pine Barrens.

Casey, the former coach and athletic director at James Wood High School and now an esteemed horse-owner and trainer, remembers the place well, particularly a promontory known as Taylor Mountain.
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"It was the last exercise, the last thing you did — taking Taylor Mountain," Casey recalled with a smile one sizzling July Saturday.
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Jimmy Omps, on Jim Casey
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These days, Casey, one of the top winners in the history of the West Virginia's Breeders Classics, pretty much feels the same way.
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But then, in Jim Casey's life, one he variously describes as "fortunate" or "lucky," what goes around often has a way of coming around.

Just like horses on a race track.

"This wouldn't be here if it weren't for her."

Jim Casey, in tribute to Eleanor, his wife of 50 years

Though inspired by that bump in the New Jersey landscape, Taylor Mountain Farm — with its classic three-rail fences, stately barn, comfortable brick home, and thoroughbreds lolling in the fields — looks as if it were plucked straight from Central Kentucky, fresh from the highway leading from Versailles to Lexington.But, instead of Blue Grass rising from the earth, the Blue Ridge Mountains rise in the distance.

This is where Jim Casey, some eight years ago, convinced Eleanor, his wife and forever "best friend," they needed to be.
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And inside the home Jim built for her, she could, before her death in July 2005, monitor the gestation of their mares via closed-circuit cameras placed in the foaling stalls.
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Home now to roughly 180 horses — "Too many," Casey says, "we'll need to get [that number] down" — Taylor Mountain gives its owner, now 78, "something to do."
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Ninety-eight percent of those involved, Casey says, do not make money.Exception though he may be — his mounts have earned nearly $7.5 million over a career of 40-plus years, some $2 million in stakes races — his annual expenses are staggering.Over "the last few years," this sum, including taxes, has approached $1 million, he says.The big-ticket items affecting his bottom line are salaries (about $480,000 a year), feed ($230,000), and veterinarian bills (roughly $125,000).

"This business is difficult," Casey continues.
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Casey had been importing his hay from Canada; his last "load" came from Nebraska.
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(Photos provided by Jim Casey)

The Caseys celebrate the win of Proud John, named for the Caseys' younger son, at the Tri-State Futurity on Oct. 25, 1969, at the Charles Town race track.The montage image includes a shot of the horse winning the race at the bottom.Above is young John (from left) with Eleanor and Jim Casey, an unidentified race official, and Betty and Willie Walter.
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Casey employs 16 people, including a full-time veterinarian and farm manager, Dr. Shay Swope.
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For horsemen solely in the trade as trainers, "times are tough," Casey says.Likewise for owners, as "few," he adds, "make money."
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A downside, Casey says, is that the state is about 21/2 years behind paying owners from this "10-10-10" program.

Breeding in West Virginia, he says, peaked two years ago.But, drawing on statistics clicked off from memory, Casey notes that, in the decade starting in 1996, the number of live foals born in the state rose from 130 that year to 630 in 2004.

His operation has prospered particularly in the West Virginia Breeders Classics.In the first 20 years of the event — started in 1987 largely through the efforts of NFL legend Sam Huff and held annually each October — Casey either bred or owned 11 winners.
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Neither the growth of the Taylor Mountain enterprise nor the success it has enjoyed comes as a surprise to Rudy Telek, who coached against Casey on the gridiron while at Clarke County High School in the '60s and, later, for the better part of 20 years, partnered with him in the horse business.
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"Casey always was a good businessman," Telek says.
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Still, at times, one gets the impression that horse racing is as much avocation as it is business to Casey.

"This gives me something to do," he says.
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Dr. Joseph Casey, veterinarian and Jim Casey's father
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Jim Casey is the son of a veterinarian — in fact, a onetime racetrack doc at New York's fabled Belmont Park.Thus, it should also come as little surprise that the track, to Casey, is like a second home.

"Doing this is almost like a vacation to me," he says.
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But here's a funny thing: As a boy growing up in Clarke County back in the '40s, Casey, born in Berryville and reared in Boyce, liked horses and remembers going to Charles Town — when it offered the only legal opportunity to gamble for miles around — but seldom cared to accompany his dad on his farm calls.The last thing he wanted to do, for example, was help vaccinate pigs, an activity he still describes as "nasty."He much preferred to play ball.

But here Casey walks, as he does most every day, in the barn area at the Charles Town track, where he houses 28 horses, his active runners.Saturday morning is "exercise day," and, stopwatch in hand, he oversees the work of jockeys, exercise riders, and "hot walkers" putting the animals through their paces, readying them for competition.

"The only bad part is that it's hot as the devil today," Casey says, warming to the task himself, "and horses don't much like the heat.The truth is, they're cold-weather animals."

Most of the horses quartered in his barn at the track are Taylor Mountain stock.He does not run a "public stable," but five or six of the thoroughbreds he quarters at Charles Town do belong to other owners.One, Bowman's Hero, is the proud property of Bill Walters, son of the late Willie Walters, the James Wood wrestling coach with whom, along with Telek, Casey broke into the racing business more than 40 years ago.
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Clearly at ease, Casey is able to monitor the work of his horses and riders, keep track of their times over a quarter or three-eighths of a mile, and still inform a neophyte on the wonderful yet oft-vexing ways of these majestic though high-strung animals.

"Horses, you know, are creatures of habit," he says."You have to be careful breaking and training them, so they don't develop bad habits."

For example, Three's a Crowd, a 5-year-old, hasn't run since October, so Casey will break him from the starting gate along the backstretch, easing him back to racing's rigors.

"He's a nice horse," he says, "but doesn't work too fast."

Another, Loves to Sing, is running for the first time since chips were removed from an ankle.

"Hmmm, 37.3 for three-eighths, about right for him," Casey says, obviously pleased.

And then there's Marcy's Claim to Fame, a 2-year-old on the track for just the second time.

"I think he can be all right," Casey observes.
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"You can get fooled," Casey says."Riders can see certain things, and the stopwatch tells you as well what you need to know.

"You usually get a good line, but again, you can get fooled.Some horses have cheap speed, but there's not much horse there."

Casey will introduce his 2-year-olds to the track, twice running them "lane to lane" — that is, down the near straightaway of the 3/4-mile Charles Town track — before moving them out to the curve at the quarter-pole.On this morning, eight of these "babies" will be stretching their young legs lane to lane.

"There's always hope with 2-year-olds," he says."There's always a possibility you really have something."

Then it's a matter of deciding what distance to run a horse in its first competitive race.Horses adjudged to have genuine speed go 41/2 furlongs (a furlong is 220 yards).Breaking away from the grandstand, Casey says, "teaches them to run real fast real quick.But you still need to teach them how to ,settle.'"

Races of 61/2 furlongs are specifically geared for maidens with no proven speed."It all depends on the horse," Casey adds.

That last simple statement speaks to many aspects of a thoroughbred's demeanor.Horses, on average, run competitively about 15 to 20 times in their careers, providing they "get there" — to the track — as Casey says.
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Jim Casey

It all started, perhaps, in idle whimsy — words scrawled on paper by a young soldier far from home, in one of his daily letters dispatched to his sweetheart in Virginia.
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It took some time — many years, in fact — but this "joke" came to pass, due

— Wendell Dick, on Jim Casey
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Charles Town, W.VA. — For the better part of a quarter-century, from the early '60s to the mid-'80s, Jim Casey led what amounted to a double life.

By day, and often late into the night, Casey gave his time to James Wood High, first as a coach and later, for 20 years, as the school's athletic director.
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Jim Casey laughs at his retirement dinner from James Wood High School in 1986.
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Of the two related endeavors, Casey himself readily admits that teaching young men the rudiments of sport was his "first love."

"I was a better coach than I am a horseman," he says.
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"They'll say Jim Casey was the best."
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For starters, Dick says, Casey is the only coach in area history to lead teams to undefeated regular-season records of 10-0 in football and 20-0 in basketball.
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Charles Town, W.VA. — For young Jim Casey, growing up in Boyce in the late '30s and early '40s, baseball was the biggest game in town.He played it whenever and wherever he could.

Casey, like most kids, followed the professional game, passionately rooting for the Philadelphia A's.But, oddly enough, many of his fondest memories center around attending games in New York City, as a boy and later as a soldier training at New Jersey's Fort Dix.
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Thus, on visits back to the Northeast, Dr. Casey would take his family to see games at Yankee Stadium, in the heyday of Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio, and Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
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Casey, 78, vividly recalls his first trip to "The House That Ruth Built" in the mid-'30s.The Yankees were playing the Boston Red Sox in a doubleheader, with Lefty Gomez and Red Ruffing on the mound for the home team.

The Yanks, he remembers, swept the Bosox, largely on the strength of one of Gehrig's 23 career grand slams.The Sox, Casey says, intentionally walked DiMaggio to pitch to Gehrig.
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Many years later, Casey returned to the Stadium, in olive drab.Servicemen during the Korean War era, he says, were supposed to pay a reduced rate at the gate.He and his buddies got in free.
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"I thought he was the best hitter ever," Casey says.

But what particularly impressed him about Boston's "Splendid Splinter" was the fact he served as a fighter pilot, first in World War II and then again in Korea, losing five prime home-run-hitting years to the service of his country.

"If Ted could put in three years in World War II and then go back again in Korea," Casey says, "I felt I could certainly do my share."
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Casey coached all three major varsity boys sports — football, basketball, and baseball — at Wood, but none for more than eight years.He achieved his greatest success on the basketball court, amassing a 134-29 overall record, which translates to an eye-popping 82 percent winning percentage.His five football teams compiled a 35-15 mark, and, in seven years on the diamond, his squads won 49 games and lost but 25.

All told, in his 20 seasons as a varsity skipper, Casey led his teams to an overall record of 218-69, for a 76 percent winning percentage.Only two of his squads posted losing marks — his first on the gridiron (4-6) in 1962, and his first on the hardwood (6-11) in 1955.

"I didn't really want to be in the Army, but it turned out well for me."

— Jim Casey

Serendipity figured mightily in moving Casey, now 78, toward a career path.He caught the coaching bug in, of all places, Germany, while a soldier in the U.S. Army.

The Korean War was raging when he graduated from the College of William & Mary — which he still calls "the best school around" — in 1951 with a degree in physical education.Rather than waiting to be drafted, he opted to enlist.A stroke of good fortune sent him to Europe, not Southeast Asia.

One day, Casey and a buddy from Waynesboro inquired about umpiring positions in the armed forces baseball league.Those slots had been filled, they learned, but, after chatting with a colonel, who turned out to be a graduate of Massanutten Military Academy in Woodstock and had passed through Boyce on occasion, Casey found himself the coach of the Combat Command A (four divisions totaling 5,000 men) baseball squad.He was on his way.

Traveling through Europe on what he terms an "eight-month vacation," he guided his team of virtual no-names — other squads featured such major-leaguers as Curt Simmons and brothers Norm and Larry Sherry — to fourth- and second-place finishes in the split-season format.

"That was my first coaching job," he says."It was just a great experience.What a great break that colonel gave me.I realized then I wanted to be a coach."

But, upon leaving the Army on Dec. 4, 1953, following a two-year stint, Casey discovered he was a coach with no job prospects.
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Frederick County School Superintendent Robert Aylor offered Casey the job.
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— Wendell Dick, on Jim Casey
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Casey himself laughs at the uncanniness of circumstance.No sooner did he change coaching positions than special players landed at the school on Amherst Street and began their ascent to stardom — in the sport he was coaching.
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Both ended up matriculating at VMI in Lexington — the latter much to the chagrin of Casey, who wanted him for William & Mary.

He laughs now at Manuel's contention, though he admits that the "key" to winning, on any level of competition, "is to have good athletes."

But, as most any Wood athlete from that era would counter, coaching played a huge part in their teams' success.Casey was not only a master strategist, able to crack any opponent's code, but was also a fundamentalist, stressing constants that any team could fall back on when the going got tough.In basketball, for instance, these were rebounding and defense.

Casey also believed in taking the extra step in preparation.
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Dick recalls one night in 1957 when Casey invited him and another basketball player to help scout Turner Ashby, near Harrisonburg, a team that buried foes with a withering fast break.
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No more than four minutes into the game, Dick says, Casey had broken down the TA break.
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Still, in Dick's mind, Casey was far more than a superior tactican and strategist, an Xs-and-Os guy.

"If you ever talk about a role model, Jim Casey was it," he says.
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"Then someone said, ,That's Coach Casey's girl friend.' Oh boy, Casey, he got as mad as a hornet."

"He cared about his coaches and he expected a lot — to be successful, to work hard — but he always treated you like you were important to the program."

— Walter Barr, on Jim Casey
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Casey had not planned to leave the coaching ranks, at least not in the spring of 1966.But when Manuel stepped up to an assistant principal's post, leaving the athletic directorship vacant, Casey had a choice to make.
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Much as Dick, as a former player, said of Casey as a coach, Barr said of him as an athletic director.
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"He was such a caring person," said Barr, noting the double-barreled influence Casey and his own Clarke County High coach, Douglas Cochran, had on his coaching career, now routinely described as legendary.
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Barr, perhaps, never appreciated the soothing hand of Casey's support more so than in 1970, when Casey knew that a tie against Handley in the season finale would send the Colonels to the newly minted state football playoffs.
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Barr called for Casey, asking him to come to the sideline.
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Casey assured the young coach his math was correct.
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Long story short: Casey wanted to keep the clash of arch-rivals at the end of the season.
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By that time, Jim Casey was long gone from "The Ridge," having decided to retire in 1986 at the relatively young age of 56.His reason for doing so had a familiar ring.

"I loved going to school," he says.

image: James W. Casey
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James W. Casey

Jim is a 1951 graduate of the College of William & Mary.His graduate work was at both the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland then a tour of duty for 2 years in the Army with the Second Armored Division in Germany.Jim was a coach and Director of Athletics at James Wood High Schoolin Winchester,VA for 33 years.Jim and his late wife, Eleanor, have bred and raced horses for over 40 years and a a trainer's license for the past 20.

Jim Casey, former athletic director at James Wood High School, holds the bridle of Henry the Lover, a 3-year-old gelding that has won four races and earned 98,000 so far.
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Jim Casey: ,Master of Taylor Mountain' STORY
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Jim Casey would be just as well pleased if horse racing banned steroids.STORY

Charles Town, W.Va. — Jim Casey would be just as well pleased if horse racing banned steroids.

But if that does not happen, and horsemen continue to administer the drugs to their thoroughbreds, then Casey says he and others will be "forced to keep up."

Since the euthanization of filly Eight Belles following this year's Kentucky Derby and subsequent revelations that Derby winner Big Brown had regularly received steroids, a hue-and-cry has arisen within the racing community to take a strong and protracted look at the issue.

"If [other horsemen didn't administer steroids], it would be fine with me," says Casey, the veteran local owner, trainer, and breeder.
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"It makes a horse a little bolder, gives him more courage, and it gets him to eat better," Casey says.
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Of foremost concern to Casey, the Clarke County native who owns Taylor Mountain Farm in Jefferson County, W.Va., is that, in a rush to judgment over steroids, other drugs deemed essential to horsemen will be banned from the equine medicine cabinet.

One such drug, for example, is Bute (phenylbutazone), a strong anti-inflammatory, administered for soreness, that is considered part of the aspirin family.Another is Lasix, a diuretic given to thoroughbreds to help prevent bleeding in the lungs brought on by the stress of racing.

"These two drugs, in particular, horsemen don't want to see cut out," Casey says."Giving a horse Bute is like giving him an aspirin.And Lasix keeps 'em from bleeding.It lowers the blood pressure."

If anything, the use of all these drugs may be linked to a diminished equine gene pool resulting from an over-arching obsession with speed.Stated simply, Casey says race horses are not as "sound" as they were, say, 50 years ago.

A blue-ribbon panel convened in Washington, he adds, concluded that the sport features far too many "short, speed races" and that thoroughbreds have been run far too much as 2-year-olds when their bone structure — fragile at best — is not strong enough to withstand the strain.

Of that emphasis on short races, Casey says, horses "run fast, hell-bent-for-leather, as fast as they can go, as opposed to breaking and then settling into stride for three-eighths [of a mile] and then running."

To Casey, who, over more than 40 years in the business, has lost but three horses to untimely racing-related deaths — two from heart attacks and one following a broken leg — the extended ripple effect throughout the industry from this obsession with speed is obvious.

"People now breed horses just for speed," he says.

Jim Casey