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GINA MARIE CRUISE SCHRADER, of Charleston and Hillsboro, West Virginia, died on January 13 of injuries sustained in a fall on January 2, in Ch…

Baker and his family ready to adjust to the Mountain State
Blue Gold News

Baker and his family ready to adjust to the Mountain State

  • by Greg Hunter
  • Updated

West Virginia University’s new athletic director Wren Baker and his family are going to have to adjust to life in Morgantown and the Mountain State.

Until he was hired by WVU last month, the 44-year-old Baker had spent his entire life in the Midwest.

Born and raised in Valliant, Oklahoma, he attended college at Southeastern Oklahoma State, graduating in 2002 with his bachelor’s degree, and then Oklahoma State, where he earned his master’s in 2003.

His professional career started at Oklahoma State, where he was the Cowboys’ basketball operations assistant from 2001-05. Then he moved back to Valliant, serving as a public school principal from 2005-06. From 2006-10, he was the director of athletics at Rogers State University in Claremore, Oklahoma, followed by a stint as the A.D. at Northwestern Missouri State. He was the deputy director of athletics at Memphis (2013-15) and Missouri (2015-16) before taking over as the director of athletics at North Texas in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex in 2016. Now he has moved 1,241 miles to Morgantown, and his wife Heather and their two elementary school-age daughters, Addisyn and Reagan, will soon follow him from DFW to MGW.

The transition may be toughest for his children, who have spent most of their lives in Denton, Texas.

“No tears so far, so that’s a good thing,” smiled the proud father. “To this point, it’s been really, really good. I had only talked to them one other time about moving — not a terribly long time ago, a year or two — and that did not go very well. This time, it went fairly well. It wasn’t necessarily their call to make, but it did help that they were receptive.”

Like Wren’s hometown of Valliant (population 754), Heather also grew up in a small south Oklahoma hamlet, Bokchito (population 632), so she is also making a significant switch in the move to West Virginia.

Their small-town roots will help Wren and Heather in feeling comfortable in their move to the Mountain State, and they are now looking for a Morgantown-area home that will fit the entire family.

“Heather went around to see a couple of neighborhoods and different areas of Morgantown,” Wren explained, who started on the job at WVU on Dec. 19. “She looked at a couple of homes, but they probably aren’t going to move up until at least March, and we may even wait until the school year is over in May. We’re still trying to figure that out. So, we’re in no hurry to find a home just yet, though she did see one she really liked. I kind of have a rule that I don’t like people being able to see into my back yard. Having grown up in a rural area, that’s my happy place, where I can get away from it all. She told me right away, ‘I love the house, but you won’t because there are a couple of other houses that can see into the back yard.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that won’t work,’ so we’ll see what we can find.

“We love spending time on the water, and Heather looked at some house in the Cheat Lake area, so I could see us moving there, though there are also some really nice neighborhoods closer (to campus) as well,” Baker continued. “Once I drive around more, I’ll get a better feel for it.”

Wren grew up in a rural area in the southeast corner of Oklahoma not far from the borders of Texas and Arkansas.

For the past 120 years, many in Valliant worked at the Valliant Mill, which employs 600 and is a major producer of cardboard packaging, boxes and containers for the International Paper Company. Both of Baker’s parents worked in the mill in the past, though Wren spent much of his childhood on the family farm.

“It was a small farm, 40 acres, which my grandfather originally owned,” explained Baker. “My father bought 40 more acres, so it became 80, and then I bought another 80, so it’s now 160 acres.

“It’s still in the family; my dad lives there. The land is all in my name now, but he takes care of it.

“I don’t know what I’ll do with it,” he said of the farm outside Valliant. “I don’t necessarily want to move back home, and I can’t see myself farming again. We’ve never planted anything. Off and on, it’s been a cow/calf operation. My dad will get tired of it and sell them all, but then he decides he needs the tax break, so he’ll buy some back.”

Though obviously the Mountaineers will now become Baker’s key athletic interest, he is just a sports fan in general. While in Dallas-Fort Worth, he had plenty of pro options if he wanted to take in an NFL, NBA, MLB or NFL contest. The state of West Virginia doesn’t have any major league franchises itself, but it’s close to many areas that do, whether it is Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Washington or Charlotte, depending on which area of the Mountain State you reside.

“Where I grew up in Oklahoma, most people like the Chiefs or the Cowboys,” Baker noted. “I like the Cowboys, though I’m not a die-hard. I’ve also been a bit of a Packers fan. I’ve never been a Steelers fan, other than our connection (at North Texas with UNT alum) with Mean Joe Greene. We did a statue a couple of years ago of him, and several of his Steeler teammates came to that unveiling. There were a bunch of Hall of Famers in that group, seven or eight guys in gold coats, there for the recognition. That’s my connection with the Steelers.”

A new set of pro teams to follow will be a minor adjustment for WVU’s new A.D., but his rural background and enjoyment of the outdoors seem to make him a natural fit for West Virginia.

“I know Coach (Bob) Huggins likes to fish, and I told him I’d like to go to some of his best spots, because I’ve done my share of bass fishing,” said Baker of the Mountaineers’ Hall of Fame basketball coach. “It will probably be a least three years before he trusts me to take me to his secret spots, though.”