Photo courtesy of BlueGoldNews.com Zach Frazier is shown during West Virginia’s contest at Virginia Tech last season.

MORGANTOWN — If Zach Frazier were a plant, he’d be a cactus, prickly and tough.

If he were a horse, he’d be a Clydesdale, not a show horse.

He’s the kind of guy who probably has planned his entire life to create his engagement ring by going down into the mines, grabbing a lump of coal and putting it under enough pressure with hands that it becomes a beautiful diamond.

He’s the hamburger made from filet mignon, the $500 bottle of wine that comes in a beer can.

If he were to make cheese, it would be Swiss cheese simply because he likes to create holes.

He is none of the above though. He’s a center on the West Virginia football team, among the best they’ve ever had … and they have had a Rimington Award winner in Dan Mozes, who was named America’s top center to take that award.

He is strong and quick, smart and tough, competitive and a leader.

Neal Brown gushes when he speaks of him as a player.

“We put a lot of responsibility on him, from identification, on how we will ID the run game, We spend a lot of time with him on how we are going to pick up blitzes that week,” he said.

“He’s really an intelligent football player. He sees we’re getting hats on the right people.”

That’s before the ball is snapped. After it gets snapped, he slips into his helmet.

“What he does is he’s really strong, so we can man some things with him that a lot of teams can’t. They have to double team. That allows our guards and tackles an opportunity to double, especially in the pass game,” Brown said.

So the opponent has a big time pass rusher from the outside. No sweat, leave Frazier alone inside a slip a tackle wide to work with the tight end or a guard to slide back and help a running back block.

“What he does is wins a lot of one-on-ones,” Brown said. “I say this to our players a lot, there’s 22 players on the field but it’s really decided by one-on-ones and he wins a lot of one-on-ones.”

Mike Joseph is the WVU strength and conditioning coach. As good as Frazier is on the field, he’s as good and as competitive in the weight room.

He’s a weight room warrior.

“He’s a guy who embraces hard work; embraces doing things the right way and he has the right physical components,” Joseph said the other day.

“He’s a guy who is highly competitive, who will work until it’s done right. He will challenge himself until he’s the best guy in the weight room, the best guy on the field. He will overcome any deficiencies he has by outworking the next guy.

“His motor, his drive is the best thing he has going for him,” Joseph concludes.

But there’s so much more.

There’s the toughness and it comes from what he does in that weight room.

“He’s one of the most invested in the program,” Joseph said. “He’s always in the weight room, always doing extra work. The best way of showing a mental toughness or a physical toughness is if we are doing any kind of run or any type of lift, he’s always trying to be the best or the first.

“I’m not saying he is all the time, but he is always trying to be. He’s always trying to meet that goal and if he is not, he is really ticked off.”a

Other guys have off days. Weight room work is hard work and some days, well, you just don’t feel like meeting the challenge.

“There aren’t 50,000 people in the stands watching him. There aren’t TV cameras or replays or play-by-play announcers singing his praise,” Joseph said.

Yet he pushes as hard as he can.

“This isn’t an ego thing. There’s too much sweat for it to be an ego thing. It’s just who and what Zach Frazier is.”

He owes a lot of his football success to his wrestling background. He was a four-time state heavyweight champion at Fairmont Senior.

“It helps a lot,” Joseph said. “I wrestled for 13 years and I think I learned things in individual sports as an athlete. it teaches you can’t blame anybody; either you do it or you don’t. You are alone out there on the mat and under the lights, like boxing or other individual sports.

If you get your butt kicked or if you win, you know you put the work in. It’s the same on the football field. You are trying to get guys to outwork the guys on the other side across the board. It’s a team game but there’s always one-one-battles on every play. If I don’t have pride to win my battle every rep, it’s going to catch up with us at some point.

“I may not win all of the battles, but you have to win the majority of them.”