BOONE, N.C — School is out here today.

Stores and restaurants have closed, too. Two feet of snow have blanketed the town. In Boone (population 19,000, elevation 3,333), a quaint college town tucked into the Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina, one must contend with the unusual risk of school buses skidding across the ice and rolling into danger.

So the town is quiet, except for one place — Appalachian Ski Mountain.

Here, the slopes are packed with children skiing and snowboarding. The club offers discounts when school is canceled. It is, according to David Jackson, formerly the voice of Appalachian State athletics and now the president of the Boone area chamber of commerce, “the community’s snow day babysitter.”

It is difficult to tell the story of Louisville’s new head football coach without starting here.

On the side of Alpine Road, a winding stretch around the mountain with a breathtaking view, a sign reads: “SNOW MAKING AREA.” That was Scott Satterfield’s job for two months in the winter of 1998-99.

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To make extra money, after a day in the office as a wide receivers coach at Appalachian State, he went home for dinner, drove to the mountain and hooked a hose up to a machine that turned water into a fine mist. The mist shot into the air, and when the weather was cold enough, it froze into snow.

In the lobby of the ski club, a glass case on the wall pays tribute to the job that stuck for Satterfield: football coach. Newspaper clippings and pennants honor Appalachian State's football tradition, which has involved Satterfield for 23 of the past 28 seasons.

In those 23 years, he played quarterback, called plays and made snow. His job was to create magic. He showed up as a walk-on at Appalachian State on Aug. 3, 1991, and he ended up at Louisville because he never let that flicker of hope die.

'Coach, hire him'

In the old football building at Appalachian State, the weight room was two floors below the office of Hall of Fame coach Jerry Moore, who led the program from 1989-2012 and coached Satterfield.

In the 1998 offseason, Satterfield and his wife, Beth, visited Moore in his office. When they left, they walked downstairs to the weight room, and Scott ended up a couple paces ahead of his wife and his coach.

Moore recalls that Beth leaned over and said, “Coach, hire him.”

Moore grinned and said, “We’re probably going to.”

He did, and three years after his playing career ended, Satterfield, now 45, returned to Boone as a restricted-earnings coach making $7,000 per year.

He grew up 150 miles east of Boone in Hillsborough, North Carolina, near Durham, where his father owned a paving company. Scott spent the summers shoveling asphalt in the blistering heat. The elder Satterfield told his son if he could handle that, football would be easy.

But it was tiring, and it was demanding, and it was often cold. In the early days of their career, the Satterfields lived in a small apartment not far from campus. It must have been poorly insulated, Beth says, because it was always freezing.

Beth, a math teacher, would wake up in the morning and turn on the heat in the bathroom. Then she’d walk downstairs, make oatmeal and go back to the warmest place in the house.

“I remember sitting there, eating my oatmeal in the bathroom, thinking, ‘This is weird,’” she said.

But that was what it took, starting in their mid-20s, and Beth says now, “It was just life. You really don’t know that it’s tough, because you’re just living it.”

That’s how it went for Scott.

Satterfield tore his ACL early in his junior season at Orange High School, limiting his college recruiting prospects. After his senior year he was still waiting for a place to play. Tim Horton, the running backs coach at Appalachian State, called and offered him a walk-on spot.

Satterfield was not the fastest quarterback, everyone says, or the best passer. But he could run the read option anyway — 18 G Load and 19 G Load, they called it. “Just a gutsy quarterback,” said Shawn Elliott, who played with Satterfield and is now the head coach at Georgia State.

“He wasn’t a great big guy, and he wasn’t going to make you miss on a tackle,” Moore said. “He just didn’t make very many mistakes.”

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He made the big plays. In 1995, Appalachian State was 6-0 and ranked No. 2 in Division I-AA for a road game against No. 3 Marshall. Late in the game, Satterfield was limping, so Moore grabbed the backup quarterback to send him in. But Satterfield said he was OK, and he scored the go-ahead touchdown on the next play.

In the regular-season finale, Appalachian State trailed The Citadel in the final minute when Satterfield snuck in a game-winning touchdown pass.

“We drove down and he threw a strike,” Moore said. “It looked like an NFL Sunday for a touchdown.”

The Mountaineers finished the regular season 11-0 with six wins by a touchdown or less. They lost in the Division I-AA quarterfinals to end Satterfield's career, and that was almost the end of the story.

After graduation, he spent a year selling insurance for Beth's father in her hometown of Spruce Pine and hated it. He was a high school coach in 1997 and then returned to Boone as essentially a graduate assistant. After one season blowing snow, he earned the promotion to full-time, with benefits and a company car and everything.

“I told my wife, ‘We made it,’” he said. “I think we made $30,000.”

Milkshakes for all

The dream grew. Satterfield was the running backs coach for four seasons and the quarterbacks coach for six, from 2003-08. He brought the spread-option offense to Boone in 2004. Appalachian State won the Division I-AA national championship in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

In 2012, with Satterfield back in Boone after three years away at Toledo and then Florida International, the Mountaineers won the Southern Conference again and lost in overtime on a missed extra point in the first round of the playoffs.

The next day, the school forced out Moore after 24 years.

Appalachian State named Satterfield the interim head coach and asked him to address the team at that moment. Moore, his mentor, was in the room. The players were in tears. Satterfield was, too.

“That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Satterfield said.

The school removed the interim tag, but the start of Satterfield’s head coaching career added a challenge. Before his team played a game, Appalachian State announced it would move up to the Football Bowl Subdivision, meaning Satterfield's team could not win the conference or go to the playoffs in 2013. His first season was lost.

The Mountaineers went 4-8, their second losing season since 1989 and first since he was the quarterback. They were no better to start 2014, starting 1-5 and making Satterfield worry about his job security.

“At some point, you’ve got to win,” he said. “You’ve got to see the fruits of the labor at some point.”

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The next week Appalachian State visited Troy, and Beth Satterfield made the trip with Scott. On a beautiful October Friday afternoon, the two took a walk along the river and thought, “Well, this has been a fun ride, if it ends here.”

The Scott Satterfield story almost ended there, too. But the next day, the Mountaineers crushed Troy, 53-14, sparking some momentum for the rest of the season. On the nine-hour bus ride back to Boone, they bought milkshakes from Chick-fil-A for everyone. Appalachian State won every game the rest of the season and is 47-11 since that day.

More everything

The dream grew. Appalachian State won a bowl game, then another, then another. The Mountaineers were 30-9 in three seasons, with two Sun Belt championships. Their fifth-year head coach started to wonder, “What else can I accomplish here?”

“We just knew that when the opportunity came that we would go,” Beth Satterfield said.

After a year or two of job rumors surrounding the most successful coach in the Sun Belt, Satterfield made the move to Louisville and will live outside the state of North Carolina for just the fourth year of his life.

This is a bigger job in a bigger conference with more facilities, more revenue and more stars. "More everything,” Satterfield said.

So the question will be: Will he change, or will he be the same guy who made snow into the middle of the night to make ends meet?

Perhaps the answer is that he’ll inevitably change. But Satterfield, for his part, said, “I hope not. I want to be who I am.”

Those around him back him up.

“No question, without a shadow of a doubt, Scott Satterfield ain’t changing,” said Mark Speir, now the head coach at Western Carolina. “I can promise you that. I’d bet my house.”

In Louisville, Satterfield won’t have the family atmosphere at first. He met Speir on the recruiting trail in the early 2000s, and Satterfield recommended him for a job on Moore’s staff when Appalachian State had an opening.

After Speir took the job, he and his wife didn’t want to move their kids in the middle of the school year. So Speir stayed in the Satterfields’ basement for six months until his family found a house.

When his son, Zeb, grew up playing quarterback, he received little Division I attention. But Satterfield offered him a spot on the roster, and the senior took the last snap of the Sun Belt Championship on Dec. 1.

Jackson estimated Speir played six snaps in his career. But “it was important to Scott that Zeb was a part of the program,” he said.

Twenty-three years at Appalachian State have endeared the Satterfields to the community. At the Wendy’s on the main road through town, after Satterfield took the Louisville job, the video sign read, “We Will Miss You, Coach Satterfield.”

That’s when this story becomes familiar. Louisville missed out on its Jeff Brohm and ended up with someone else’s.

Leaving home

For 30 years, the Appalachian State coaches have gathered on Wednesday nights during the season for a fireside devotion. They meet at the home of Dick Furman, who owned a house on a pond and befriended Moore when he arrived.

Furman’s brother, Jim — who runs a company that operates several Wendy’s franchises in the area — furnishes the food. Dale Jones, Satterfield’s linebackers coach at Appalachian State, starts the fire. Three men take turns giving the devotional.

When Satterfield took over for Moore, he continued the Wednesday tradition. He even started closing with some of his own remarks.

Last year, when his name started coming up in job rumors, Dick Furman broached the idea that Satterfield might be nearing his last Wednesday night devotion.

In Furman’s memory, Satterfield responded: “I want the Lord’s will in my life. I want to be where He wants me and where He can use me. If that’s in Boone for years to come, that’s fine. And if it’s somewhere else, he wants to be where he feels like he’s been led.”

That is the kind of home Satterfield is leaving behind, with 23 years of friends, achievements and memories.

At this crossroads, it also speaks to the quality of opportunity that lies ahead.

“I really honestly haven’t even had time to process it or think about it or even put a name to my dreams, really,” Beth Satterfield said. “I just know that so many of our life stories have been written here, but there’s so many more to come.”

Jake Lourim: 502-582-4168; jlourim@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @jakelourim. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/jakel.