The Super Six is in town this weekend, so enjoy!
It may be the last taste of championship football we’ll get in this area for a long, long time.
HA!! Just kidding. Relax. It’s not going anywhere.
Mercer County has been organizing to make a bid for the 2020 Super Six weekend, with one game presumably at Princeton High (the Class A game, which is proposed to be moved to Friday night), and then Class AA and AAA at Mitchell Stadium in Bluefield on Saturday. Part of the bid, it seems, is to offer a rotating basis with Wheeling: Super Six South, then Super Six North, according to frontman Marty Gearheart, a former state delegate.
And while reasonable people can understand sharing some sporting excellence with our brethren in the southern part of the state, there’s an air of defiance in Wheeling. If the city loses the Super Six, even for a modest time, the momentum is lost with the corporate sponsors and the volunteers that make this thing sing. It won’t be the same.
“Sharing is a difficult proposition,” pointed out SSAC Executive Director Bernie Dolan, himself a driving force in Wheeling securing the event some 26 years ago. Noting that the previous bids in Charleston (1979-93) had been for two-year plans, “It was Wheeling that presented the first four-year bid, because of the sponsors and their ability to budget more. To (lose it and) come back a year or two later would make it rough.”
And that would be a shame. Wheeling has set the standard of how to indulge the teams, coaches, cheerleaders and band members. The way this city has run the Super Six, in fact, has had a sensational spillover effect on the other sports championships, too.
“It’s become the model for other championship venues,” Dolan said. “Beckley with soccer, Huntington with wrestling, Cabell Midland for cross country. Wheeling has become the benchmark to follow.”
Wheeling wrestled the Super Six away from Charleston and Laidley Field in 1994, and it wasn’t hard. Charleston took the event for granted. Teams would bus down, play the game, then bus back home. Nothing special. At all. And the “crowds?” I remember the 1986 Class AAA game when Brooke’s faithful followers absolutely dwarfed the fandom for Stonewall Jackson, a Charleston school.
The seeds for the idea of Wheeling hosting the event were probably planted in 1991, when Wheeling Park went to the state Class AAA championship game to take on Capital. When the Patriots got off the bus to get into the stadium, they found it locked and nobody around. When somebody was rousted to let them in, he pointed them toward the locker room and left. And, of course, it was locked, too. Egads. Unwelcome to the Big Time, eh?
Now the kids are feted with banquets, gifts of athletic wear, 11 scholarships of $1,000 apiece, etc. It’s a happening. Win or lose, the players and coaches will remember this for the rest of their lives — for the right reasons. They’re treated like kings.
So, getting back to Bluefield and Mercer County: What will it take for those folks to stake a claim in the Super Six?
“I don’t think you can meet the product (Wheeling) and expect the (SSAC) Board to go to an unknown,” Dolan admitted. “You’ll have to substantially beat the known product. What that means is, ‘What are you going to do to make it better for the kids?’ Because that’s what this is about.”
It’s certainly not about a monetary boon for Wheeling or Ohio County. The restaurants and local shops may do some brisk business, but the football championships, for the most part, are a drive-by affair. “The Class AA people (Friday night game) may stay in hotels in the area,” Dolan said. “Certainly the 3-A folks are driving here and then back home. Most of the other sports (championship events) have more people in beds. This isn’t really about bringing a bunch of money to Wheeling — it’s really about shining a light on Wheeling and what we have here. Hopefully, they’ll see what we have to offer and come back.”
And, for the local fans, it’s wonderful entertainment. The best teams in the state fighting for — at least at the high school level — immortality. The players from John Marshall’s 1996 team and Wheeling Park’s 2015 team, for example, will forever be champions.
Six teams this weekend are shooting for that very same thing.
Bring it on.
