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Wheeling Island Stadium may reopen soon

WHEELING — Wheeling Park High School football coach Chris Daugherty paid little attention to the work happening around him Friday at Wheeling Island Stadium as his team ran drills in preparation for the upcoming season.

That work, however, which is being done at a quicker-than-expected pace, could have Daugherty’s Patriots playing Friday night games on their home turf by the middle of next month, as construction crews are nearing the finish of installing brackets in the stadium’s seating sections to reinforce the upper and side concrete panels.

The $407,000 stadium improvement project is proceeding so well that Ohio County Schools officials now believe the venue may be ready in time for the Patriots to host University High School on Sept. 15.

“I feel really good about it. The last we heard was (Sept.) 17 or 18. If it gets done just a few days early, we could play the University game at the stadium,” Ohio County Assistant Superintendent Rick Jones said.

That would be only five months after two concrete panels came down from the top of the stadium when school employees found damage to one of them.

Three days after discovering the problem with the first panel, contractors brought it to the ground by crane. However, an adjacent panel plummeted from the top of the stadium in an uncontrolled manner, eventually crashing through the fence around the stadium.

This forced officials to move the annual OVAC Rudy Mumley All-Star Football Game and Queen of Queens competition to Martins Ferry last month, while leaving Ohio County officials scrambling to find replacement venues for football and soccer competition.

Wheeling Park will face Brooke High School at 7 p.m. Aug. 24 at West Liberty University in the school’s football opener. The game against University High School also is scheduled for the WLU campus at 7 p.m. Sept. 15.

“We’re fortunate that it happened when it did and how it did,” Wheeling Park Athletic Director Dwaine Rodgers said of the collapse.

School officials initially believed repair work at the stadium would cost as much as $1 million, but learned in June the price would be $407,000, which is the amount Colaianni Construction bid for the project.

Friday, Colaianni contractors worked to install metal brackets in the concrete panels that remain in place. The new concrete panels needed to fill the hole left on the stadium’s west side are due to arrive this week, Jones said.

“The brackets seem very secure,” Jones said. “We think this will let us keep everything very secure for a very long time.”

The seating section in question was built in 1987, though the stadium itself dates back to 1927. Jones said the school’s insurance policy, held through the West Virginia Board of Risk and Insurance Management, should help offset about 5 percent of the project’s expense.

Rodgers said school officials also had to move Wheeling Park boys’ and girls’ soccer matches, with these games to be split between Wheeling Jesuit University and the J.B. Chambers Memorial Park in East Wheeling.

“We appreciate everyone being so cooperative and helpful,” he said of athletic directors from other schools and those who oversee recreation facilities.

In addition to the University contest, Rodgers and Jones said if the stadium is open, Park would host football games against Cambridge on Sept. 22.

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