The crown jewel of the high school sports scene in Wheeling will stay put at least another four years.
The Super Six, which features each of West Virginia’s three high school football state championships, will remain in Wheeling through 2023.
Bluefield also made a pitch to host the Super Six in a rotation format that would have allowed the event to alternate between the northern and southern parts of West Virginia every other year.
“It looked like Bluefield made a couple trips to Wheeling and their team has obviously made a lot of trips so they know a lot of what goes on,” WVSSAC Executive Director Bernie Dolan said. “They tried to do a lot of what Wheeling’s done and it was close, but for the time being, the security of knowing exactly what you have is good.”
The 2020 Super Six will mark 27 consecutive years the event has been held in Wheeling.
“The kickoff banquet, great facilities, academic achievement brunch, scholarship money, a team host and band host, there’s a lot of things that they’ve done,” Dolan said. “Bluefield’s was very similar and they recognized Wheeling does a good job. They wanted to put their own prints on it and it was well put together and well represented.”
Wheeling Island Stadium hosts the Class AA title game Friday night, while the Class AAA and Class A finals are played Saturday at the same site.
The plan for the Super Six South had called for the title games to be played at both Mitchell Stadium — the home field of both Bluefield and Graham (Va.) — and Princeton’s Hunnicutt Stadium.
“Wheeling’s done it for twenty-six years so they’ve had an opportunity to grow their program over that time,” Dolan said. “I’d encourage Bluefield to continue to look at it and hopefully they’re back at the table in four years.”