By Liz Beavers
lbeavers@newstribune.info
managing editor

KEYSER —After giving a report Tuesday on the recently stepped-up efforts to get the new Keyser High School Sports Complex ready for play this fall, Superintendent of Schools Skip Hackworth said that it finally looks like Keyser High's “Field of Dreams will become a Field of Reality.”
Board member Craig Rotruck, however,  had some strong words about whose job it was to oversee the progress at the newly named Tornado Alley.
Noting that Hackworth's and the board's main priority has to be “to put every student in a class and make sure every class has a teacher,” Rotruck said he felt KHS principal Charles Wimer and athletic director Ken Griffith should have played a bigger role in making sure the necessary work was getting done at the field.
“I've read the newspaper articles, and there's been a lot of finger-pointing,” he said during the regular Mineral County Board of Education meeting.
“To me, that means a lack of leadership on the part of Mr. Wimer and Mr. Griffith.”
Rotruck said he realizes that Wimer also has the duty of getting the high school ready to accept students on Aug. 26. He added, however, that he felt Wimer and Griffith had not been there when they were needed for construction at the field.
“Their not being there, I feel, has slowed down the process,” he said.
Hackworth said, however, that Wimer's main priority as principal must be getting the high school ready to open for the year, and that he had been busy in meetings in preparation for that.
Noting that while they want to get the sports complex done, he said, “it's still our priority to get ready for the new school year.”
Hackworth also said he would be “remiss” if he didn't thank Bob Harman, John I. Rogers and Ron Kuykendall for all their efforts in raising funds and working toward getting the
facility built. Harman chaired the original Keyser High School Athletic Facilities Committee, and Rogers and Kuykendall are co-chairs of the Keyser High School Campaign Committee, which has sought contributions to be used both for the sports complex and for academic scholarships.
“I want to emphasize that this is a community project, not a school project,” Hackworth said, adding that there are still needs which the community will be asked to help fund.
“I met with those two gentlemen on Friday, and we discussed some other fund raising strategies,” he said of Rogers and Kuykendall.
And while Rotruck said emphatically Tuesday that he does not want to be “the laughing stock of 'Red Neck football,'” referring to a comment made over the weekend by Athletic Boosters President Gary Nelson in regard to a multi-million-dollar stadium using Port-a-Pots because the restrooms are not finished, Hackworth noted that when the Golden Tornado played at University High in Morgantown last fall, the situation at that school was similar.
Although the new state-of-the-art high school was in operation, the sports complex had not yet been finished, and the school was forced to use “tents for concession stands and Port-a-Pots.”
Hackworth said his main concern is to make sure the necessities are ready for the season.
“If we have to dress at the high school because the locker rooms aren't done, then that's not really bad,” he said.
“It's better than we've had for the past 10 years.”