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ELKVIEW, W.Va. -- Country music superstar and Glen Dale native Brad Paisley is headed to Kanawha County in August to help the Herbert Hoover High School football team christen its new stadium. It's a welcome event for the Huskies, whose high school was washed away during the devastating Elk River floods of 2016.
The football team announced on its Facebook page that Paisley will visit the new high school in Elkview on Aug. 19. That night, Hoover will face Paisley's alma mater, John Marshall, in a preseason scrimmage, which will start at 6 p.m.
Paisley toured the school in the days following that massive flooding, which left the high school uninhabitable. That fall, Hoover students shared Elkview Middle School classrooms with the middle school students - the middle schoolers taking the mornings and the high schoolers taking the afternoons.
For the 2017-18 school year, Hoover students moved into portable classrooms erected right beside Elkview Middle, which is where they have gone to school ever since, waiting for a new high school to be built.
That new school, which sits on Elk River Road,will include a virtual learning center, career technical area, large science labs, two gymnasiums, and several sports lockers, geothermal heating and cooling, a football field with home bleachers built into the hillside, practice football and soccer fields, tennis courts and batting cages. Construction on the facility began in 2019, and students are expected to move into the new building by the start of the 2023-24 school year.