GRANVILLE, W.Va. — Wind often aids hitters in their quest for power at Kendrick Family Ballpark.
While that was not the case Wednesday when West Virginia welcomed Penn State, one could hardly tell.
The Mountaineers hit six home runs, including three in a six-run first inning as their offense led the way in an 18-7 seven-inning win against Penn State before a crowd of 3,748.
“This game was about practice yesterday. We had a great practice yesterday and kind of went back to some fundamental stuff offensively that we’d kind of got away from,” West Virginia coach Randy Mazey said. “Kudos to our players — they committed to what we were trying to teach them in practice yesterday and carried it over into the game, which isn’t all that easy to do. You live and die by the homer I guess with this team. We hit some this past weekend, but we didn’t pitch well enough to overcome it.”
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Making his first career start on the mound, freshman Chase Meyer overcame two walks to work a scoreless first, and when he came back out to pitch the second, the Mountaineers (29-18) were in complete control.
Logan Sauve hit the first pitch thrown by Penn State (21-21) starter Mason Butash over the wall in left-center field, and it was a sign of things to come.
West Virginia’s first seven batters went on to reach, including JJ Wetherholt on a single, while consecutive base-on-balls created a bases loaded opportunity for Sam White, who singled to left to drive in a pair.
Grant Hussey worked the third walk of the inning and Brodie Kresser immediately followed with a grant slam to left-center for a 7-0 advantage.
“The guys on our team have unbelievable juice. We have guys that can hit the ball far,” Kresser said. “I’m not one of them, but I guess I can run into it. Even if it is windy, our guys can put the ball in the air and make it fly. It’s pretty cool to see.”
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Butash was relieved by Ben DeMell after recording his first and only out, but DeMell’s outing began in the same fashion as that of the Nittany Lions’ starter, with Skylar King connecting for a home run into the right field bullpen to make it 8-0.
The Mountaineers wasted no time adding to their advantage in their second trip to the plate, which began with Reed Chumley’s 427-foot home run off the scoreboard — his team-leading 13th long ball of the season.
White followed with a home run of his own to right, which made it three home runs against DeMell in a six-batter span.
Kresser’s single and a Ben Lumsden double allowed WVU to add to its comfortable advantage later in the second as the home team plated separate runs on a King sacrifice fly and Sauve single to leave PSU with a 12-0 deficit.
“I know one thing — we’ll take the field Friday with confidence,” Mazey said.
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However, the Nittany Lions broke through in a big way offensively in the third to put a scare into WVU.
During that frame, PSU amassed five of its nine hits, and utilized a Bobby Marsh single to bring in its first run, before Tayven Kelley brought in a pair with a single to right-center. That marked the end of Meyer’s outing, which covered eight outs. He was replaced by Bryce Amos, who faced three hitters and failed to record an out as the Nittany Lions drew closer by scoring a fourth run on a wild pitch, two on Joe Jaconski’s single and again on a J.T. Marr single that trimmed the WVU advantage to five.
“We needed a game just like this,” Mazey said. “We didn’t need them to score seven in one inning, but we needed some guys to start swinging the bat and it’s good to see that, and we needed some guys that pitched to pitch.”
Any thought of PSU coming closer to completing a rally, however, was largely put to rest in the home half of that inning as the Mountaineers scored three runs with two outs — one each on Hussey’s double, Kresser’s single and Lumsden’s single, all of which came off Will Perkowski.
West Virginia got its sixth and final home run in the fourth when Wetherholt belted a 439-foot shot to right that made it 16-7.
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“The reason this is not an easy park to hit home runs in is because the wind is swirling a lot sometimes,” Wetherholt said. “With no wind, it’s a normal park and the ball carries and it doesn’t get affected. Pretty much all of us have enough power to get it out to any field, but when wind is blowing in a certain direction, it kills homers. No wind is perfectly fine with me.”
Ellis Garcia, pinch-hitting for King, made the most of his opportunity in the fifth and drove in two with a double that pushed the lead back to double figures.
After Tommy Beam worked a scoreless fifth and sixth, Aidan Smith followed suit in the seventh, enabling WVU to finish off the victory early as a result of a 10-run mercy rule.
In addition to driving in five runs, Kresser was 4-for-4.
“We really emphasize on hitting off speed up the middle and hitting balls up the middle. The middle is where you make your money and you’re going to win a lot of games when you hit up the middle,” Kresser said. “I didn’t change too much. Kept my approach and saw it well.”
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Wetherholt added three hits and Sauve, White, Hussey and Lumsden had two apiece in what marked the Mountaineers’ ninth straight home win (their last home loss came back on March 30 against Oklahoma State).
“We couldn’t do that if it wasn’t for the fans and people in the community,” Mazey said. “Asterisk on those last nine wins for the atmosphere the community has created.”
Meyer was credited with the win after allowing five runs in 2 2/3 innings. He struck out five and walked five.
Maxx Yehl threw 1 1/3 scoreless innings and was the first of three consecutive WVU relievers to log a scoreless outing.
Butash fell to 1-4 after being charged with seven runs.
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The matchup marked either the fourth or fifth to last home game for Mazey, who will retire at the conclusion of this season.
WVU is set to welcome Kansas State for a three-game series starting Friday and is attempting to add what would be a final home game for Mazey on Tuesday.
“You guys keep reminding me and so does my wife. I don’t want this to be about me,” Mazey said. “If it becomes about me, that’ll be a huge distraction. I want it to be about the kids, the fans and the community and just do what we do. When I’ve coached my last game, it can be about me because it doesn’t affect this year’s team anymore. As long as this team is playing and playing well and has a chance to do something, it needs to be about them.”
CHARLESTON, W.Va (WCHS) — As the conversation around two large transmission lines being built through parts West Virginia continues, the biggest question remaining is, will ratepayers be impacted?
The Valley North project is on the table and it would span from Putnam County to Frederick County, Maryland, totaling to 260 miles. Two new substations would also be built, one in Hardy County and the other in Frederick County Maryland.
According to the project website, these lines would strengthen the grid to deliver more reliable and affordable electricity to homes, hospitals, schools and businesses.
Energy Efficent West Virginia policy director, Emmett Pepper said, building these lines will not strengthen the power that we get at home.
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“We have some of the least reliable electricity in the country here in West Virginia. That’s not because of the large transmission lines that we see their tower above us. It’s because of the local distribution lines, the ones that come close to our homes. While there can be some small amount of benefit potentially from the big transmission lines going in, it is the local lines that are the problem and that is not being addressed by this,” he said.
Lawmakers we spoke with earlier this month said between both transmission line projects, West Virginia could have to front the bill for anywhere between $440 million to $900 million.
“This is going to be more cost for rate payers and will not fix our problems here. There are other places in the region that have issues with transmission, but that’s not our issue,” Pepper said.
He said he’d like to see state leaders take action to ensure these costs don’t fall back on ratepayers.
“I think we need to have a rate payers’ bill of rights that would actually protect people and have a plan for how we’re going to deal with this so that it has less of an impact on rate payers,” he said.
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Multiple open houses are scheduled for this project in West Virginia:
-Berkeley County, WV: July 7, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. Holiday Inn Martinsburg Foxcroft Ballroom
– Hampshire County, WV: July 8, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m Bottling Works Event Center
– Tucker County, WV:July 8, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m.Tucker County High School
– Hardy County, WV: July 9, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. Misty Mountain Event Barn
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– Barbour County, WV: July 15, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. Philippi Middle School
– Lewis County, WV: July 16, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. Robert L. Bland Middle School
– Upshur County, WV: July 16, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. The Event Center at Brushy Fork
– Harrison County, WV: July 21, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. South Harrison High School
– Preston County, WV: July 21, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. Craig Civic Center
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– Calhoun County, WV: July 22, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. Calhoun County Middle-High School
– Gilmer County, WV: July 22, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. Glenville State University Waco Center
– Braxton County, WV: July 23, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. Days Inn Flatwood Conference Center
– Grant County, WV: July 23, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. Landes Arts Center
– Kanawha County, WV: July 28, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. Sissonville Middle School
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– Roane County, WV: July 28, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. Spencer Armory
– Jackson County, WV: July 29, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. Greene Center
– Putnam County, WV: July 29, 2026 | 4:00 – 7:30 p.m. Poca High School
The grim discovery was made on the morning of June 14 on Cabin Creek Road in Kanawha County. PHOTO: WCHS TV
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A Putnam County man has been identified as the victim in a homicide from two weeks ago.
The Kanawha County Sheriff’s Office announced Tuesday afternoon that the victim was Joseph Lovett, 28, of Hurricane. Human remains were discovered near a burning vehicle in the 300 block of Cabin Creek Road on June 14. Those remains were sent to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to be identified.
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Harold Patterson
A man was already in custody in connection to Lovett’s death. A coordinated law enforcement effort from Kanawha and Putnam counties, in addition to North Carolina authorities, led to the arrest of Harold Patterson, 27, of Laurinburg, North Carolina, on June 16.
Patterson was charged with first-degree murder.
He’s being held in the Scotland County Detention Center in North Carolina, pending extradition back to West Virginia.
The Kanawha County Sheriff’s Office said the investigation is ongoing.
by Jasmine Milbourne, Mountain State Spotlight June 30, 2026
HUNDRED, W.Va, — Every day, Austin Hayes drives with his mom through the mountains of West Virginia’s northern corridor heading east to school. A once proud Hundred High School Hornet, Hayes is now an incoming junior at North Marion High School in Farmington.
After the consolidation of his high school in Wetzel County, Hayes decided to attend school in another county. His commute is about 20 minutes, but that’s only a fifth of the time some of his former classmates travel to their new school, Valley High.
“There’s a lot of kids that have to sit on the bus, that was the main complaint,” he said. “The bus times.”
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In November 2024, the Wetzel County Board of Education voted to consolidate four of the county’s high schools into two. Students at Paden City High School would go to Magnolia High School and those at Hundred High School would go to Valley High School. By 2029, all students would go to one school.
Students in Wetzel County are hardly alone. Across West Virginia, public schools are rapidly closing. Political leaders are cutting taxes and funneling hundreds of millions of taxpayer money into a school voucher program, while wringing their hands about local school financial struggles.
Meanwhile students, parents and community members in Wetzel County want change. They’d like elected officials and bureaucrats to listen more to the people, fix the school funding formula and try to protect other communities from losing their schools.
Before the Wetzel County school board voted to consolidate, board members held public meetings at multiple schools in the county to hear the community’s concerns.
Hayes, then a student at Hundred High School, joined the teachers, staff and other community members who came out. He participated in football, basketball and track.
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Austin Hayes, began attending school in Marion county after his previous school, Hundred High, in Wetzel County, consolidated with Valley High at the end of the 2024 – 2025 school year. Courtesy Photo
“A lot of Hundred students that go to Valley now, sit on the bus for at least an hour every day, just going one way, and it’s just unfeasible for a lot of Hundred students to have the same opportunities for after-school sports and stuff,” he said.
A mother of three, Abby Tennant’s youngest child attended Paden City High School before it shut down. “I loved Paden City,” Tennant said. “Everybody knew my daughter, they knew what was going on with her. She needed help. It was freely given.”
Tennant went to multiple board meetings, asking questions and raising concerns about what this would mean for the students. After the consolidation decision, she opted to put her daughter in school in another county.
Wetzel County school board member Jimmy Glasscock was the only member to vote against both consolidations. He said he was disappointed that the board didn’t listen to the voters in the county.
“We’ve lost our students, we’ve lost our communities, we’ve lost our teachers, we’ve lost our service personnel, we just continue losing, and we will continue losing,” he said.
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Following the county school board’s vote to consolidate, the West Virginia Board of Education met and voted to approve the consolidation.
“I went to the state board meeting and spoke out against it as well, and honestly, that disappointed me just as much,” Hayes said. He said that neither the county nor the state school boards had adequately addressed concerns the community shared.
Since attending North Marion, Hayes doesn’t participate in as many extracurriculars or sports.
In this year’s legislative session, Sen. Jay Taylor, R-Taylor, sponsored a bill that would have required a county vote before closing schools. Although Taylor is a member of the Senate Education Committee, he said he doesn’t know why the bill didn’t come up for a vote.
“I wanted to protect rural schools,” Taylor said. He believes more money should be going to the students and that part of that change is fixing the funding formula.
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School funding formula ‘outdated and convoluted’
Schools around West Virginia are hemorrhaging enrollment. State school board President Paul Hardesty warned in January that financial hardship and closures they were seeing in Hancock County were only the beginning. This month, he said up to 20 schools could close in the coming year.
Since 2019, 70 public schools have closed and over 30,000 students have left the West Virginia public school system. In the last year, Wetzel County Public Schools have lost over 150 students, dipping below 2,000 students in the county.
At the beginning of this year’s legislative session, House legislators heard from consultants they had hired to study the state’s public education system. The consultants told them they needed to rework the state’s school funding formula and cap the Hope Scholarship. Lawmakers made no changes to either.
Wetzel County is the biggest producer of oil and gas in the state, but the drilling boom hasn’t brought the prosperity that advocates predicted, as the school funding formula bases pay for teachers on enrollment. And the county’s enrollment doesn’t support the number of teachers on the payroll.
Del. Bill Bell, a fifth-grade teacher in Wetzel County, said, “The formula itself is outdated and convoluted.”
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Bell campaigned during the Republican primary on strengthening public schools and ensuring that teachers and service personnel were compensated competitively. He lost.
Sen. Charles Clements, R-Wetzel, served as the vice chair of the Senate Education Committee. He sponsored a bill this year that would have updated the school aid formula mandating funding for 1,200 students per county even if enrollment falls below that. The education committee never put the bill on the agenda.
“We have a constitutional obligation to provide an education to the students in West Virginia,” Clements said. He is not running for reelection.
Clements’ bill was among several proposed changes to the formula. Other proposals included one by Del. Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, that would have created a block grant for all counties and a supplemental account for special needs students. Ellington introduced the legislation in February, and the clock ran out on the session while lawmakers were still talking about it. He did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Beyond the classroom
Jessup Higgins, a 2026 graduate of Magnolia High School, is hoping to go to community college for electrical work. He was originally a student at Paden City before it closed.
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“It was definitely a nerve-wracking transfer to Magnolia, because I didn’t know anybody there, and I had no idea what it was going to be like, because it’s probably three times the [size] school that I went to,” Higgins said.
He attended the Wetzel County Technical Education Center during his high school career. He said that aside from his family, he doesn’t plan to stay in Wetzel to explore other opportunities.
“[I’d] like to leave my hometown and go, you know, see what the world has to offer,” Higgins said. “And also, there isn’t a whole lot of money around here.”
Lisa Stillion, a retired nurse who taught in both Wetzel and Ohio counties believes the state needs to invest in broadband, infrastructure and technical education programs to keep its students.
“Our state just keeps losing people, and there’s nothing you can do to replace them, because the industry is just not here,” she said.
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The Paden City High School building now houses a few small businesses.
In November 2025, the Wetzel County school board purchased land in Porters Falls to build a new campus that will include a new career and technical center. Part of pulling their resources together is making sure they have qualified teachers including those for technical education.
“I think these kids need to be better prepared for what’s going to be their career and their way of supporting themselves as they graduate,” Stillion said. “Not every kid’s going to college, and that mindset needs to be looked at.”
Born and raised in Paden City, Rodney McWilliams is a 1984 graduate of Paden City High School. He is a distinguished alumni award winner. McWilliams believes part of keeping people in the communities is making sure their schools stay open and investing in their students.
He said there aren’t many business or work opportunities in Paden City that would make people stay in the community otherwise. McWilliams is the president of the Paden City Foundation, a philanthropic organization that gives scholarships to Paden City High School alumni and supports various civic projects around the city.
He opposed the decision to consolidate the schools because he said the school was the main hub of the town.
“My interest is basically sentimental for myself and for people that hold the school near and dear, historical reasons,” he said. “And, also, to keep the town on the map.”
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This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2026/06/30/school-closures-impact-communities/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://mountainstatespotlight.org”>Mountain State Spotlight</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/mountainstatespotlight.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/cropped-MountainStateSpotlight-Icon.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
