Just a few finishing touches need to be done and the new Portsmouth High School Football Stadium will be completed. Lockers need to be installed in the huge fieldhouse, and carpeting in the team room and coaches office, and a bolt tightened here and there and it will be complete in plenty of time for the first game, Sept. 5.

What is extraordinary about this beautiful state-of-the-art complex is the amount of time devoted to the construction.

A lot of people rolled their eyes when Ralph Applegate, the Portsmouth facilities director, said in November before construction had begun, that the Trojans would play their first home game in that facility. They are not rolling their eyes now.

It is a reality. They will be ready for the Trojans to come running through the fog machine out of the tunnel and onto the field.

This is going to be some event at some facility.

Sports fans will love watching football games from the huge bleachers overlooking the recessed Sports Turf field, or watching the action on the baseball field a few hundred yards from the football field.

Portsmouth High School graduates will be thrilled by how J & H Erectors has incorporated parts of the former city school buildings in the actual infrastructure.

Everyone else will be taken by the aesthetic attraction — colors mingled with the natural surroundings, and the way the facility sets off the things around it. Second Presbyterian Church is even more accented by the facility than that historical structure was before construction began.

It's something everyone must see.

So make sure you have a ticket for the first game on Sept. 5, and plan to take it all in. There is nothing else like it in the area.

Hats off to Ralph Applegate, and all of those involved in the concept and bringing it to fruition. New PHS memories begin this year.

As Ralph put it — "It's a place that is going to build memories for the next generation."

We couldn't agree more.