MORGANTOWN — The Country Roads Barbecue Clash is bringing food, kid friendly fun, and music to Mylan Park this weekend to support the Hoss Foundation’s Family Resource Center.
The center will take up an entire floor of the new WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital. It will offer laundry services, dining, living rooms, tutoring for siblings and more, said Amy Hostetler, executive director of the Hoss Foundation.
“We’re trying to bring normalcy back to families in the hospital and trying to help in the areas, the everyday luxuries they don’t get,” she said.
A local restaurant owner suggested holding a barbecue event and “now we just dug deep and it turned into a three-day festival,” Hostetler said.
The rock band Gin Blossoms kicked the festival off with a concert on Friday night.
Today and Sunday attendees can watch competitors in a Kansas City Barbecue Society prepare their meats to be judged by professional KCBS judges, logistics manager Jamie Summerland said.
The competitors will turn in two meats each day — chicken, pork, ribs, and brisket.
While the public won’t be able to sample the competition goods there are multiple barbecue vendors, artisanal vendors and craft vendors, Summerland said.
Today features a kids’ zone with inflatable slides and bounce houses and Sunday there will be characters from Paw Prints. There are also other kid-friendly activities on both days such as face painting.
“We thought happy kids, happy parents,” Hostetler said. “And you know, our foundation is to help kids in the hospital so we wanted to make sure we brought a kid-friendly environment here.”
Admission is $10 a day for adults and kids 12 and under are free.
Today will feature live music inside the community center by After the Fall and Helicopters. Sunday the Nighthawks will take the stage.
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