Irvin Smith was scared.

He was in eighth grade at Poolesville, back when it housed the middle and high school, and a budding football star. Smith said he was advised by everyone that he needed to transfer to Seneca Valley if he had any chance of being recognized in the sport.

No one, he recalled being told, would offer him a scholarship if he stayed at a school that was so far on the western outskirts of the county that it was often forgotten.

Before he made his decision, he went to Howard Lyles, the teacher, coach and athletic director whom many students considered a mentor. Lyles sat him down. He told Smith to stay loyal to his community and the kids he grew up with. This was where he was from, and these were his roots. Just because he was from Poolesville didn’t mean he couldn’t dream big.

So Smith stayed. And by the time he graduated from high school, he had his pick of offers from 13 Division I schools.

“He wasn’t just a coach — he was a role model,” said Smith, who graduated from Poolesville in 1985 and went off to play for the University of Maryland. “He was a dad, even though I had a dad; he was my dad at school. It was just like a family thing. He was very respected and a great person.”

On Friday night, Smith and about two dozen of Lyles’ former students and players returned to the high school. The campus has been overhauled after decades of community activism. For the last five years, construction crews have torn the school apart, expanding the building and renovating areas like the gym and cafeteria.

Next month, the final two indoor projects will be completed, officially ending one era and moving into a new one. But the community didn’t want to move forward without first honoring its history. So on Friday, at halftime of Poolesville’s football game against Einstein, the community came together to honor Lyles by naming the stadium after him.

Lyles was unable to attend the ceremony due to health complications, but his nephew, Gregory Brooks, was there for the ceremony.

“He didn’t want to make a big deal about this, because he doesn’t like to make a big deal about stuff, but he was happy this was happening,” Brooks said.

Lyles was born in Jerusalem, a historic Black community right outside of Poolesville. In 1956, Lyles was one of the first six Black students to integrate the school. He excelled in athletics, especially baseball, and had the opportunity to play for the Orioles. Instead, he became a teacher and returned to Poolesville in 1968, where he remained until his retirement in 1994.

The multi-sport coach loved to challenge students to contests — field-goal competitions, sprints, you name it — said Link Hoewing, a former student. After he beat them, and he almost always did, he would make a hissing sound and walk away without a word.

He also believed strongly in teamwork. During a playoff basketball game, the team was down at halftime but the star player was bragging about how well he was playing, Hoewing remembers. Lyles wouldn’t have it. He pulled the star player, and the star had to beg Lyles to get back into the game.

“I think you could’ve heard a pin drop because he was good and we needed him, honestly,” said Hoewing, who is now the chair of the Fair Access Committee for Western Montgomery County. “But we ended up winning that game because it actually showed us that he did care about the team.”

When Lyles retired, he felt that the gym and school were too small, Hoewing said. Many in the community felt similarly. For the past 30 years, Poolesville residents have been lobbying Montgomery County Public Schools to modernize the high school and its facilities, Hoewing said.

Poolesville, with about 5,700 residents, has always felt ignored by the county.

“It’s kind of like out of sight, out of mind,” Hoewing said. “Most of the attention goes down where there’s a lot more people and a lot more voters.”

After a selection process, Poolesville was initially included in the MCPS’s fiscal 2013-2018 Capital Improvement Program, which would have funded the school’s upgrades. But it was removed from the program in 2017 due to budget cuts. So the community banded together to advocate for the high school’s renovation again. In 2021, the Board of Education approved the renovation.

The $60.2 million renovation began in 2022, and the school remained open during the process.

Sports practices were relocated to local parks, churches and middle schools. Girls and boys varsity basketball teams had to play their games on the road.

In 2024, the first phase of the renovation was completed, with 140,000 square feet added to the school. The second phase is now nearly done, and the final two indoor pieces — the cafeteria and media center — will be ready on Nov. 4.

“We were running a school literally in the middle of a construction area,” principal Mark Carothers said. “If you were to drive past the road, everything looked like construction, but in the middle of it was our school, still trying to function and provide the same level of education environment that we hold ourselves accountable for.”

But now, with it nearly complete, they can finally move forward. The cafeteria no longer doubles as storage and can fit all the students inside. The four magnet programs each have their own hubs and open spaces for student collaboration. They have a new gym with a higher ceiling — they’ll no longer have to worry about their volleyballs hitting the ceiling or gym classes fighting for space.

“It means a lot to the community. I think it means a lot to the students to feel as though they’re finally getting the facilities and the experience that you would expect for any student,” said Beth Singh, a parent of one current student and one graduate. “For that to come to fruition after all these years, I think that’s fantastic.”

In 2021, after plans to renovate the school were finalized, the conversation then moved to whom they should name the stadium after. Lyles’ name was the one that came up most.

“It’s just great to honor somebody who has not just had an impact on Poolesville High School as a teacher and a coach but also that more historical impact of integrating the school and then becoming a longtime staff member at the very school that he integrated,” Carothers said. “I just think it’s a fantastic story that really does need to be honored and remembered for generations to come.”