VALDOSTA — The TitleTown trophy will have a permanent home at the James H. Rainwater Conference Center.

In a meeting last week area superintendents, city and county officials and a university representative met to discuss the appropriate place to showcase the trophy.

Lowndes County Superintendent Dr. Steve Smith, Valdosta City Superintendent Dr. Bill Cason, Mayor John Fretti, Valdosta State University Athletic Director Herb Reinhard, Lowndes County Chairman Rod Casey and the James H. Rainwater Conference Center Executive Director Don Poor discussed three possible locations for the trophy.

The meeting was held at the conference center.

City Hall, the conference center and the airport were considered as options for the trophy’s location.

“We felt that (the conference center) would be the location where it would be seen by the largest number of people, both local and those from out of town,” Reinhard said. “Valdosta State University is very comfortable with that decision.”

The TitleTown trophy will be on display at Saturday night’s season opener against Fort Valley State, he said.

“We just felt like we needed to put this thing to rest,” Smith said. “We’re head of the agencies that were primarily responsible, not that there weren’t others, for the TitleTown award.”

A trophy case will be built to house the trophy and memorabilia from VSU, LCS and VCS will also be used to tell the story the path to TitleTown.

“It is a community wide thing, it’s something the entire community did, not just one school district or another school district,” Cason said. “It needs to be in a place where everybody can share it.”

Smith said LCS also plans to buy an acrylic replica of the trophy in the future and that other entities and area schools will be able to do so as well.

A replica trophy will cost around $600 while the actual trophy cost $10,000.

“Ironically the people primarily responsible for winning the trophy, Lowndes, Valdosta and VSU, none of us felt like it needed to be at our campuses,” Smith said.

Georgia Christian School is the last area school that has yet to use the trophy for a special event.

Valwood, VSU, LCS and VCS have all used or plan to use the trophy.