Last Friday's football game was more than just X's and O's for Pisgah, Canton

Aug. 25—Sometimes a football game means more than touchdowns and extra points, fumble recoveries and pass interceptions, and blocking and tackling.

The folks here in Haywood County certainly know that to be a fact, as the annual battle between the Mountaineers of Waynesville's Tuscola High School and the Black Bears of Canton's Pisgah High School has long been heralded as one of the top gridiron rivalries in the Southeast. The County Clash pits cousins against cousins and co-workers against co-workers in a competition for bragging rights until the next game rolls around.

But for the players, coaches and fans of the Pisgah Bears, last weekend's season-opening home game against another mountain rival, the Brevard Blue Devils, represented a true homecoming. That's because the game was the first to be played in Pisgah's home stadium since the devastating flooding spawned by Tropical Storm Fred back in August of 2021.

Perched near the banks of the Pigeon River, the high school's Pisgah Memorial Stadium was one of hundreds of structures damaged by the raging floodwaters that claimed the lives of six people upstream in the community of Cruso.

Homes were destroyed, lives were shattered and businesses were closed. A recent drive I took along U.S. 276 through Bethel and Cruso and up to the Blue Ridge Parkway revealed there is still a lot of recovery work to be done.

After the floods, the Pisgah team did not have the opportunity to compete on their home turf for two years, playing their so-called "home games" at neutral sites at nearby high school stadiums in 2021 and being forced to visit the stadiums of all their opponents in 2022.

That pair of flood-disrupted seasons followed on the heels of the global COVID-19 pandemic, which affected just about every aspect of life in 2020. Like other high school students across the state, Pisgah students faced shuttered classrooms, virtual learning, parking lot drive-by graduations and no football in the fall, as games were postponed to the 2021 spring semester.

And, back in March of this year came the shocking news that the Pactiv-Evergreen paper mill in downtown Canton would be closing for good in a matter of mere months. The plant had served as a rallying cry and point of pride of the Pisgah Bears, who proudly wore the blue-collar label of "Mill Town."

That's a whole lot of hardship to pile onto a small, tightknit mountain community. So it comes as no surprise that, when the Pisgah Bears could finally lace up the cleats and strap on the helmets last Friday, the stands of Pisgah Memorial Stadium were packed and overflowing with community members and fans eager to find some sense of normalcy.

As sports reporter Aarik Long reported in this publication earlier this week, it had been 875 days without a Pisgah football game taking place on the artificial turf of Memorial Stadium. For some members of the team, it represented the first game they had ever played on their home field.

Adding to the celebratory atmosphere was a newly unveiled tradition — just before kickoff, the sky above the stadium was filled with the loud blasting of an old steam whistle from the paper plant, the same whistle that once sounded the start and end of another day of work in the mill.

Here's another piece of evidence that this was not your typical opening night of football for Pisgah. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who along with elected leaders has provided much-needed state level support to the town of Canton after the floods and the closure of the mill, was on hand to conduct the pregame coin toss.

It's understandable that more than a few tears were shed last Friday night at Pisgah High School by players, coaches, family and fans. Thankfully, this time around they were tears of joy rather than tears of sorrow.

While it did mean more than just a typical football game, the Pisgah vs. Brevard season-opening tilt nevertheless was a game. The Bears' 24-10 victory was the icing on the cake, giving Canton residents another reason to smile as they departed the resurrected stadium for the first time in two years.

Bill Studenc, who began his career in journalism and communications at The Mountaineer in 1983, retired in January 2021 as chief communications officer at Western Carolina University. He now writes about life in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

"That's a whole lot of hardship to pile onto a small, tightknit mountain community."