Times' Game of the Week Preview: Blackhawk at Beaver Falls (Reeves Field)

BEAVER FALLS – Pittsburgh CW, the sister station of KDKA-TV, will televise 10 WPIAL high school games during the regular season. It kicks off its coverage Friday by sending its camera crew and announcers to Geneva College’s Reeves Field.

Obviously, the powers-to-be at KDKA believe Blackhawk vs. Beaver Falls will be a Week Zero blockbuster.

It would be a reach to say Cougars vs. Tigers is one of the WPIAL’s hottest rivalries. But their high schools are only six miles apart. And it is the first night of a new season.

So, the stands are Reeves Field figure to be jam packed.

“It’s one of those things that you’re going to run into players from both teams all the time, whether you’re going down to Oram’s (Donut Shop) in their territory or you’re at Applebee’s (restaurant) in our territory,” said Blackhawk coach Pat Feeley. “There’s always a Beaver Falls/Blackhawk mix in our communities. It’s one of our best attended games of the season.

“There’s definitely that respect factor and pride factor. Who’s going to have the right to the (15010) zip code?”

Beaver Falls coach Nick Nardone agrees.

“We’re excited when we play them and I know they’re excited when they play us,” Nardone said. “We all know how close we are. A lot of our kids know their kids, and vice versa.”

Actually, before Blackhawk High School opened in 1973, many students who lived in communities such as Patterson Heights, Patterson Township, West Mayfield, and Chippewa Township attended Beaver Falls High School.

The first time Blackhawk and Beaver Falls played on the football field was in 1974 when John Barley coached the Cougars and Larry Bruno coached the Tigers. Beaver Falls won that night 21-0.

Since then, the two schools have only met on the football field 25 times. Blackhawk leads the series 19-7.

From 2006 through 2017, Beaver Falls and Blackhawk didn’t play each other. But they have played four times in the past five years, including the past two in what the WPIAL calls Week Zero games.

In those past four meetings, each team has won twice. Two years ago, Blackhawk won 31-20. Last year, Beaver Falls won 22-7.

“Our athletic director and their athletic director got together and made it happen,” Nardone said.

“Because of the proximity of the two schools, this is a game that’s good for both communities. It’s one of our more-packed games of the season in terms of crowd size. People get excited when Beaver Falls and Blackhawk play. So we made sure if we didn’t get it as a (non-conference) game scheduled by the WPIAL, we’d play it in Week Zero.”

Both teams enter Friday’s game with all the optimism that a new season brings. That being said, there are some basic differences between the two squads.

Blackhawk and Beaver Falls have each won their share of WPIAL titles. The Cougars have won four, but all in the 1990s – the last in 1996 -- when Joe Hamilton was their coach. The Tigers have won five WPIAL titles, most recently in 2016 when Ryan Matsook was coach and then again in 2020 with Nardone at the helm.

Blackhawk, which has gone 2-6, 2-8 and 4-7 the past three years, underwent a coaching change less than a month ago when Zack Hayward resigned as coach and athletic director to become the A.D. at Chartiers Valley. Luckily for the Cougars, the transition wasn’t difficult. Feeley has been a long-time Blackhawk assistant and was part of Hamilton’s and Hayward’s coaching staffs.

“We took our lumps last year,” Feeley said of a few 2022 losses, specifically 42-0 and 54-3 mercy-rule setbacks to Class 4A Parkway Conference powers Aliquippa and Central Valley, respectively.

“But we had a freshman on the offensive line and a sophomore at quarterback. So we thought that down the road, those experiences would pay off, and hopefully this is the year it pays off. Four wins shouldn’t be our goal. Doubling that, making the playoffs and ultimately making it to Acrisure (Stadium) should be the goal.”

One of the reasons for optimism is that Blackhawk returns most of its skill position players. Back for his second season as quarterback will be junior Stephen Knallay. His top two targets figure to be senior wide receiver Dontae Campagna, who’s been starting since his freshman season, and 6-foot-4 junior Tyler Heckathorn, who’s moving from tight end to wideout. After leading the Cougars in rushing last year as a junior, running back Maurice Watson-Trent is back for his senior season.

Defensively, senior linebacker Thomas Price may be the Cougars’ best defensive player. Feeley believes he’s a candidate for Defensive Player of the Year honors in the Parkway Conference.

This past Saturday, Blackhawk scrimmaged Steel Valley, the team that beat Beaver Falls last year in the WPIAL Class 2A championship game.

“We did OK,” Feeley said. “We didn’t do terrible but we didn’t play well enough to win the scrimmage. Steel Valley was a great test, and we had a couple guys out. We made some mistakes so we’re working on those mistakes this week at practice. I liked our kids’ intensity. They did make some mistakes but they kept coming back. They kept on fighting.”

Meanwhile, Beaver Falls is reloading after a spectacular three-year run in which they went 11-2, 9-4 and 11-2, respectively, with one WPIAL title and two appearances in the WPIAL championship game.

They did graduate two dynamic stars from last year in quarterback Jaren Brickner and wide receiver/defensive back Trey Singleton, who are both playing college football at Fairmont State University in West Virginia.

Brickner was a four-year starter who holds most BF passing records while Singleton caught 33 passes last year for 1,067 yards while also rushing for 351 yards. In all, he scored 20 TDs.

And the Tigers do have two of the best linemen in the Beaver County area in Sy’Mauri McCoy, a 6-foot-3, 280-pound senior who shared Lineman of the Year honors last year in the Midwestern Conference with Mohawk’s Colton Root, and Damien Lee, a 6-foot, 280-pound senior.

“Beaver Falls always has great athletes,” Feeley said. “They have such great pure speed. And those two guys (McCoy and Lee) up front, they’re monsters. They have such a destructive influence on both sides of the ball.”

This past Saturday, Beaver Falls scrimmaged North Catholic, a Class 4A program.

“It was a good scrimmage for us,” Nardone said. “North Catholic is a good 4A school. They gave us a great test. It was a physical scrimmage which we liked because we’ll be playing some bigger schools in the next few weeks in non-conference games. That prepares us for when we start our conference games. We came out of the scrimmage healthy so it was real good work.”

So, the stage is set for Friday night at Reeves Field.

Two football teams whose schools are located just a few miles apart from each other trying to start off the 2023 season on the right foot.

“Our kids are pumped up. I’m sure their kids are pumped up. And it’s on (Pittsburgh) CW.” Feeley said. “It’s going to be a great game to watch.”

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Times' Game of the Week Preview: Blackhawk at Beaver Falls (Reeves Field)