PA HS Football Rivalries Part 3

The chat with the Pennsylvania High School Football Historian continues with some foes on the West with Farrell against Sharon and Beaver Falls versus Aliquippa.

The Pennsylvania Football History expert from PAFBHISTORY.com is the man with the plan when it comes to collecting data about high school football history in the Commonwealth of PA. He has tapped into Dr. Roger Saylor, the legendary gridiron historian from Penn State, combed through Newspapers.com for tidbits and continues to gather photos, stats, and stories from experts around the country on PA High School Pigskin. The Historian's social media presence is strong especially in the Twitter-sphere, @pa_fb_history. He placed a recent question on Twitter about what people believe the biggest Pennsylvania High School rivalries are. The response was overwhelming and we were lucky to get a chance to sit down with him to go over some of the most talked-about answers to his posted question. They are in no particular ranked order and just a random sampling of some of the more popular ones. This is such good stuff that we are going to break our conversation into multiple parts so that the rivalries don't get lost in the shuffle, and the appreciation of each and the value they bring to all of football can be appreciated.

The third part of our discussion took us to two fierce scholastic arch-rival games in PA.

When the Sharon High School Tigers play the Farrell High Steelers it comes down to some talented hard-nosed football. It is so hard-nosed that they had to call this rivalry game the Steel Bowl.

The two schools are located only a few miles apart from each other in the hotbed of Mercer County football that has rivals Hickory High and Kennedy Catholic not far from these venues as well. At the time of this piece the Farrell Steelers and Sharon Tigers teams had faced each other 68 times and the competitiveness is so evenly matched that 35 of these have been decided by one score. Sharon holds a slight edge in wins but it easily could be the other way around.

These two arch rivals are in the same class for at least 2022 and 2023.

Talk about barnburners with top talent, well how about Aliquippa versus Beaver Falls in this Pittsburgh suburb WPIAL match-up.

These two schools located West of Pittsburgh boast some of the finest football talent to have ever come out of one area. The PA Football Historian shares the names of multiple NFL Hall of Fame players that once competed in this rivalry.

The Aliquippa Quips are so well reknown that even Sports Illustrated has done a story on the program. The SI.com article says this about the tradition and stadium setting of Aliquippa:

"Carl A. Aschman Stadium, home of the Fighting Quips, was wedged into the hill's flank in the late 1930s, creating one of the nation's loveliest settings for football."

The Beaver Falls Tigers have a long tradition of playing top football themselves. According to thier website in the 133 seasons the Tigers have roared on the gridiron they have had 6 undefeated seasons and 18 where they only dropped but one game! They are truly a proud program and the talent that has run onto the stadium in Beaver Falls has been amazing!

They will be in different clases for the upcoming 2023 season but if you ever want to see good football catch the next time these two foes oppose each other.

The banner photo is of the September 18, 1959 Football Game Program of Dieruff vs Farrellin Allentown PA. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites: mentioned above and of course the PAFootballNew.com and PAFBHistory.com websites.

Catch part 4 of this series with two more great rivalries in PA High School historya releasing Friday 4/29/22.