Across the US, high school sports provide a sense of community — and, for some, a way out

The phone calls started coming long before the lights at “The Pit” flickered on for the first time this fall.

“When will the senior citizen passes be available?” Aliquippa High athletic director Jennifer Damico’s office heard more than once as the latest season of Quips football inched forward.

At the school about 30 minutes northwest of downtown Pittsburgh, the passes have been a longstanding tradition — a way for the community’s past to connect with its present.

A lot has changed in the century-plus since Aliquippa first opened its doors. The Aliquippa Works steel mill, which employed well over 10,000 workers at its height before the industry collapsed, is long gone. Many storefronts in the heart of the borough’s business district sit empty.

One of the few constants through the years has been those precious hours every week during the fall when the Quips storm out of the locker room.

“We might be going to different churches on Sunday at 11,” says coach Mike Warfield, an Alquippa alum and retired state trooper who believes the program saved his life twice. “But on Fridays at 7, we’re together.”

Amid an ever-changing landscape, when a constant distraction sits in the palm of your hand, and the culture wars seem specifically designed to divide, those Friday nights and everything they represent endure.

“It may be overstated, but I think it’s kind of an American institution,” says Bruce Howard, director of publications and communications at the National Federation of State High School Associations director of publications and communications. “If you played on a sports team in school, you’re still talking about it. You still remember it.”

In a country in which nearly a third of the population tunes in to the Super Bowl, the confluence between sports and community may be felt most acutely in far smaller venues.

A century-plus ago, organized sports at the local level were a mishmash. There were no real age limits or parameters. Around the dawn of the 20th century, state athletic associations began to pop up in the Midwest, hoping to establish a little order amid the chaos. The model they created provided the framework for what has become an intrinsic part of the high school experience.

Today, even with competition from youth travel leagues, prep sports are thriving. The NFHS’s annual survey for the 2025-26 academic year estimated there were over 8.4 million participants in high school sports, a 25% jump since the 20th century became the 21st.

The expansion of opportunities — particularly on the girls’ side with flag football and wrestling — has helped. It also looks good on a college resume.

Yet the roots, particularly for the 1.1 million high school football players and what they have come to represent, run far deeper than that.

Rich Boronyak grew up in Crafton, Pennsylvania, 60 years ago. A three-sport star at long-since-closed Crafton High, he remembers the parade the town threw after a football championship. The faces that lined those streets are still so fresh in his mind.

“Everybody knew everybody,” he said from the stands at “The Pit” while waiting for his grandson, who plays football for Mars Area High, to take on the Quips.

It remains that way in countless places across the nation, though perhaps few where the pressure and the privilege of playing are more intertwined than Aliquippa.

It’s not just the record 21 regional championships, the five state titles, and the notable alumni like Pro Football Hall of Famers Mike Ditka, Ty Law and Darrelle Revis. It’s all of it.

Senior running back Akiva Woods says “there’s a huge standard to stay up to.”

Reminders dot the stands at home games, where the alums reminisce and keep tabs on the latest members of what all involved universally describe as a family.

Things have changed since Paul Royba graduated in 1984. Back then, there was no pregame hype video. No cameras capturing every moment. Gone are the miserable grass field and the locker room where hot water was more myth than fact.

And still, part of the appeal remains eternal.

“The mentality and the spirit has stayed the same,” says Royba, now 60 and recently retired after 34 years in the corporate world.

That spirit is described on Quips T-shirts: “Aliquippa against the world.” The school of around 320 students does its best to silence the outside noise that their hometown is poor, small and dangerous.

“Athletics is what I believe has kept this place going,” Damico says. “There’s been good economic times and bad, but the athletics is always the constant, always the positive story that is coming out of here.”

Things are hardly perfect, but they’re hardly perfect anywhere.

America’s harsh realities in 2026 have a way of showing up. About an hour east of the Quips and the Mars Planets game, longtime rivals Gateway and Penn Hills played in front of a mostly empty stadium after school officials learned of a “potential threat.”

For Woods, his goals lie beyond Aliquippa. He’s already received scholarship offers from nearby Division II schools, and he’s hoping a standout senior year turns even more heads.

It’s working out that way for Lester Longmire. A year ago, he was a senior linebacker and one of the leaders of the defense. Now he’s a special teamer and freshman sports management major at Slippery Rock University, about an hour north.

Standing on the sideline as the Quips struggled in the first half against Mars, Longmire talks about the urge to get away, even though it means leaving his support system and everyone he cares about.

“I do miss football. I miss the community and all that,” he says. “But I want to start a new life, so I plan on staying out of here.”

Just not quite yet. Eager to encourage his former teammates, Longmire wades into the sea of red-and-black jerseys.

As he walks away, the safety and the promise of the Friday night lights and all they have meant and all they will mean cradle him once more.