Across the US, ‘Friday night lights’ provide a sense of community – and, for some, a way out

ALIQUIPPA, Pa. (AP) — The phone calls, all asking the same question, 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 countdown to the latest season of Quips football inched forward.

At the school perched atop a hill 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. Not all of it for the better.

The Aliquippa Works steel mill, which ran for miles along the nearby Ohio River and employed well over 10,000 workers at its height before the industry collapsed, is long gone. While the lampposts along Franklin Street in the heart of the borough’s business district carry banners honoring “Hometown Heroes” who served in the armed forces, many storefronts behind them sit empty.

One of the few constants through the years has been those precious hours every week during the fall, when Chief Mark Swan trots onto the field atop War Eagle with a flaming spear in hand, the Quips storm out of the locker room named after legends, and the daily challenges of the outside world slip away.

“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 far more than they’re designed to unite, those Friday nights and everything they represent endure.

Not just in Aliquippa, but Alaska and Alabama and everywhere in between. And not just on the football field, but the basketball courts, the baseball and softball diamonds and all the rest.

“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. “I think it’s something that 30, 40, 50 years from now, 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 that carry far bigger personal stakes.

The tradition is thriving across the board

A century-plus ago, organized sports at the local level were a mishmash. There were no real age limits or parameters of any kind. Stumble into what passed for a football game at the time, and it wasn’t unusual to see adults, college students, and high schoolers all out there together, safety and any semblance of fair play be damned.

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 — including sponsoring championships and dividing member schools into classifications based on student population — provided the framework for what has become an intrinsic part of the high school experience.

Fast-forward 100-plus years. Even amid increased 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, where flag football and wrestling are fueling significant growth — has helped. It doesn’t hurt that many universities view an athletic background, regardless of ability or results, as a plus 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.

For many families, the intangibles learned playing sports — the reliance on teamwork, the ability to deal with adversity and the simple act of putting their phone down to interact with their peers — are an invaluable teaching tool that can be difficult to replicate elsewhere.

A recent AP-Ipsos survey revealed that about half of parents with K-12 school-aged children say their kids play a structured sport. And in an era where pay-to-play “travel” teams are becoming commonplace despite the soaring costs, high school sports offer a typically cheaper and in some ways, more meaningful alternative.

Pittsburgh Pirates pitching ace Paul Skenes grew up in Southern California playing both high school and travel ball. Both set the foundation for him to become a No. 1 draft pick and the 2025 National League Cy Young winner. Yet asked which group of teammates he stays in touch with most, he pointed out he visits his high school buddies whenever he heads back home.

“Being able to have relationships and be a normal person, that’s important,” he says. “So it is like a social development thing. Being on a team is really important. Having friends and understanding each other, it’s really important.”

It’s that profound sense of connection that serves as the through-line from the classroom to the community.

The bond between players, school and community can be timeless

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 the football team won a championship during his senior year. What strikes him even now is how many of the faces that lined those streets remain 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, which have become so expected the Quips no longer receive rings for accomplishing it, the five state titles, and the list of 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’ education in it came at a young age. Scan pictures of the 2018 team that won it all, and you’ll find then 9-year-old Woods in the background, soaking it all in. “There’s a huge standard to stay up to,” he says.

Reminders dot the stands at any given home game, where the alums who have been where Woods is trying to go reminisce and keep tabs on the latest members of what all involve universally describe as a family.

Yes, things have changed since Paul Royba graduated in 1984. Back then, there was no pregame hype video. No cameras capturing every moment of glory and shared almost instantaneously on social media. 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 field is different, but 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 T-shirts found both inside the Quips locker room and scattered throughout the stands: “Aliquippa against the world.” Those who have grown up there are well aware of the stereotype ascribed to them. That Aliquippa is poor. That it is dangerous. The school of around 320 students does its best to remind themselves it’s all outside noise and that in some way, their success both on the field and in the classroom speaks louder than any words typed by strangers online.

Yes, the last 40-plus years since Aliquippa Works began shutting down have taken a toll, including the creation of a highly transient community in which nearly a third of the student enrollment transfers in and out during a given year based on a wide array of family circumstances. What the Quips do when the stands are packed is one way to combat a narrative they hope one day will finally go silent.

“Athletics is what I believe has kept this place going,” Damico says. “You can see the absence of the steel industry really took a hit on this area. … 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 creeping in eventually. About an hour east of the Quips and the Mars Planets game, longtime rivals Gateway and Penn Hills renewed their rivalry after a lengthy hiatus. But they played in front of a mostly empty stadium after school officials learned of a “potential threat.”

For some, the lights provide the launching pad for the American dream

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 before Signing Day in December.

While both Damico and head coach Warfield pointed to Aliquippa’s shifting academic profile, with multiple students from the Class of 2026 putting together Ivy League-worthy applications, sports remain for many the most direct path to college — and perhaps, a new life elsewhere.

It’s 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. Even as he speaks, Longmire’s jaw tenses after the defense gives up a big play that eventually will become an afterthought in a 42-27 win. A moment later, eager to “coach up” 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 — from Longmire and the senior citizens in the stands who waited months for their passes to the Little Quips serving as ball boys who one day dream of being on the field themselves, and all the rest — cradle him once more.