It’s time for Beaver County memories, presented by St. Barnabas. In conjunction with the Central Valley Warriors competing in the state football playoffs, St. Barnabas would like to take this look back at previous Beaver County high school football state champions.

All in all, there have been  eight different high school state football champions from Beaver County , the first of which came in the 1991 class double a division as the Aliquippa Quips, coached by Frank Marocco and lead by future Super Bowl champion with the New England Patriots, Ty Law, defeated Hanover area twenty seven to zero.

in 1998, two streaks of sorts began, the first was a string of years that saw Rochester win three titles over the next four years, and the second streak that began that year was the first of four years in a row that Southern Columbia high school would lose to a beaver county team in the single a division final. Rochester beat southern Columbia eighteen to nothing in

1998, followed by Rochester Ram victories over Southern Columbia by twenty two to fourteen in 2000 and and sixteen to zero in 2001.  Ryan Matsook,  who would later on coach Beaver Falls to victory  in Hershey , was an assistant under his uncle and head coach, Gene Matsook, at Rochester for the latter two championships. Another team of rams, that being the South Side rams handed Southern Columbia a loss in the title game of 1999 by a score of twenty seven to twenty one.

The county’s first class triple A high school football state championship happened in 2002 when the Hopewell Vikings, coached by Dave Vestal and led by former Buffalo Bill and current Jacksonville Jaguar linebacker, Paul Posluszny, defeated Strath Haven by a score of twenty one to ten.

The Aliquippa quips returned to the championship game again in 2003 and beat Northern Leghigh thirty two to twenty seven. that game featured a super human effort by Aliquippa’s own, and current New York Jets corner back, Darelle Revis, who scored five touchdowns in the game. Coaching the quips was current Aliquippa head coach Mike Zmijanac, who has gone on to become the only high school coach in Pennsylvania to win state championships in football and basketball. Zmijanac previously coached the Aliquippa boys basketball team to a state title in 1997.

Middletown suffered defeat against Beaver County area teams for three years in a row for the class triple A state high school football crown.  Beaver Falls defeated the Middletown High Blue Raiders thirty to thirteen in twenty seventeen. Quaker Valley topped the Blue Raiders in twenty eighteen by a score of forty one to twenty four and the Quips from Aliquippa earned their third state title in school history by demolishing Middletown thirty five to nothing in twenty eighteen.

This has been a state football championship edition of beaver county memories, brought to you by St. Barnabas.