File Photo Wheeling Park will host St. Clairsville at Wheeling Island Stadium Friday night to kick off the high school football season in West Virginia.

WHEELING — It’s the opening week of high school football in the Mountain State and the Ohio Valley will once again have a doozy on the schedule to celebrate.

For the fourth year in a row, two of the top programs in the valley will meet with Wheeling Park opening the season inside Wheeling Island Stadium Friday night against visiting St. Clairsville.

“We’ve played for four years in a row now so we know each other pretty well,” St. Clairsville coach Brett McLean said.

The Red Devils (1-0) were victorious in their season-opener last week, although without playing as clean a game as McLean would’ve liked in a 48-34 win over Canton South.

“When you get a win, you’re not looking for style points,” McLean said. “I think our kids did tremendous under pressure in the situation that we found ourselves in…We made some mistakes that we wish we hadn’t, but the good news is that we survived them and we can go to work trying to correct those mistakes.”

Mistakes are expected of any team playing its first game of the season, but Wheeling Park coach Chris Daugherty doesn’t think his team can afford to make too many come Friday night.

“I always feel like we’re a little bit behind when we play anybody in Ohio early in the season,” Daugherty said. “It forces us to play clean and mistake-free football in game one, and that’s difficult. If we make too many mistakes, St. Clairsville looks like a team that will capitalize on that.”

The Red Devils were also able to use their opener to break in several new starters, something the Patriots will have to do on the fly Friday. Park will debut six new starters on a defense that will be tasked with slowing down St. Clairsville’s ever-potent running game.

“We’ll have to make adjustments as the game goes on and sometimes that’s hard with young or new defensive players,” Daugherty said. “When you play with a group of kids and then get them back for a year, those adjustments can be made so much easier and on the fly. We’ll have to see how they react to adjustments, but hopefully we can stay in our home (defense) and not have to make too many.”

The Red Devils ran for 367 yards last week, led by a trio of 100-yard gainers in Andrew Vera (143), Dino Burk (111) and Jacob Walker (107). Their passing game was also effective as Vera passed for 44 yards and a touchdown on just three completions.

“I think they do a great job of using their personnel and making stuff out of whatever type of kids that they have,” Daugherty said. “Schematically, they give you a lot. They throw enough and it’s well thought out. They do a good job.”

Daugherty said he wasn’t surprised to see the Red Devils have success even with a number of news faces in the mix.

“When you play other good programs, I don’t pay attention to how many (graduates) they lost,” he said. “I think the No. 1 sign of good programs is they tend to weather those things. They tend to develop kids and have kids ready (to play) and I view St. Clairsville that way.

“You could tell me they lost all 11 (starters) and I wouldn’t even know that, because I know they’re going to have kids ready to play football.”

Despite last week’s offensive success and Park’s young defense, McLean knows better than to underestimate the Patriots.

“When you look at Wheeling Park on film, they don’t have many holes,” McLean said. “They have a lot of big defensive linemen, big linebackers that are physical and come downhill at you. Statistically, it’s a tough gig trying to run against them.”

If the Red Devils are able to put points on the board, Daugherty thinks it’ll be his offense that’ll need to be leaned on to keep things competitive.

“Last year I said the total opposite, our defense is going to have to hold us and give our offense time to grow,” Daugherty said. “It could be different this year that we’re going to have to score some points to take some heat off our defense. That remains to be seen if we’ll be able to do that, but we do return a lot of kids offensively.”

Park will be led by returning starter Brett Phillips at quarterback with a bevy of options at wide receiver for him to throw to.

“There’s been great documentation about their receiving corps and the skill and ability that they have there,” McLean said. “They’ve just kind of rekindled what they had last year. In a lot of places, it looks like the same team. We’re always respectful that they’re going to be one of the best opponents we play every season.”

McLean said a key to winning the game will be getting off to a good start, something the Red Devils did not do when they fell into a 13-0 hole against Canton South in week one.

“We’ve got to be better than we were a week ago,” McLean said. “(Wheeling Park has) got the ability to put you behind fast and put you to sleep quickly. We can not go down there and be stuck on the school bus still, we have to be ready to play football.”

Kick-off inside Wheeling Island Stadium is scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday night.

“I think it’s no secret what they’ll try to do and it’s probably no secret what we’ll try to do,” Daugherty said. “It’ll be interesting to see which facet of football wins.”