It was seven weeks ago. Pride was on the line. Community against community like many, many times before, but each time Shadyside and River High line up against each other, all that matters is that game on that day.
On Sept. 24, Shadyside emerged the winner over River, 14-12.
And once again tomorrow evening, it’s Tigers versus Pilots, and this time it is postseason football. Shadyside will enter the third-round contest with a 10-1 record after scoring 65 points during its first two playoff wins, and the Pilots have won six straight since the two-point loss to the Tigers. The Division VII, Region 27 game is scheduled for Saturday evening at the Dave Bruney Football Complex at Purple Rider Stadium in Martins Ferry.
So, will the Tiger Pub’s Tiger Burger become the Pilot Burger? Or will the Riverside Restaurant’s Riverside Burger get renamed the Tiger Burger?
“We’ve done this before with different businesses in Powhatan. The last time, we lost a game in the OVACs, and I sold Pilot burgers for the week that followed,” explained Matthew Coffland, owner of the Tiger Pub along Central Avenue in Shadyside. “I know a lot of River fans had a good time with it because I heard about over and over again. Rivalries are fun like that.
“That’s why I’ve put it back on the line for this Saturday’s game against River. It’s the playoffs, and it’s a big deal to the folks here in Shadyside, so we’ve made the bet with the Riverside Restaurant in Powhattan Point,” he said. “We love our Tigers, and it doesn’t matter what sport we’re talking about. The support is always there.”
No Guarantees
Coffland has lost this bet before with other businesses in Powhatan Point, and he knows the Tigers and the Pilots match-up against each other fairly well. The Pilots completed the regular season with a 6-4 record, good for a fourth-place finish in the 3-A OVAC standings.
Shadyside’s 8-1 regular-season record earned the Tigers the OVAC Class AA championship. Their lone loss of the year was to Bellaire, 13-12, on Oct. 8 at Fleming Field.
“When we lost the bet the last time, we had a lot of people come up from the Powhatan and Hannibal areas, and they were taking pictures of the bill because it had ‘Pilot Burger’ on them,” Coffland recalled. “The people in Shadyside had fun with it, too. Everyone was a good sport about it.
“It’s a big deal because half of the kids from Powhatan go to school here in Shadyside, and then the other half of them go to River High,” he said. “That really fuels the rivalry, and it’s been like that for as long as I can remember. I believe it was in the early 1990s when Shadyside started sending a bus down to Powhatan because it’s actually a shorter trip from there to Shadyside than it is to Hannibal.”
Year after year, Coffland explained, it’s about the student-athletes, and it’s about community pride.
“I am friends with the owners of the Riverside so I knew they would accept the bet. It just makes the games a little more interesting,” Coffland insisted. “For a lot of people in both communities, high school sports is the heartbeat, and the same is true in a lot of areas here in the Valley. And it’s not just the parents of the players either.
“When you go to a Shadyside game, sure you’ll see the parents, but you will also see most of the people from the community because it’s what we have always done here,” he added. “The same is true with River fans, and it never matters if it’s the boys or the girls. That’s why we have fun with these bets because it adds to the conversations when people are discussing the games.”
