Parkersburg head coach Matt Kimes signals to players during a preseason practice at Stadium Field. (Photo by Jay W. Bennett)

PARKERSBURG — Parkersburg High School third-year head coach Matt Kimes and the Big Reds will have the opportunity come 7:30 p.m. Friday to get back to the .500 plateau when they invade Erickson All-Sports Facility to take on rival Parkersburg South.

A year ago, the Big Reds needed to rally to secure a 43-35 triumph versus the Patriots of head man Nate Tanner.

After opening the campaign at 1-2, the banged up Big Reds are just continuing to do their thing with a next man up mentality.

“It’s a fun week,” admitted coach Kimes. “It’s one of those things that you look forward to as a competitor. There’s relationships you build with coaches throughout the years and I’ve got some guys that I’ve worked with before on that staff. I consider them friends and it’s always good to beat your friends, you know, especially when you are competing against each other. There’s multiple reasons you get fired up for this one. As a coach you want to make sure you put your kids in the best position to win. It’s good for your program, too, to beat your city rival. You want to be the one that’s got the bragging rights for the year, so we’ve had them for the year last year and hopefully we continue that after Friday. I think the biggest thing you know as a player you are playing against people that you know, which you don’t do that every week.

“Normally you are playing against people that you might know the names, but you don’t know the faces that go with the names like you do with this game. It’s one of those games where you play with people you’ve been playing against all through your football career, from pee wee to middle school, and now you are playing against them again in high school, but now it just means a little bit more. From the coaching standpoint, I think obviously you get the juices flowing and you want to get your competitive juices going and you want to go out there and put your best product you can on the field, but you also want to make sure you put your kids in the best position to be successful. You don’t want to get caught up in the moment. You want to make sure you manage the game the right way, like you would any other game. I think that’s the biggest thing for me as a head coach is just making sure I keep my composure as well, even though the energy level is super high, and make sure I’m making good decisions.”

The energy level was definitely electric last year as then signal-caller David Parsons helped key the comeback after throwing for 410 yards and five touchdowns while adding 86 rushing yards and a score.

Senior quarterback Cooper Cancade will be making his first career rivalry start against the Patriots.

“I think coach Tanner does a good job of getting the best out of his kids and utilizing their skill sets to have success,” Kimes said of PSHS. “I think that’s what any good coach does and he consistently does that year to year. They are no different this year in terms of what they are going to try and do. Offensively they are going to go fast with their tempo as long as things are rolling well for them and then they are going to mix their deep ball explosive game passing with also a controlled passing game, but also they want to run the football the majority of the time.

“They have one of the better running backs in the state and a first-year quarterback who has shown he’s capable of making plays with both his legs and his arm. They challenge you at all levels of your defense. One good thing about what they do is it’s very similar to what we just seen last week with Hurricane in terms of tempo. It’s going to be something we’ve practiced for a couple weeks. It didn’t really hurt us a whole lot against Hurricane, but in the past against Parkersburg South the tempo has affected us. We’re going to prepare for it again this week and hopefully the kids respond well to it.”

As far as the injuries are concerned the Big Reds are just trying to manage the best they can.

“We are day to day with a bunch of guys,” said the coach. “It’s just whoever shows up to practice is the guys we’re going to get reps. Hopefully some guys make some progress in their recoveries through the week so maybe we can play them a little bit Friday. At the same time that’s stuff out of our control. We’ll play the guys that are healthy and we have enough capable bodies to go out there and win the football game.

“It just makes it a little bit more difficult when you are playing some guys that probably aren’t quite varsity ready, but they are playing because of necessity. That makes it difficult, but those kids are getting valuable Friday night reps and when we do get these starters back it’s just going to continue to add to our depth, and now our depth is not just necessarily on paper, our depth has experience.”.

The annual PHS/South rivalry game used to be at the end of the season and this affair will mark the first time they’ve met in Class AAAA since the WVSSAC expanded football to four classifications in the Mountain State.

“I kind of understand why they want to do it this time of the year with the weather still being nice and both teams still getting their feet under them in terms of how their season is going to go,” said coach Kimes.” I also did like playing at the end because I think no matter what you keep your kids locked in for the longevity of the season because they know that game is still on the horizon.

“The athletic directors do a great job of promoting PHS, South rivalry week and it kind of culminates with the football game at the end. I think it’s really good for the student bodies and the communities to kind of go against each other all week and create that kind of friendly rivalry that exists within the two schools. Both athletic programs are supported at a high level.”

While the game means a lot and the Big Reds will be attempting to win for the 40th time in 57 attempts, the fact remains with the new postseason changes that both programs will qualify for the quad-A playoffs since they advance 16 programs to the postseason and that’s how many were left in 4A once everyone was finished being moved around by the WVSSAC.

“As a guy who grew up in Parkersburg and known about this rivalry all my life and participated in it and coached in it for many, many years, and actually coached in it on both sides of the river, I don’t think there’s anything like it in the state of West Virginia,” added coach Kimes. “The bragging rights are real. There are a lot of people who really care about this game.

“Obviously for us as coaches we got to treat it as just another football game and hopefully our kids can understand it’s just another football game. At the same time you want to win this football game because it does mean so much to the people, the fans and the community supporters, and the rest of the student body that all want to win this game so bad. Hopefully we can go out and play the way we are capable of playing.”

Contact Jay Bennett at jbennett@newsandsentinel.com