Eagles and Bearcats have a lot at stake on Friday
Elvis Presley had 18 No. 1 hits in his career, but his top selling song was a banger that’s still among the best-selling singles of all time.
“It’s Now or Never” did more than tell the tale of a man trying to get his crush to stop dragging her feet. It was a motto for life, and it applies to the two teams playing Friday at War Vets Field as much as to ambivalent lovers with cold feet.
Both Tyrone and Huntingdon have played the 2026 season with great expectations. The ‘Cats entered the season off their best playoff run in 20 years, having played in the District 6 3A championship a year ago.
The Eagles meanwhile, started out 3-1 with a defense as stout as any in the area.
However, each team has experienced the hard times that come with a Laurel Highlands schedule, and they enter Week 7 on the outside of the playoff picture looking in. There’s a path for each of them to get there, but for both the Golden Eagles and the ‘Cats, the time is now to start stringing together wins.
Whoever takes the loss when the teams play Friday at War Vets Field will almost certainly miss out on the postseason, so it’s now or never for a pair of longtime rivals who are no strangers to high stakes games.
We know they’re good. Two and four is not a reflection of how good they are. They’re a lot like us. This is probably a pretty even matchup as far as athletes go.
Tyrone Coach Jason Jones
“Anything can happen, but I told our guys it’s playoff football time for us now,” said Tyrone coach Jason Jones, whose team enters the game 3-3 on the heels of losses to Bellwood-Antis and Bishop Guilfoyle. “It’s win or go home, and that’s the mentality we have to have. I think Huntingdon is approaching it the same way. For them to get in the race, they have to win out. For us, it’s a huge game to get back on track.”
Tyrone is currently ranked sixth in District 6 3A, trailing Penn Cambria and Philipsburg-Osceola by 15 points. Huntingdon, at 2-4, sit behind Tyrone in seventh.
It’s a position the Golden Eagles have found themselves in each of the last two seasons, when they were able to win big down the stretch to make the postseason, but during those campaigns the team’s remaining games were against squads ranked beneath them in the standings. This season, 3A is loaded, so although Tyrone could dismantle the standings with three good weeks of football, it won’t be easy.
But Jones said as much as the game against Huntingdon is about getting back into the playoff mix, it’s also about gaining back a measure of respect after the way the Eagles’ season ended a year ago.
In 2025, Tyrone defeated Huntingdon 41-21 in the regular season before being shellshocked in the District 6 semifinals at War Vets Field. Huntingdon returned an interception for a score and blocked a punt to set up another touchdown in the first quarter and went on to bulldoze the Golden Eagles 42-7.
“It’s about righting some of the wrongs from the playoff game,” Jones said. “That was the way their season finished last year. “For the sophomores and juniors who are now juniors and seniors, that was a really bad night for those guys. A little bit of that has been motivation this week.”
Jones would love to see that motivation take shape in more offensive production on the scoreboard. While the Eagles have moved the ball better in the last three weeks than at any time this season, it hasn’t manifested into points, and they’re stuck at about 14 points per game.
To change that, Tyrone will need to start finishing drives, and there have been promising signs of late, starting with quarterback Ben Walk, who’s coming off his best game – a 248-yard, two-touchdown performance against Guilfoyle. He has now thrown for 748 yards and 9 touchdowns and has just two interceptions in his last 60 passing attempts.
And while Mason Emigh has done most of the heavy lifting where Tyrone’s receivers are concerned (22 receptions for 542 yards), five other receivers got open to catch passes against the Marauders, giving the Eagles’ offense a dynamism it hadn’t shown in the prior five games.
“We’re definitely better than we were against Bellefonte (in Week 1),” said Jones. “I still don’t love that we’re scoring 14 points a game. You can see they’re feeling a little more comfortable trying to do some different things. I’m looking to get some of our guys going in the right direction. If we can get some of these other guys going, it would be huge for us.”
The Bearcats are giving up just over 28 points per game and are coming off a loss to Central where they surrendered 29, even with the Dragons fumbling twice in the red zone.
But if the ‘Cats’ defense has been less stingy than it was a season ago, when Huntingdon played in the 3A championship game, it’s also been more productive when it has the football. They’ve scored 27 or more three times, and their lopsided losses have come at the hands of the same teams who delivered similar defeats to Tyrone – Bishop Guilfoyle and B-A.
“We know they’re good,” said Jones. “Two and four is not a reflection of how good they are. They’re a lot like us. This is probably a pretty even matchup as far as athletes go.”
Perhaps the biggest key for the Eagles will be establishing their own defense as one of the top groups in the LHAC East, which it was all the way up through Week 4. Their losses to BG and the Blue Devils skewed that a bit, but Jones thinks his group is still one that can make plays and stop good offenses.
“There are a lot of people doubting the defense now because of two bad weeks and looking past what we did in the first four, so I’m excited to see us play,” he said. “This group is what we’ve been built on. Even though we’ve had two bad week, Weeks 1, 2 and 3 we were very solid.
Until Week 5 – a 37-14 loss to Bellwood-Antis – Tyrone had allowed just 41 points and was surrendering a little more than 100 yards per game on the ground. And in spite of their two recent losses, the Eagles have remained a team that aggressively makes plays defensively. They’ve stopped 37 plays behind the line of scrimmage and recorded 10 sacks while forcing 7 turnovers. Defensive end Kyler Suhoney and linebacker Dylan Robinson have accounted for a lot of that damage, combining on 14 TFL, but players like linebackers Connor Zupon and Reid Starr, along with linemen John Eaken and Landon Finocchio, have been getting more involved.
They will have their hands full against a Bearcat offense that hasn’t dropped off much after graduating two top-tier running backs in Landon Erdman and Evan Edmiston. Senior quarterback Reese Hughes has been a force, with 649 passing yards and 255 rushing yards, while junior Cole Lane is on pace for a 1,000-yard season, with 627 yards on 93 carries.
Through the air, the ‘Cats turn to Javaughn Dodson and Kobe Cathern, who have combined for more than 500 receiving yards.
There are playmakers on both teams on both sides of the football, as was the case twice a season ago.
Then, it produced two blowouts, each going in different directions.
But it’s now or never, and and the game will hinge on the team who’s playmakers can get it done when the stakes are high, as they certainly will be Friday.
