ASHLAND - Competition and camaraderie.

All for a cause.

The 7th Annual High School Football Challenge brought all 14 Schuylkill County high school teams together Tuesday for a unique blend of competition events at North Schuylkill, all while raising $33,500 for SUW partner agencies and student initiatives.

Put on by the Schuylkill United Way, the game featured over 600 players competing in seven events to determine an overall winner as well as top performers in each competition and overall strength and speed and agility champions.

It was an opportunity coaches and players from area schools Marian, Panthers Valley and Tamaqua were eager to make the most of.

“This is a great event for everyone,” said Tamaqua quarterback Luke Kane. “Everyone’s out here working hard, showing off what they’ve been putting in over the summer. I can’t thank everyone enough for holding this. It’s really amazing and gives so much great exposure to all the kids.”

Kane helped Tamaqua placed second in the passing competition behind winner Nativity.

“I just like competing,” Kane said. “Everyone is out there doing that, trying to break records. At the end, hopefully it all pays off and you can get that trophy.”

In addition to the passing competition, or quarterback challenge, there was also 185-pound bench press, broad jump, farmer’s carry, tire flips, shuttle relay and two-player football sled push challenge. A new halftime kicking exhibition event was also added this season, which was won by Tri-Valley.

Blue Mountain captured the overall team title. The Eagles, who won the strength and speed and agility competitions, finished with a score of 88 to top Schuylkill Haven, which had a score of 76. North Schuylkill placed third overall with a 75. While all football players on a team could be included, an event limit of five participants constituted a team, with each participating school allowed two teams of five.

Each event lasted five minutes, with scoring done on a point system based on the total number of teams entered in the event.

“It’s nice. It’s something that mixes it up,” said Blue Raiders’ head coach Sam Bonner, who brought about 23 kids to the event, one the program has now done the last six seasons. “We’re doing a lot of 7-on-7s, we’re doing a lot of teamwork, we’re in the weight room a lot. So this is really a change of pace. It’s something the kids could bond over. It’s a chance to do something different other than the day-to-day grind.”

And the fact that it offers such a wide variety of events means different players get the chance to show their skills.

“It’s kind of a mix of everything. It depends which person you ask,” said the Panthers’ Brennan Kunkel of the highlight of the night. “For me, probably the shuttles or the catching, just because it’s my position. But I bet the linemen would say the sled push or the tire flip, or other events like that.”

Having the chance to start the season with momentum is something every team is hoping for this fall.

“Anything you do with your whole team and together in the summer is a positive,” said Panther Valley head coach Mark Lavine, who is entering his third year with the program and brought 28 kids to Tuesday’s event. “Anything you can do together is only going to help your program.

“We’re excited. We’re excited with the amount of kids we have back, and our third year in the program. The first year taking over is always tough, and the second year you’re adjusting to that. So it really feels like we hit the ground running this year. We’ll take it one game at a time, but we’re looking forward to it. This was our best offseason by far as far as weight room, strength went up. It all starts there, and hopefully it translates onto the field.”

While Lavine prepares to start Year 3 at Panther Valley, Billy O’Gurek is set to begin his first year as head coach at Marian after taking over for Stan Dakosty.

But O’Gurek knows what it takes to succeed, having been on Dakosty’s coaching staff and also having played for him at Marian - including as a member of the 2000 District 11 championship team.

“We’ve got a good group,” said O’Gurek, who brought just over 20 kids to the event, with each player attending guaranteed to participate in at least one event. “We’ve got decent numbers, we’re going to have between 40 and 45 kids on the team. We have a good mix of guys who contributed on the varsity last year, and JV guys who we are going to need to step up. But they’ve been in the weight room since I got hired, pushing each other.

“I think at this point, with the passing scrimmages (at Jim Thorpe, Wilson West Lawn and Lehighton last week) and now this competition, I think they were eager to finally get out of the weight room in the basement and sort of see what else other people have, and measure themselves against some of the other teams we may see on our schedule this year.”

It’s a challenge O’Gurek’s team, which played for a District 11 Class 1A championship last year, accepted on Tuesday, with a raucous round of applause coming after Julian Hermany and Michael Gelatko finished on the bench press.

“An event like that, we take serious pride in,” Hermany said of the bench press. “We’ve been going at it since November. We’ve been training for this. We have milestones towards our goal to be a better football team. So this is just step one. And when we have chemistry, and we have family like that to support us, and we do what we have to do to get it done, that really makes us feel good and have pride in ourselves.”