The McKeesport Area and Woodland Hills varsity football teams will open the 2008 season participating in the fourth annual Kirk Herbstreit Ohio vs. USA Challenge Labor Day weekend.

Coach George Smith's Mc- Keesport Tigers will be on a "mission" when they face perennial Ohio scholastic power Colerain at 5 p.m. Aug. 30, in the Cincinnati segment of the Challenge in the Bengals' Paul Brown Stadium.

It will be the preliminary to the event's marquee game matching national powers Cincinnati St. Xavier and two-time Alabama Class 5A champion Prattsville at 8 p.m.

Prattsville was No. 2 while Ohio Division 1 champion St. Xavier finished No. 5 in USA Today's 2007 final national rankings.

In other Aug. 30 games at Paul Brown Stadium, Middletown (Ohio) will open the Challenge against St. Thomas Aquinas (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) at 11 a.m. and Cincinnati Elder will face Warren Central (Ind.) at 6 p.m.

Games Aug. 31 have Cincinnati Moeller vs. Montgomery Bell (Tenn.) at noon, Huber Heights Wayne (Ohio) vs. East St. Louis (Ill.) 3 p.m. and Lakota West (Ohio) vs. St. Rita (Ill.)

Woodlands Hills will open the one-day Canton segment of the Challenge playing Howland High School, near Warren, Ohio, at 11 a.m. Aug. 30 in Fawcett Stadium, site of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game.

Wolverines coach George Novak recommended to promoters that McKeesport be considered for an invitation to play in the Cincinnati segment of the Challenge.

"I feel McKeesport deserves to be able to compete against some of the best football teams in the country," said Novak, who is recovering from recent hip replacement surgery. "George Smith is one of most successful football coaches in the WPIAL.

"Although it has the smallest enrollment in WPIAL Class AAAA, McKeesport annually finishes among the top teams in that classification. His success season after season does not come easily."

Other Canton games are McKinley vs. Indianapolis Cathedral, 2 p.m.; Youngstown Cardinal Mooney vs. Covington (Ky.) Catholic, 5 p.m. and Massillon, Ohio, vs. Jordan (Utah), 8 p.m.

Some games in the Cincinnati segment of the 2007 Challenge, which included Gateway High in Monroeville, were televised nationally by ESPN2 and ESPNU. Canton games, which included Pittsburgh Central Catholic among the participating teams, were televised by the NFL Network.

Chicago-based Intersport, a sports marketing firm that promotes the Challenge, is working to finalize telecast details for this year's football extravaganza.

McKeesport, in addition to playing suburban Cincinnati Colerain, is being cast as a collective ambassador without portfolio for the school district

"This will be more than just another football game for our team," said school board president Wayne Washowich. "Our players will be performing on a national stage.

"Just being invited to participate in Ohio along with some of the premier scholastic football teams in the nation speaks volumes about how McKeesport Area's athletic reputation is perceived outside our community.

"I see our football team as being our ambassador, not only for the school district, but also representing the City of McKeesport and the entire Mon-Yough Valley."

Board athletic committee chairman James Brown added, "Playing in the Challenge also will provide an early opportunity to showcase our players before major college coaches and recruiters. One of our kids might wind up with a scholarship to a Division I university."

"When coach Duke Weigle's McKeesport High football team played a postseason game in Florida during the late 1940s, several players wound up with scholarships to the University of Miami and Clemson. It can happen again."

According to McKeesport sports historian John Smonski, Weigle's Tigers played Miami High in a holiday bowl game at the Orange Bowl in 1947.

"Ironically, those McKeesport guys wound up playing against each other in college during a Clemson-Miami football game," Smonski said.