Correspondent file photo / Michael G. Taylor Former Chaney quarterback Matthew Jones (10) tries to break a tackle during a City Series meeting with East last season at Rayen Stadium in Youngstown.

At one time, Youngstown, spurred by an explosion of industry and immigration, boasted as many as 170,000 residents. To accommodate the growing population, the city grew to have six public high schools.

As the industrial economy slowed and eventually collapsed, however, Youngtown’s population began a sharp and decades-long decline, leaving the once-burgeoning city to rust and many of its half dozen high schools to shutter.

The six public schools that comprised the City Series – East, North, Rayen, South, Wilson and Chaney – quickly began to feel the effects of the ever-decreasing pool of students, and in 1980, North, the smallest and most eastern of the original six, closed. South followed suit in 1993, as did East in 1998, halving the number of schools that existed 20 years earlier.

In 2007, Wilson and Rayen, the northernmost and southernmost schools of the group, respectively, both closed to make way for the reopening of East.

Since then, Chaney, aptly named the Cowboys, has sat on the West Side, while the Golden Bears of East represented the other side of the city. By this time next year, though, there will be only one.

In May, the Youngstown City School District announced that East and Chaney would merge into one middle school and one high school beginning with the 2026-27 school year.

At that point, there will be no more Golden Bears or Cowboys, just as there have not been any more Presidents, Redmen, Tigers, Warriors or Bulldogs. Starting next year, there will only be the Youngstown High School Defenders.

But before then, at noon today, more than a century’s worth of rivalry games and memories will culminate in the final football meeting between City Series schools, fittingly at Rayen Stadium, a venue rooted in Youngstown football history, and on a field that with the names and colors of each of the six schools at its center.

“This is definitely a special game, and you add everything else to it this Saturday, and that takes it up another level,” Chaney head football coach Seth Antram said.

Once Chaney restarted its athletic programs for the 2019 season after eight years without a football team, Antram served as the offensive coordinator for three seasons before becoming the head coach at Boardman.

After just one year with the Spartans, though, Antram was lured back to Chaney, which he said at the time was “1,000% the one opportunity that would’ve pulled [him] away” from Boardman.

On the other side of town, East is also led by a man with a lot of love for his school.

Mark Greene, in his first season as the Golden Bears’ head coach, graduated from East in 1987, and in 2009, he was inducted into the school’s hall of fame for accomplishments in football and track and field.

“I played back when we had the five schools,” Greene said. “Back then, it always created a rivalry between the East Side, the South Side, the North Side, the West Side – we always had that. So we took pride in winning, whether it was football, basketball, track, whatever, we always did that. So now knowing that this is it – this is the last game, [we’re] going down in history as the last team, the last coaches, me as the last head coach – it’s special. It means a lot to me, and I’m grateful for the opportunity.”

With much of the attention on what happens after this year, including who will lead the combined football program, the respective coaches have had to try to keep their teams focused on the season instead of the unknowns that lie ahead.

“It’s very unique,” Antram said. “I’ve actually tried to reach out to coaches that have gone through a similar situation, and I haven’t had a whole lot of luck with that. It’s just unique on a variety of levels.”

Its uniqueness and finality, though, has led both teams to explore and honor the traditions and cultures of their schools in their final year, while also taking pride in being the last team in their storied programs.

“Once we found out they were closing the schools and bringing them together, we started talking about history,” Greene said. “The first game of your last season ever as Golden Bears and so on … and just trying to go out as winners and establish that perfection as we went out. We want to set the bar high for whoever comes in after and just want to let them know that this high school’s last class was a great, great team, great bunch of guys.

“We want to win. We want to be successful and please the community, our fans, put on a good show for them. The culture is changing in Youngstown City Schools, and that’s a big thing.”

Shortly after its announcement that the two schools would merge, the YCSD named P.J. Fecko as its new athletic director.

Fecko, who had served as the district’s middle school faculty manager and dean for the previous four years, is no stranger to the history and tradition of Youngstown high school football. As Cardinal Mooney’s head football coach for 20 years, Fecko led the Cardinals to four state championships, three more state title game appearances and 158 total wins.

“It was always a big deal when the city schools played,” Fecko said. “When you had all of them up and running, and the games they would have at Rayen Stadium and South Stadium, and the crowds that it would draw, and the buzz that it would create, and all of the great athletes that had played on those fields for so many years in the different eras. And it was something that you paid attention to. It was something that you peeked to see the pregame of, where everybody’s standings are in the City Series. And then you would definitely open that paper the next morning, and see all the highlights and read all the articles and the snapshots that were in the newspaper.”

As the new head of the district’s athletic department, Fecko admitted that his new job, which will include hiring the Defenders’ various coaches, has some challenges, but he maintained that the the “tremendous amount of work” in balancing the final year of the high schools while planning the first year of the unified school makes it “even more exciting.”

“Obviously, once we get through the football season, we’ll post the jobs and take applications, and once we do so, find the best candidate to lead this new high school on the football field,” Fecko said. “From that point, obviously the offseason is going to be very, very important … to gel and create some type of team unity and some leadership. So I think it’s exciting, and I think that everything will be in place for our student-athletes to have success in the fall.”

In the 80 years the Youngstown City Series was an official conference, Chaney captured nearly half of the league football titles, including 14 of the last 17 as the number of schools dwindled. But since there have been just two teams competing for the unofficial title of city champion, the series is tied 5-5.

East, then known as the Panthers, won each of its four matchups with Chaney after reopening and before the Cowboys’ program went dormant. Once revived, Chaney repaid the favor, rattling off five straight wins. Last year, East held off a late Chaney comeback to win 14-13, earning the first victory over its rival in 14 years and tying the 21st-century series record.

Both coaches acknowledge that under usual circumstances, Saturday’s game would be enormous, with East’s (6-3) hopes of a playoff bid hinging on a win and Chaney (3-5) trying to avenge a bitter loss from a year ago, as well as spoil East’s season.

But the circumstances are anything but usual. They are historic.

“Playing for championships, the City Series championship, the bragging rights, for the city,” Greene said of his memories playing in rivalry games. “But this is a little more special because it’s the last year. There’s no more. So we’d have the bragging rights forever.”

“It’s huge,” Antram said. “It’s been huge the last few years, ever since it’s been down to two city schools. And, like I said, you add a layer to it. Now, you get bragging rights forever. A lot of these guys know each other, but everything is magnified this season.

“I think it’s really magnified since there’s two schools left right now. A lot of these guys played Little League with each other and have kind of grown up playing against each other since then. So now, they showcase all that on Saturday.”