YORKVILLE — Buckeye Local and Bellaire both are looking to build upon last season’s respective sub-.500 records.

Both showed flashes of potential, and each coaching staff will be looking to build upon that come tonight’s kickoff.

The Big Reds are heading to World War II Memorial in Yorkville for a Thursday night kickoff to the high school football season.

Buckeye head coach Chris Kiedaisch noted his team is looking forward to the early-season spotlight.

“I think we’re excited,” he said. “It’s the feature game on TV, the first in the Valley, and honestly, any other week I’d say it would be tough preparing for a Thursday game, but we scrimmaged on Thursday, as did Bellaire.”

The practice schedule adjustment gave each team a full week’s worth of looks to get prepared, as did the preseason. Buckeye tested itself against Fort Frye and Bridgeport during its scrimmages and Kiedaisch and staff learned quite a bit about this season’s Panthers.

“We scrimmaged Fort Frye at home and used it as a measuring stick to see how good we are, especially defensively,” Kiedaisch said. “If you make a mistake, they will explot it. And the first scrimmage, we saw some thigs we needed to work on. But we had it on film and got it corrected. Against Bridgeport, we played a game sim and got up big early and were able to sub out.”

Now the Panthers’ defense will be tested again by a Big Reds’ offense that returns three starting linemen and all of its skill players from a season ago, including the ever dangerous Raekwon Pettigrew, whose impact will be felt on all sides of the ball.

Not only that, but quarterback Michael Dipple has a full year of seasoning under his belt. In viewing Bellaire’s scrimmage films, Kiedaisch certainly noticed.

“The big takeaway is their quarterback got drastically better,” Kiedaisch said. “He worked a lot on his game and it showed in both scrimmages.”

Bellaire features a new offensive coordinator and the Big Reds will look to capitalize on their speed and experience at the skill positions, opting for a more spread-type look.

That makes Buckeye’s ever-present goal of clock control and dictating tempo all the more important.

The Panthers have a nice stable of running backs, bolstered by a sizeable and experienced offensive line.

“One of our philosophies is tempo control,” Kiedaisch said. “We will continue to take what we’re being given, but we have two really good running backs and an experience offensive line and we’re going to rely on them.”