San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, left, celebrates offensive tackle Colton McKivitz (68) after the NFC Championship NFL football game against the Detroit Lions in Santa Clara, Calif., Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

LAS VEGAS — For a lot of young football players growing up, a chance to play in the Super Bowl was a life-long dream.

Even though Colton McKivitz was bigger than most kids his size during his childhood in Jacobsburg, he didn’t start playing football until his sophomore year at Union Local High School. He was a baseball player first, having dabbled in football as a freshman at East Richland Christian High School, where he played 6-on-6.

“I always dreamed that I would play in the World Series,” McKivitz said during a recent telephone interview from California. “But getting a chance to play in the Super Bowl is all right, too.”

McKivitz, a 2015 graduate of Union Local and a former Big 12 Co-Offensive Lineman of the Year at West Virginia University, will be the starting right tackle and wearing No. 68 for the San Francisco 49ers when they meet the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII Sunday inside Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada, a suburb of Las Vegas.

He is also the first player from Belmont County, and one of only a handful from the Ohio Valley, to ever play in a Super Bowl, the last being Wheeling native and The Linsly School graduate C.J. Goodwin for the Atlanta Falcons in 2017.

He said during the interview that making the Super Bowl after defeating the Detroit Lions in the NFC Championship game “hadn’t really sunk in yet, but it probably would on (Feb. 4) when the team left for Las Vegas.”

Playing football in high school was what the 6-6, 301-pound McKivitz described as a “family” decision.

“When I transferred to Union Local, my parents (Matt and Wendy) and I sat down and talked about it,” he recalled. “I went to a couple of camps at WVU and Penn State. Football seemed natural for me, and being 6-6 and about 275 sure helped.”

At Union Local, he was a three-year starter on both offense and defense, earning all-Ohio Division V honors his senior season. He initially verbally committed to Miami of Ohio before changing his mind and opting for WVU.

At WVU, McKivitz redshirted his true freshman season. He became the Mountaineers’ starting left tackle four games into his redshirt freshman season and started the final 10 games. As a redshirt sophomore, he moved to right tackle, starting all 13 games and earning honorable mention All-Big 12 honors. He started all 12 of the Mountaineers’ games as a redshirt junior. He moved back to left tackle going into his redshirt senior season and, on top of sharing the award for the conference’s top lineman, was named first-team All-Big 12, second-team All-America by Walter Camp and third-team All-America by the Associated Press.

McKivitz was selected in the fifth round of the 2020 NFL Draft by the 49ers as the 153rd overall selection after a very productive four-year career with the Mountaineers. However, until this season he mainly saw action on field goals and extra points. Yet the Niners organization saw something they liked in the 27-year-old and signed him to a two-year contract extension.

He made his NFL debut against the New York Jets on Nov. 29, 2020 at MetLife Stadium, playing eight plays. His first start came on Aug. 31, 2021, at the Los Angeles Rams. He has started every game this season.

When asked to assess his play this season, he said there were good times and there were bad times.

“It has been mostly productive. My pass blocking wasn’t that good to start out, so I picked out one area to concentrate on and that was my hands,” he said. “I needed to be more consistent with my outside hand. It’s worked because I think I’m playing my best football right now.”

He will get another test come Sunday when he lines up across from the Chiefs’ George Karlaftis or Felix Anudike-Ozumah. He’s already been tested by Pittsburgh’s T.J. Watt, the Los Angeles Rams’ Aaron Donald and Detroit’s Aidan Hutchison just to name a few of the league’s top left defensive ends.

For the season, McKivitz has played 1,040 offensive snaps and has only been penalized twice, which ranks 69th in the league, and has only allowed nine quarterback sacks, which is tied for the fourth fewest in the NFL. Three of those came in the opening week of the season to Watt.

He said ever since beating the Lions, he has received hundreds of messages – emails and texts – from fans, family and friends.

“It’s been crazy. There’s all kinds of stuff going on.”

Social media was carrying a clothing line with the slogan “From The Hangar to the Super Bowl.” “The Hangar” refers to the high school gym at Union Local where he starred as a four-year member of the Jets basketball team.

When asked about the game itself, McKivitz said “a lot of guys on our team remember Super Bowl (LIV)” – where the Niners lost to the Chiefs 31-20 – “and they don’t want a repeat of that.”