Ken Halloy lives in Columbus.

However, he’s never forgot where he came from.

The 1983 St. John Central High graduate is doing all he can to give back to the local area, which proves year in and year out how much it loves its high school football.

Halloy, president of Halloy Boy Sports Marketing, has been around high school football at its best.

He was one of the key figures involved in getting the annual Kirk Herbstreit Classic off the ground as arguably the premier high school football showcase in the country each fall.

He’s about to embark on a similar voyage in the Ohio Valley and the festivies for the event – which has been worked on, tinkered with and tweaked for the better part of two years – get under way this evening at WesBanco Arena in Wheeling.

The inaugural Friends of Coal Classic goes from a good idea to fruition Monday, beginning at noon at Wheeling Island Stadium when Cleveland Glenville and Thomas Jefferson, Pa. meet in the first of what’s going to become a Labor Day tradition in the Friendly City.

“I shared this idea with community leaders about two years ago and they all told me they thought it would be a big success,” Halloy said during a phone interview last week. “From a football standpoint we’re ready to go, but it’s just a matter of finalizing the final details and there are probably about nine million little details to work out.”

Putting an event of this magnitude obviously doesn’t come together overnight. That could still be the biggest understatement this writer has ever made. Coming up with a lineup of games can be tough enough, but Halloy actually admits he got lucky when he starting contacting the schools he wanted to bring in for the event.

“There were only a couple of schools that were already scheduled,” Halloy said. “Getting the teams wasn’t nearly as difficult as I had thought it might be. We’re already working on 2009, 2010 and 2011 and hopefully by October, we can release next year’s games.”

While most of the area fans are looking forward to seeing the likes of Glenville with all of its possible future Ohio State Buckeyes as well as Lakeland, Florida, which has one of the highest pedigrees of prep football in the nation. Throw in the likes of Pittsburgh Central Catholic and it’s a full-fledged card of heavy hitters.

However, that’s not the exact reason the event was started.

“It was actually created for local teams,” Halloy said. “I have worked with the Herbstreit Challenge and only bigger schools get invited due to their fan bases and ticket sales, but the schools in the Ohio Valley are as passionate about high school football as anywhere in the country, but they just don’t have the size or numbers to get invited.”

So Halloy approached several local schools and came up with the annual meeting of Wheeling Central and Steubenville Catholic to close out th evening with a 6 p.m. kickoff Monday night.

“We want to allow local teams to play big-school teams down the road,” Halloy said. “We’ll never put up a school like Wheeling Central against a Lakeland or something like that, but we could get some teams like Marion Local or someone to come in and play a Wheeling Central. We’re always going to try to have two or three local teams in the field.”

The fact that the two local schools are considered small schools in terms of their respective state enrollments goes to show that all schools in the Ohio Valley could potenially draw an invitation to the event in the coming years.

As with any event in its fledgling stage, there is some apprehension about everything going off without a hitch and whether or not people will come out and support the event, which costs $15 for all three games and it also includes a breakfast with several legendary college football coaches, who are coming to Wheeling to take part in the Don Nehlen and Friends event, which will be held at WesBanco Sunday evening.

“There’s always an uncertaintly because it’s never been done here before,” Halloy said. “I think we’ve got a lot of good things in place and I think we’ve created an environment that will attract people to come out and support the event. As a promotor of these types of events, we tend to go toward the side of cautious optimism.”

An event like this will go a long way in challenging Ohio Valley football fans, who often make the claim that they are amongst the best in both the states of Ohio and West Virginia.

“I’m curious to see just how much the Ohio Valley likes its high school football,” Halloy pointed out. “I haven’t lived in the valley for 25 years, but people tell me it’s more of a religion than ever, which is what had a lot to do with me bringing this event here.”

Along with the football games Monday, fans are also invited to take part in the Health Plan Fun Zone, which will run on the west side of Wheeling Island Stadium from 11 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. and will feature free games, contests and goodies such as popcorn, cotton candy and frozen treats. From 4-6 p.m. in the Fan Zone, folks will have the opportunity to meet and greet Jeremy Starks, who is a spokesperson for Friends of Coal and also a professional Pro Bass Angler.

With everything seemingly in place, Halloy knows that the execution of the event will go a long way in allowing it to sink or swim in the future.

“If we do a poor job Monday then it probably won’t happen again,” Halloy said. “But, that’s not going to happen. We’ve done this before and I don’t have any anxiety about pulling the event off. The easiest part of the entire weekend is the games themselves, and when those gates unlock Monday morning we’ve got to be ready for anything.”

SETH’S SCOOPS

• LONGTIME OHIO Valley Football official and Halloy’s classmate at St. John, Sam Jones, was in charge of assigning the officials for the contests. All Ohio Valley officials will be used for the games according to Halloy.

• GLENVILLE AND LAKELAND are both set to arrive in the Friendly City Saturday and will be staying at the McClure House in downtown Wheeling. Both squads will work out at Wheeling Island Stadium.

• THE OTHER teams will bus to the Friendly City on game day. However, each squad will be assigned a team host to make sure its treated well for the entire day.

• MEDIA IS coming from far and wide to cover the inaugural event. Halloy has received media requests from more than 60 outlets, including the likes of ESPN.com, Rivals, Scout, New York Times, USA Today, The Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

• HALLOY got his biggest piece of positive news when he was surfing weather reports this week and saw that forecast was set at 80 degrees and mostly sunny on game day.

Staskey can be reached at sstaskey@timesleaderonline.com