ALIQUIPPA, Pa. >> In a small city northwest of Pittsburgh, once home to one of the largest steel manufacturing plants in the United States, players on the Aliquippa High School football team paused their practice last August for a few unexpected visitors.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, showed up to give pep talks.

Introducing Walz, Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, congratulated the team’s coach for winning last season’s state championship. Then he gestured toward Walz, saying, “We got a coach on our team, too.”

Walz was a high school football coach, and the Harris campaign has wanted voters to remember it — especially in swing states such as Pennsylvania.

In Western Pennsylvania, football is so important that Mike Hall, an Aliquippa resident who used to work in catering, jokingly said that robbing the bank on fall Friday nights would be easy “because everyone is at the high school games, even the police.”

For decades, Democrats counted on winning Beaver County, which includes Aliquippa, because it was a union-fueled Democratic stronghold anchored by workers at the steel mills. But that party loyalty began to fade when the plants shuttered. The massive, 7-mile plant in Aliquippa, founded in the early 1900s as Jones and Laughlin Steel, closed in the 1980s. Thousands of jobs disappeared.Harris and former President Donald Trump have visited the county a number of times because so many votes seem up for grabs: Registered Republicans now outnumber the Democrats there by fewer than 4,000 votes, according to this week’s data from the Pennsylvania Department of State.

Aliquippa, where residents love football and value its deep connection to the community, is something of a barometer of Harris’ big bet: that Tim Walz, the former football coach, could help lure disaffected voters back to the Democratic Party.

Walz is all about that role — bringing the joy, the fun and the communal hug — to the Democrats’ campaign rallies. The question is whether his persona as a football coach is appealing enough to convince voters that they could vote for Democrats again.

What else can he offer them, beyond a pep talk?

Bill Zuccaro, 58, owns Stevie’s Dari Mart, a corner store in Aliquippa. He said that years ago, when a flood decimated his shop, he felt like the government didn’t help him enough. His bank accounts still haven’t recovered, and he’s worried about retirement.

Four years ago, he was a Bernie Sanders supporter. Today, he’s a Republican. He likes Walz. “Coaches are like family here,” he said.

Still, with the election just days away, Zuccaro is undecided.

Long hours and aching muscles. A refusal to give up against bigger opponents or insurmountable challenges. That’s what Aliquippa football is made of, said Brian Cox, 45, who owns a barbershop in town that he named Legends, for the long line of Quips football greats.

The Quips have traditionally been so good that they play schools more than twice their enrollment to make the competition fair. But the team’s five state championships have not been enough to revitalize a city that has struggled economically since the mill closures. Cox said he is reminded of that daily.

His barbershop is on Franklin Avenue, which used to be a bustling strip of shops, restaurants and a United Steelworkers union hall. Now it barely has a heartbeat. Foot traffic has vanished. Many buildings have been knocked down or boarded up. One big parking lot is dotted with junked cars.

The most famous high school football coach

Other candidates — mostly Republicans — have banked on their football pedigree to get votes. Tommy Tuberville, a former Auburn coach who is now an Alabama senator, did it. So did Herschel Walker, the former pro football player, who lost his 2022 Senate race in Georgia.

In Texas, Rep. Colin Allred, a Democrat who was captain of the Baylor University football team and a Tennessee Titans linebacker, is hoping football can help him win his senate race over the incumbent, Ted Cruz. Walz was never a pro, but he has become, perhaps, the most famous assistant high school football coach in the country. He was a defensive coordinator.

During the vice-presidential debate, he mentioned football three times. At the Democratic convention, delegates created a roiling sea of signs that said, “COACH WALZ.” At one point in the convention, 15 of Walz’s former high school players from Mankato West High School in Minnesota walked onto the stage. Most wore their jerseys. Their high school’s fight song played as if it were a not a presidential rally, but a pregame one.

‘I do love that he is a football man’

In August, Walz spoke to the Quips team, accompanied by Jerome Bettis, a former Pittsburgh Steelers running back. Walz sounded like the coach he had once been.

He thanked the team “for giving us the privilege to stand on this field.” He said that success in football meant trusting the guy next to you.

“Our country’s not that different,” Walz said, adding, “The more we figure out that we’re in this thing together and we have more in common than we have separated, we’re going to do a heck of a lot better.”

Though only a handful of players would be old enough to vote this time, Walz related to the teenagers in a way that other politicians haven’t been able to do, said Vashawn Patrick, the head coach. “What Walz said really made the players feel like he was one of them.”

Can a coach’s pep talks work with voters?

Danielle Sampson, mother of a Quips player, said Walz’s coaching past “would definitely” help Harris in Western Pennsylvania. Walz impressed her by speaking to the players with familiarity, she said, making him seem “so normal.”

Cox waved at the Harris-Walz campaign bus from the sidewalk as it passed his shop that day.

That said, he is skeptical of promises and cheery speeches. Every politician pledges to bring prosperity back to Aliquippa, he said, but all have failed.

He is leaning toward voting for Trump because the former president is a businessperson and is “raw and tells you things straight to the point.” But he is still unsure.

“I do love that he is a football man,” Cox said of Walz. “I feel like we could ease into a conversation — first, where we could talk about the game, and then when I could ask him, ‘What is your plan to build the economy for small businesses?’”

“Right now,” Cox added, “I don’t know what Harris’ plan is to help guys like me.”