Meet the dual-sport standout who is the Times' 2023-24 Male Athlete of the Year

ALIQUIPPA — For Aliquippa dual-sport athlete Tikey Hayes, winning the WPIAL & state championships in basketball and football was always his dream when growing up in Aliquippa.

The junior made his dream come true this past year as due to Hayes' two impressive seasons both on the gridiron and on the hardwood, the Quips won both the WPIAL and PIAA championships in football and basketball.

“It was amazing to see all of the hard work paying off. We came up as little kids thinking about winning WPIAL and State titles in basketball and in football and that's what we did this year so it was amazing.”

With those efforts in both sports during the 2023-24 athletics season, Hayes has been named the Beaver County Times Male Athlete of the Year.

Many Quip greats have been honored with the award in years past so for Hayes to be named this year’s male athlete of the year, is something humbling for the rising senior.

“It is an honor,” Hayes said to the Beaver County Times. “I have seen a lot of other Aliquippa players that have won it. My coaches kept telling me that I have to play more than one sport and that has helped me in many ways. When DJ Walker won the award, someone came up to him saying that he was the athlete of the year so to be able to win an award like that is special.”

Hayes once again put yet another strong campaign together in the fall during the football season getting handed the rock 235 times and rushing for 2,129 yards and 23 touchdowns.

With his outstanding junior season, Hayes has now compiled just under 6,000 yards throughout his career with the Quips as the Penn State commit enters his final high school season sitting 10th all-time in rushing yards in the WPIAL.

But for Hayes, those personal accolades did not mean anything to him because of the sour taste left in his mouth after the 2022 PIAA State Championship game when Aliquippa fell to Bishop McDevitt 41-18.

“I just wanted another state championship. After we lost in 2022, two days later I got right back to work. I knew that my job for the next year was to win a state championship. In the games, I was just trying to put my head down and do as much as I could for my team so we could win. I didn’t care about anything that I did and accomplished on the field, I just wanted to win a championship.”

When it comes to having a successful football program and making a deep run into the postseason both at the district and state level, teams need to have players buy into their system and all work together.

For Hayes and his Quip teammates, everybody was working together to reach their goal, which was avenging their loss in the state championship game last season.

“We had guys out on the field that had no egos,” Hayes said. "Nobody was trying to be the hero; nobody was trying to make the big plays. We just all worked together and did our jobs and when we did, we won. When guys didn’t do their jobs, we almost lost like we did against West Allegheny where guys weren’t really doing what they were supposed to be doing. But when they started to work and do what they were supposed to do we scored on the final plays of the game. With us just all focused on doing our jobs and keeping our egos in check, that allowed us to win big games.”

In that state championship game against Dallas , Hayes rushed for 220 yards in the victory while finding the end zone three times helping the Quips claim their fifth state title in program history.

Following the state championship, Hayes went right into basketball season and did not miss a beat.

Even though the conditioning was different from the gridiron to the hardwood, and Hayes and his Aliquippa teammates did not have a lot of time to adjust, there wasn’t anything that he couldn’t handle as he began the 2023-24 basketball season.

“There was definitely a little adjustment switching from football to basketball in the short amount of time that we had between the end of football season and the beginning of the basketball season," he said. "The conditioning between the two was way different and we had to get more in shape, but it wasn’t anything that we couldn’t handle.”

As the season progressed, Hayes and the Quips dominated the competition using their physical defensive style of play to wear down opponents' offensive attack.

After a deep postseason run into the WPIAL Championships, Hayes helped Aliquippa in capturing yet another basketball title which marked the program’s 14th district title — tied for the most in WPIAL history.

It also became the second time that the program has won football and basketball titles in back-to-back seasons since the 1987-88 seasons and remains the only school to accomplish that feat.

Even after Hayes and the Quips made history in the WPIAL Championships, their journey did not end there as the junior played a key role in their state title run topping Holy Cross for their sixth PIAA title.

After Aliquippa won its state basketball title, it took a few days until it fully set into Hayes’ mind that he won WPIAL and state titles in both basketball and football in the same year.

“Once we won the state championship for basketball, it really didn’t set in that we won both the WPIAL and state titles in both basketball and football until a couple of days after the game,” Hayes said. “That is a hard thing to do because when you play sports back-to-back like that, some bodies might be hurt but we stayed together and we did it.”

Now heading into his senior season, Hayes will look to replicate the success he had in his junior campaign with the high school football season getting set to kickoff in just over a month.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Meet the dual-sport standout who is the Times' 2023-24 Male Athlete of the Year