More Than Just a Game

Bucks and Montgomery County high school football rivalries heat up this Thanksgiving.
By Dom Cosentino

Bristol and Morrisville high schools, both located in Lower Bucks County, are two of the smallest football-playing schools in Southeastern Pennsylvania. And yet, when they line up to play one another on Thanksgiving morning, as they will again this year for the 80th time, they’re both suddenly transformed into something much, much bigger.

“It’s our Super Bowl,” said Greg Pinelli, the Bristol Athletic Director. “The winner of that game – you could go 0-10, and after that game the Thanksgiving dinner tastes wonderful.”

Bristol-Morrisville is one of many high school football rivalries involving Bucks and Montgomery County schools. They are rivalries that extend back generations. They are rivalries that include their own rituals and traditions. And they are rivalries that have endured even as the landscape of high school football has changed in the last 25 years with the advent of statewide playoffs.

Perhaps no game in the two counties has lasted quite like Lower Merion-Radnor, which on November 14 will be played for the 113th consecutive year, which makes it the longest continuously played public high school football rivalry in the country. The teams first played on October 26, 1897, and to this day the game sparks the passions of members from both school communities.

“There’s always a little bit more of a buzz in the air,” said Don Walsh, the Athletic Director at Lower Merion.

During what’s known as “Radnor Week,” Lower Merion students prepare with pep rallies and with what Walsh described as “Color Wars,” whereby members of each grade take a hallway in the school and decorate it, among other spirit-themed activities.

The Bristol-Morrisville game involves similar traditions. At Bristol, the senior players are typically paired up with a cheerleader. The player typically gives the cheerleader a charm—“They spend a lot of money,” Pinelli said—while the cheerleader will decorate the player’s home during the week of the game.

“That’s the tradition,” Pinelli said. “It’s a family. People come back, and they look forward to it. It’s a social gathering; it’s said that you meet people again at weddings, funerals and the Bristol-Morrisville game.”

The game has personally meant a lot to Pinelli, a 1973 Bristol graduate who played in the Thanksgiving game and whose four sons all did, too.

“The year we didn’t have it,” Pinelli said, referring to 2001, when Morrisville had to cancel its season because of a lack of players, “there was a void there.”

While many schools continue to play Thanksgiving games, many more have opted out, preferring instead to play one another earlier in the season in the wake of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association’s decision to sponsor statewide football championships in 1988. There was a time, for instance, when the intra-school-district rivalry pitting Central Bucks West and Central Bucks East of Doylestown annually drew more than 10,000 people to James Work Stadium at Delaware Valley College on Thanksgiving morning. But as CB West, which was once a nationally renowned powerhouse, continued to advance in the playoffs, a conflict was created. In 1993, the game was moved to earlier this season, which is where it remains today. And then the Central Bucks School District opened Central Bucks South in 2004, further diluting the status of the rivalry between CB East and CB West.

In recent years, other rivalries have followed by either choosing to move to earlier in the season or to be done away with entirely: Norristown-Upper Merion, Wissahickon-Upper Dublin.

There are, however, plenty of other rivalries that continue to thrive, either as a result of being competitive or as a result of just staying strong. Pennsbury and Neshaminy, located in Yardley and Langhorne, respectively, have been playing since 1931, and this year both are among the top teams in the state heading into their much-anticipated November 6 matchup at Pennsbury.

On Thanksgiving, Pottstown and nearby Owen J. Roberts played last year for the 50th time. Quakertown and neighboring Pennridge will meet this year for the 80th time. And Upper Moreland and Hatboro-Horsham will do so for the 74th time.

There are private schools with longstanding ties, too. Germantown Academy, in Fort Washington, has played William Penn Charter of Philadelphia every year since 1887—the longest-running rivalry in Pennsylvania and the oldest continuously played rivalry in the country. On the day of that game, which this year will be November 14, all of the schools’ other fall sports programs play one another, too. The Hill School of Pottstown has played Lawrenceville (N.J.) since 1887, too, though not without interruption.

When Bristol hosts Morrisville this year on Thanksgiving, the players from both teams will wear commemorative jerseys to honor games past.

“There are just so many different components,” Pinelli said. “You’re a part of history. It’s unbelievable.”

Dom Cosentino is a freelance sports writer for the Intelligencer.