It was a different time.
The goal posts were torn down after every Thanksgiving Day game.
And the players all joined together at the end of the big day to celebrate their rivalry and companionship.
It was football in the Valley in the 1950s and 1960s.
Approaching the 100th Thanksgiving Day game between Derby and Shelton, former players reminisced about their time on the teams, and what it meant to the community.
To them, the rivalry was about family, tradition and camaraderie.
FAMILY
“It involved emotions,” said Leon Sylvester, a former Shelton schools superintendent who played for Shelton in the late 1950s.
Sylvester’s uncle had played for Derby; his dad for Shelton.
“As a young boy, I remember my father and my uncles — at the Thanksgiving Day table there would be heavy discussion about how the game had gone,” Sylvester said.
Families were closer together then, said Sam Toni, who played for Derby in the late 1950s. And people followed in the footsteps of their older family members, leading to long-time family franchises in Valley sports.
“If you had a brother or an uncle or a father who played for Derby, it was more than likely you were going to play,” Toni said.
The feeling at the games was about family as well, former players said.
Three to five thousand people would show up at the Thanksgiving Day game.
“You get more of a family feel than the Derby-Ansonia game,” said Jack Walsh, a Derby High School graduate who later coached basketball at Shelton High School. “It’s one big reunion. It’s more than the game.”
TRADITION
The rivalry was also friendly, former players said.
Players from the two teams joined together for a dance the night of the big game.
The players looked forward to the game all year.
“It’s a tough rivalry, but it’s also a friendly rivalry,” Walsh said.
“It was always fair and fun,” Sylvester said. “Very competitive, but you can compete against someone and still be friends.”
“It was one of these things where you hated one another for two weeks, and then for a week and a half, you practiced as if you wanted to beat them into the ground. And likewise they would be doing the same thing,” Toni said.
Then it went back to normal afterward, Toni said, when the teams got together for a dance the night of the big game.
Victor Spigarolo, who played for Shelton in the late 1950s, said the outcome of the game could make or break a season.
“Let’s sum it up this way,” Spigarolo said. “If you had a losing season, and you won the Derby-Shelton game, everything else was forgiven. That’s how important it was to people in the Valley.”
Several former players talked about how people would knock down the field goal posts and carry them down the street in victory.
But the players rarely saw it, because they were back in the locker room either crying or cheering the result of the game.
CAMARADERIE
The players felt a deep connection to one another.
“It taught discipline, and what having a friend next to you is for,” Toni said. “And when you played the game, you were on the team, and you were part of it. If you got into a problem, they were always there. You could count on them because you played with them on the football field.”
But the game brought out feelings of community among the residents of both towns too.
“I think this game is really about so much more than what happens on the field,” said John Niski, the athletic director for Shelton. “The people who have played in this game over the past 100 years are neighbors, friends, coworkers — Valley-ites.”
“It really has a lot of meaning to the people that have grown up here,” Niski said. “It’s more than just a football game.”
THE ASSOCIATION
The rivalry has stuck with many players.
Some have started an alumni association for former football players, called the Shelton Lafayette Field Football Association, named after the field at Lafayette School where the team held their games.
The group meets for reunions, and gives scholarships to football players.
In October, the group held a joint reunion with Derby football players, Spigarolo said. About 65 people showed up.
“At the time back then, there was such tremendous animosity between the two teams,” Spigarolo said. “After you got out of school, you just remember each other as fellow competitors.”
Others, like George Quadretti, have memorialized the days.
Quadretti wrote the book “The Legends of Lafayette Field“ to recall Shelton football between 1946 and 1961.
The photos in this story are from that book, and come from private collections and Shelton yearbook collections, Quadretti said.
“It was our last game of the year. For us kids in Shelton, it was our most meaningful game,” Quadretti said.
THE GAME
The Thanksgiving Day game will begin at 10:30 at Shelton High School.
Commemorative items will be sold, and an alumni tent will be set up for former players to gather together.
Former players from each generation will be honored during a half-time ceremony.
