Thursday is going to be a very special day for everyone in both communities – but is it the 100th game?
Jack Walsh does the math in this column about the long-time football rivalry between Derby and Shelton high schools.
Look it up on Wikipedia, and the site will tell you that it is one of the oldest high school rivalries in the country.
In fact, they say that the game has been played 101 times since the first game in 1904.
Wait a minute!! At Thursday’s game in Shelton, they are going to be celebrating the 100th edition of the game and have been selling pins, t‑shirts and stadium cushions to commemorate the game.
Special ceremonies recognizing anyone who ever played in the game are being held at halftime, and the two oldest living players from both schools will toss the coin at the start of the game. It’s going to be a very special day for everyone in both communities – but is it the 100th game?
I can’t answer that because it is up to officials in both towns to actually decide.
However, for as long as I have been involved with the Rotary luncheon, I’ve been spending time in the weeks before Thanksgiving looking through old copies of the beloved, but defunct Evening Sentinel. I’ve been reading the historical record of the game and recounting stories of the great games and the community activities surrounding them at the luncheons. And every year at the end of the luncheon would ask just how many games had been played and who was ahead in the series.
A few years ago, Shelton High School Athletic Director John Niski sent me a copy of a spreadsheet that he had compiled showing all of the games ever played along with the scores. It is that spreadsheet that shows this year’s game to be number 100.
Up until I received the spreadsheet, I had thought that the first Derby/Shelton game was played in 1905 with Derby winning by a score of 27 – 0. I had not seen a 1904 game listed before, so I decided to try to learn more about it.
The Evening Sentinel does indeed have a 1904 Shelton High School game against a Derby team. However the team was not called Derby High School, but rather the Derby Juniors and Shelton won by the score of 11 – 5. The game was played on the meadows in Derby. To my surprise in reading the article, the Derby team had three players including the quarterback who were students at Yale University.
About two months ago Randy Ritter of Derby sent me a picture of the Derby High School football team from 1905 as pictured in the Derby High School 1906 yearbook. The picture included the football schedule with the results. The scores do include a Derby win over Shelton by a 27 – 0 score as previously recorded. However there is a second game with Shelton listed as well. That one shows Derby a 10 – 5 winner over a team called the Shelton Juniors. I don’t know if they had any Yale players, but the game description does not mention Shelton High just as the 1904 game did not mention Derby High.
I decided to take a closer look at the other 1905 game, and there was a surprise there as well. An earlier article on Shelton High School had mentioned that they were trying to start a football team. However, I could not find a record of any Shelton games except for the previously mentioned Shelton Juniors. Derby had played several and was set to play New Milford for a second time. However, New Milford pulled out of the game, and suddenly a team from Shelton High School which had never played a game traveled to Derby to play.
The Sentinel said, “Shelton is just forming an eleven and Friday evening their men got around for the first time to practice. The majority of them had never played Rugby, few had ever played in a regular game against a strong team. But they obligingly consented to play, expecting nothing less than defeat”. The result was a predictable 27 – 0 Derby win, the first one in the history of the game as most from Derby would say. But hold on a minute – was it a real game? The Evening Sentinel article begins by saying, “The Derby high school eleven defeated the Shelton high school team by the score of 27 to nothing Saturday afternoon in the meadows. It was not a regular game however, being played for practice”.
So what does it all mean? I don’t know, but it makes for some interesting discussion which should only serve to heighten interest in a truly great, but friendly rivalry between the towns.
By the way, the first Thanksgiving Day game between the schools was played in 1914, and they have been playing on Thanksgiving every year since 1922 except for the years when the game was postponed because of weather.
You can find scores from all the games on the Rotary website.
Jack Walsh is President and Chief Operating Officer of Valley United Way. A life-long resident of Derby, he has been with United Way since 1989. Jack was previously a teacher in Shelton and Derby as well as the head boys basketball coach at Shelton High School. He was also the Director of the Recreation Camp in Derby, a United Way funded agency, for fourteen years. The views in his column do not necessarily reflect those of the Valley Independent Sentinel.
