The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Rivalry week is special
North-South, Brush-Mayfield evenly matched this season
In many ways, rivalries are what make high school sports great.
Every game is big, but the game against your fiercest rival — that’s what gets your blood boiling, that’s what distracts you in school all day on game day, those are the games you remember the rest of your life.
Case in point, nearly three decades have passed since my senior year at Grand Valley, when we went to the locker room at halftime of the JV basketball game against rival Pymatuning Valley to change into our varsity uniforms and had to stay there because the seats we had were already taken by the fans who John Kampf crammed into the gym.
There’s no way we would have passed a fire code that night.
Some things stick with you forever.
Such memories will be made this weekend as two of the area’s fiercest rivalries are renewed when Brush and Mayfield meet for the 96th time and South and North clash for the 57th time.
South (2-3) heads up Stephens Boulevard to face North (2-3) on Sept. 28, while not far away Mayfield makes the short jaunt to Korb Field to face Brush in a battle of 2-3 teams.
A glance back at history shows both rivalries are extraordinarily balanced, though one team has dominated each rivalry in recent years.
Brush leads the all-time series with Mayfield, 4845-2. However, since 1990 — a span of 26 games — Mayfield has a 25-1 record.
South and North are dead even in their rivalry, with a 27-27-2 record. But the Rebels have won 12 in a row and 14 of the last 15 dating back to 2001.
Recent history hasn’t been kind to Brush and North.
Since 1990, Mayfield has outscored Brush, 690-264, for an average score of 26.5-10.2. And since 2001 — when at the time North had a 23-13-1 advantage in the series — North has been outscored by an average of 38.2-17.8.
But this year there is a lot of rumblings that history could repeat itself for the first time since 1989 — or at least has a viable chance to do so.
North is coming off a 10-8 win over Riverside in which the Rangers shut down a Beavers offense that had scored virtually at will in the first four weeks of the season.
Brush looks like a different team with Godwin Joe at quarterback, winning two in a row and giving teams fits with Joe’s dual-threat abilities behind center and the emerging running threat of Christian Ross.
Then again, South and Mayfield are going to have something to say about it. After all, they are the teams that have momentum of recent success on their side, not to mention plenty of playmakers of their own.
South quarterback Mike Federico is less than 1,000 yards from the all-time passing mark at his school, and receiver Devannaire Conliffe is likely the toughest matchup in the area. A potential duel between the Rebels’ high-octane offense and the Rangers’ staunch defense could be in the offing.
Mayfield quarterback Anthony Williams might very well be the five-week leader for breakout player of the year. We’re not sure anyone saw the Wildcats averaging 27.6 points per game at this juncture after graduating the offensive firepower they graduated last spring.
Whichever officiating crew has the MayfieldBrush game might want to keep an oxygen tank handy in what looks like it might be an offensive showcase.
Keep in mind also that marquee defenders such as Brush’s Tyrone Chambers, North’s Tyler Swearingen and Mayfield’s Izzy Watson will also want to have a say in how rivalry weekend goes.
This is one of those weeks you could splitscreen games like you can with the NFL Sunday Ticket. The BrushMayfield and North-South games could be that good.
And memorable, especially for those who are playing in them.
Rivalry games always are.