It takes two for a rivalry

When I was a sophomore at Golden High School in Colorado, the varsity football team defeated the school's dreaded rival, Wheat Ridge, in a regular-season Jefferson County league game.

The Golden football program, a perennial mediocrity compared to Wheat Ridge's usually successful teams, was so confident that particular year that before the game they had shirts printed that said "Golden Beats Wheat Ridge 1980."

Not terribly creative, but straightforward. One has to wonder how long the players wore those shirts before they decided that their juvenile boasting was kind of embarrassing and the shirt became a rag for drying the car. On the other hand, maybe some have kept them to this day as a memento of a shining high school moment.

But the sad thing about these shirts was that the Golden Demons/Wheat Ridge Farmers rivalry lived mostly in the heads of the Golden students. My husband was a Wheat Ridge graduate, and he said they didn't really think of anyone as rivals. They were usually too busy winning - so often that even schools from other leagues "hated" Wheat Ridge.

Golden is now one of the trendy suburbs of the Denver metro area, but at the time, it was a blue-collar town, built on mining and the Coors beer manufacturing plant.

Wheat Ridge, whose district ran alongside Golden's and even overlapped in places, was reputed as a place where everyone was rich, which was a bit of an exaggeration but excellent school-rivalry building propaganda. Though there were a few mansion-like properties in the district, many of the neighborhoods consisted of average-sized solid brick middle-class homes.

Demographic facts didn't matter. In the minds of the Golden students, the Wheat Ridge students all were spoiled snobs who deserved to be beaten by the hard-working laborers and to have a football loss rubbed in their face by printing it on a T-shirt.

I might have pretended to share my fellow students' hatred of all things Wheat Ridge, but I don't remember really caring.

We keep hearing anecdotes here at the Inter Lake about the rivalry or the jealousy that has developed between the students at Glacier and Flathead high schools and have received letters from students where the writers are worked up about issues that will undoubtedly be forgotten in a few years.

An informal poll of my two boys, who attend Flathead, reveals that the average Brave or Bravette carries little to no animosity toward Wolfpack members.

I myself have witnessed Glacier soccer players talking openly and without shame to the Flathead players they've known for years. And my sons said when Glacier students have attended Flathead football games, students of all school colors have been welcomed gladly into the student section.

A good-spirited school rivalry that drives competitors to become better in sports, drama or otherwise usually is just fun. School rivalries that become emotionally ugly couldn't be more senseless, as they boil down to nothing more substantial than address prejudice - which is kind of embarrassing.

Reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4431 or by e-mail at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com