Crosstown Rivals to Unite At Enfield Reunion

ENFIELD, CT — When Enrico Fermi High School opened in 1971, a crosstown rivalry began with Enfield High School that lasted for more than four decades. At the time, there were two junior high schools in town - Thaddeus Kosciuszko and John F. Kennedy - and with some exceptions, the majority of "Big K" students went on to Fermi, while most of the JFK teens attended Enfield, meaning most of the kids did not even know each other unless it was through a town activity or youth sports league.

The rivalry was intense for a number of years, particularly on various grass, hardwood and ice playing surfaces. Both the Raiders and Falcons competed in the Central Connecticut Interscholastic League (CCIL), which provided fierce competition among all of its member schools, but none more so than when the two Enfield schools butted heads.

For 37 years, Thanksgiving morning began with the annual Enfield-Fermi football clash, with thousands of spectators ringing the field. The two schools also battled twice a year on the ice, with five state championships being claimed between them as fans regularly filled the Enfield Twin Rinks to capacity.

Two monumental events took place in the 1982-83 school year (my senior year at Fermi, by the way) which began to alter the longstanding rivalry. School officials closed Kosciuszko, merging seventh and eighth-grade students into a single location at JFK and placing freshmen into the high school buildings for the first time since the 1960s (a banner atop the cover of the Fermi yearbook exclaims, "Population Explosion"). Previously, the two junior high schools had housed grades 7, 8 and 9. From 1982 through the present day, all middle school students (which now includes sixth-graders) attend JFK.

The second major happening took place March 12, 1983, in the now-defunct New Haven Coliseum. On that afternoon, Fermi defeated top-seeded South Windsor 8-5 to capture the school's first Division II ice hockey championship. Not to be outdone, Enfield, which had won Division II the previous year, then took the ice and, though it required overtime, knocked off defending champion Notre Dame-West Haven 5-4 to complete a perfect 23-0 season and snare the Division I crown. To this day, that marks the only occasion in Connecticut hockey history where two public high schools from the same town won both divisions in the same year.

Several celebrations ensued - on the ice, with fans scaling the glass and boards to join the players, and on the team buses, which were interspersed with a mixture of players from both squads. Most of the players had grown up together in the Enfield Hockey Association, and the dual victory brought out genuine joy for each other and the town as a whole, as Enfield became known as "The Hockey Capital of Connecticut."

That evening, and into the next morning, a celebratory bash was held at the home of one of the players who lived near the Twin Rinks (their name is being withheld, though it is believed the statute of limitations has expired). That party has become legendary, similar to what is said about Woodstock: if you remember it, then you weren't actually there.

Three and a half decades later, history will again be made, as the senior classes of 1983 will celebrate the 35th anniversary of their graduations with a first-ever joint reunion on Saturday, Nov. 3 at the Old Country Banquet Hall on Alden Avenue.

"The suggestion was bantered about after the 30th high school reunion five years ago," said former Enfield mayor Scott Kaupin, who was president of the Fermi Class of 1983. "Some people mentioned that they were going to both reunions and that we should consider combining efforts for the 35th. When we began planning our 35th reunion about one year ago, I reached out to some friends from Enfield High School and we discussed the joint reunion. Each class talked to a number of people and even solicited input via Facebook posts. The response to combine efforts was overwhelmingly positive, so we joined together and have worked on planning this reunion together."

Enfield alumnae Wendy (Zocco) Doyle said she had started an "it's time to start planning our reunion" Facebook page when she was contacted by Kaupin.

"Scott reached out to me...and the positive comments started a survey and the ball started rolling, and you know how organized Scott and Chip (Dyer) are....boom. Combined committee, website, reunion," Zocco said.

She continued, "Having a town rivalry was all in good fun. The annual rival football game always brought our classes together. Then, in 1983, our schools really rallied to support our hockey teams that both won division titles on the same day. Boy was that a day to remember in Enfield! History was made!"

Kaupin said, "The committee is comprised of class members from both Enfield and Fermi. Besides a little friendly banter back and forth, we have planned what promises to be a fun night for people to reconnect and even make some new friends from their crosstown rivalry!"

Among the guests scheduled to attend is Magnus Ostenberg, formerly known as Magnus Nilsson, who was a Swedish exchange student at Fermi and a first-team All-CCIL soccer standout. He scored more than half of the Falcons' 31 goals that season, finding the net 16 times and adding five assists to lead the team to the Class L state tournament after a string of losing seasons.

Ostenberg changed his last name following his high school days as a tribute to his mother.

"His father's last name Nilsson is very popular in Sweden," Kaupin explained. "It's similar to Smith or Jones here in the U.S.A. Ostenberg is his mother's maiden name and not as popular. He switched to his mother's family name to allow the name to continue another generation."

Ostenberg will be visiting the United States for the first time since 1986.

"Me and a friend from Sweden drove from San Francisco [to Enfield] in a Buick Wildcat-66 for Thanksgiving," he recalled via text message from Kristianstad, Sweden.

Information about the combined reunion may be found here, or on the committee's Facebook page.

Photos courtesy of Enfield Historical Society via archive.org

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