The Fall high school athletic event of the year, 50 years ago

The mythical City championship for high school football lasted for just over five decades, from about 1921 though the mid-1970s.   Thanksgiving in Newport then always meant DeLaSalle Academy versus Rogers High.   As far as I know, it was always played at Freebody Park, just off Memorial Boulevard, the prettiest road in town.

But fifty years ago, the game was postponed to Sat., Nov. 30th, due to very heavy rain on Thurs., the 28th.   Rogers beat DeLaSalle that day, 14 - 6.   DeLaSalle had won the previous year, 14 - 12, and the year after '63, by 13 - 0.

Yet that was the last year that DLS ever won ('64).   Nobody ever thought that it would not even exist anymore, only a dozen or so years later.   An acquaintance of mine who was either a student there then, or would have been soon, claimed that the bishop in Providence wouldn't help the school financially . . . and suspected that other R. I. Catholic high schools did receive financial help.   Who's to know?   Yet, only a generation or two later, demand to enroll in R. I. Catholic high schools became quite high.

But when I think of DeLaSalle, I think of William Faulkner's story, "The Bear" . . . the gist of which was, when a hunter finally had a chance to nail the bear, he realized that if he did, he would no longer have the animal to pursue.   So even though I always wanted Roger to beat DLS, there arose a void when said rival was no more.   "It just wasn't the same anymore."