UPDATE: Thanks to an inexplicably detailed website on Michigan high school football, which lists the results of every game going back to 1950, I think I figured out why Northwestern and Powers stopped playing each other. It wasn't the violence referenced in the comment section; there were violent altercations at almost every game. It may have been the results. Powers beat Northwestern six times in a row between 1978-1983. With the old playoff system, losing the first game to a smaller school was probably a good way to ruin your season. But things might be different this year. Northwestern beat Southwestern 32-6 in the first game of the season on Friday.
UPDATE: Rich Frost points out that this rivalry is renewed just as the biggest rivalry of them all in Flint — the fabled Northern/Central matchup — disappears.
And here's another thing that's hard to believe: No more Northern/Central football games. Was there anything better than a Thanksgiving Northern/Central game at Atwood Stadium?
ReplyDeleteLess than a mile? They're less than the length of a FOOTBALL field from one another!?! I hate irony.
ReplyDeleteTo add insult to injury the second biggest stadium in the county is Guy V. Houston which is right there.
Tis a damn shame that it was back in the days of Todd Lyght, Andre Rison, and Veno Belk that these two schools faced one another for the last time. My heart says the Wildcats will stage a miracle victory, but my mind says it'll be a Powers drubbing.
I planned to use the football field reference but then I envisioned some reader with a heightened sense of measurement pointing out that it was actually 524 feet that separated the schools. So I played it safe. I seem to remember in the eighties that Northwestern was always ranked higher but often ended up losing to Powers.
ReplyDeleteHow about the four schools left in the inappropriately named Big Nine joining forces with Northern, Northwestern and Southwestern for a Flint-area conference? Save on travel costs and keep the money local.
I Google Earthed it just to confirm the distance... I'm guesstimating that it is around 95 yards.
ReplyDeleteThe Shrinking (enrollment that is) Seven Conference is a good idea, but something tells me Flushing and Davison might object.
As a proud product of the Flint Community Schools I propose the Scummy Seven Conference: Northern, SWA, NW, Bendle, Beecher, Montrose, and Choice. Something tells me the 8 man team at MSD could beat most of these schools.
Anybody remember the kid with no legs who played football for SWA a while back. Man, that was the most heartwarming, triumph of the human spirit story I'd heard in a long time.
No feet and playing football? More irony for ya.
ReplyDeleteI was there the last time we played Northwestern and took part in the inevitable brawl after the game as we headed to the bus!
ReplyDeleteIf I recall correctly, which I do, a member of our team skipped the bus ride, went to his house, retrieved a weapon and fired random shots towards good ole' Houston stadium. A classmate of yours Gordie!
Hey Gordie - didn't we (Powers) also play one time in Atwood stadium v. Northwestern and one of our students (soccer player, won't i.d.) was literally kidnapped by Northwestern students, beat up, and later released?
Ahh.. the rivarly.
Let's rekindle the Beecher rivalry as well and have Mose Lacy climb the Holy Redeemer bleachers again to attack a Powers parent!
Such fond memories....
God bless Flint football!
Northender -
The image of Mose Lacy attacking Powers parents is wonderful. Those smug Charger mom and dads deserve an occasional terrorist attack.
ReplyDeleteI'll never forget watching Mose Lacy purposely drop the runner up trophy for the Class B championship after Beecher lost to Buena Vista on a last second Hail Mary shot.
Powers always aggravated me. They'd get tons of kids from places like Mott Park who were too wimpy to hack it at Northern. Did anybody besides Gordie really go there for the Catholic education?
Math/Science at Northern and the Humanites at Central were top notch programs, so the "superior education" argument doesn't work. Maybe it does now, but back in the day...
The true Powers - Northwestern rivalry took place in the 7-11 store kitty corner from the Power's parking lot. I once drove into school (in my red Chevette, no less) to be passed by the entire Power's varsity football team going to fight Northwestern students who had trapped a Power's cross country runner in the 7-11.
ReplyDeleteWurst - I can give it to the
1980's Central for the humanities program, but to laud Northern's math/science program is laughable.
I remember as a freshman at Powers in the late 70's going to watch the varsity Powers vs. Northwestern football game at Houston stadium. My parents dropped me and my friends off at Northwestern, but we told them we'd meet them in the Powers parking lot after the game. So naive!
ReplyDeleteSo of course in crossing that unlit 95 yard patch between the schools, we were met by a group of Northwestern partisans. They asked us who were and if we had watched the game. We said, "Powers" and "yeah, we won." Then they asked, "So, you wanna fight?" I looked at my friends, we looked at them, and I said, "No, not really." There was a slight pause (relief? disappointment?) and then one of them said, "Okay" and we parted ways. Turned out they were a bunch of naive freshman, too, who really didn't know how these things were supposed to work either.
The fights at the NW game were not greater than Grand Blanc. The major problem game was Beecher. Rocks thrown at the bus, random fights breaking out before and after the game - wonderful.
ReplyDeleteI always found it funny that the Flint Journal NEVER reported about the brawls involving Beecher.
Wurst: "As a proud product of the Flint Community Schools I propose the Scummy Seven Conference: Northern, SWA, NW, Bendle, Beecher, Montrose, and Choice. Something tells me the 8 man team at MSD could beat most of these schools."
ReplyDelete1. Why would you put Bendle and Montrose in this category? Those schools are MUCH different compared to the others mentioned.
2. If you're going to pull random teams out of the GAC to pair with the city schools and Beecher, then it should be Hamady... Not Bendle or Montrose.
3. Choice has no football team. The actual school isn't even open anymore. But when it was, they had basketball, and that was about it.
4.The eight man team at MSD couldn't beat ANY of those schools.
5. The reason the Flint schools (particularly Northern and SWA) have such negative results on the field has a lot to do with their conference. They play in the Saginaw Valley with Bay City Central, Bay City Western, Midland, Midland Dow, Mt. Pleasant, Saginaw, Saginaw Arthur Hill, Saginaw Heritage.
Does anyone have any information on Houston Stadium? I have been searching the web and found very little. It is extremely easy to find Atwood info, but nothing on Houston. Does anyone know when it was built? Or what the seating capacity is?
ReplyDelete