Inside the epic prep sports rivalry
When 4,500 screaming basketball fans instantly cut the cheers and the chatter as someone starts the traditional prayer of the Christian Brothers: “Let us remember we are in the holy presence of God,” it’s clear that this is a different type of a rivalry.
Since 1893, San Francisco’s two oldest Catholic high schools, St. Ignatius College Prep and Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep, have squared off in what’s billed as the oldest high school athletic competition west of the Rocky Mountains.
Sure, it was rugby that was played on that long ago St. Patrick’s Day and the games were hit and miss affairs until the 1920s, but for generations of San Franciscans, those games and the rivalry behind them have been an important and well-remembered part of the city’s athletic tradition.
“It’s something you grew up with in San Francisco,” said John Scudder, president of Sacred Heart Cathedral and a 1973 graduate of the school.
Since the end of World War II, that rivalry has been recognized with the Bruce-Mahoney Trophy, named for Bill Bruce of St. Ignatius and Jerry Mahoney of Sacred Heart, both killed in the war. Each year, the perpetual trophy moves to the school whose boys won two of the three games in football, basketball and baseball.
There’s nothing sleek or modern about the trophy, a hefty wood and medal product of an earlier time that stands better than three-feet-tall. It takes four people to lift and move it, but there was no shortage of eager volunteers at Sacred Heart last year after the school took the trophy home for the first time in a decade.
“Few traditions capture the joy of high school as much as this rivalry between SI and SH,” Paul Totah, director of communications at St. Ignatius, said in his 2005 history of the school. At a Bruce-Mahoney game, “you will find emotions tuned to a fever-pitch, voices hoarse from shouting and athletes primed to play at their peak.”
Jesuit Father Robert Walsh, president of St. Ignatius and a 1968 graduate, is no stranger to the tradition. But when he walked into the noisy, jam-packed Memorial Gymnasium at the University of San Francisco earlier this month for the Bruce-Mahoney basketball game, all he could say was “Wow.”
“As a student, I was very aware of the rivalry,” said Walsh, whose father and uncles also went to St. Ignatius. “I don’t know of any other Jesuit school that has anything like this rivalry.”
When Walsh and Scudder were high school students, San Francisco was still a heavily Catholic city where many people identified themselves by the parish where they lived. The boys at the then all-male schools were almost all from the city, growing up in the same neighborhoods and going to the same Catholic grammar schools.
“A game like the one at USF was like the ones when I was a student about 35 years ago, Scudder said. “There were a lot of bragging rights associated with those games.”
At USF, the stands were filled not only with teenagers sporting the green of Sacred Heart or the red and blue of St. Ignatius, but also with parents, friends, alumni and plenty of future students.
“The parents of the students who attend our schools grew up with the rivalry,” Scudder said. “The kids have been going to these (Bruce-Mahoney) games since they were in the third or fourth grade, with their parents or older brothers and sisters.”
Things have changed over the years. Today’s San Francisco has far fewer teenagers than it did 40 years ago and not nearly as many Catholics, so both schools have had to reach outside San Francisco’s city limits for students.
The biggest change, though, has come since the 1980s when Sacred Heart merged with all-girls Cathedral High School to become Sacred Heart Cathedral, and St. Ignatius started to admit young women.
Having girls at the schools hasn’t been a bad thing for the rivalry, Walsh said, since some of the crowds during the all-male days had more the feeling of Christians versus lions than a meeting of Catholic gentlemen.
“There’s still a fever pitch of excitement and the rivalry is probably more animated,” he said. “But there’s also a better sense of respect for the other team.”
That respect, and the shared Catholic educational mission, can be seen in the student-led public prayers that begin each game. It’s important to remember that the schools have many more similarities than differences, Scudder said.
“We’re both rooted in the same Catholic faith, but with numerous differences in tradition and background,” he added. “But there has always been lots of cross-pollination,” with graduates from one school ending up on the faculty of the other.
“The deep respect the two schools have for each other is a great gift,” Walsh said. “We have a great rivalry and a healthy rivalry and we need to care for it in the best of reasons.”
Not to mention that the rivalry is a lot of fun for students and supporters of the two schools.
Sacred Heart’s basketball team eked out a tight 47-44 win in that second round of the Bruce-Mahoney competition at USF. Since St. Ignatius won the fall football game, the April 16 baseball game at AT&T Park will decide whether the trophy stays at Sacred Heart or returns to St. Ignatius.
“This is good for the kids and something they’ll always remember,” Scudder said. “A game at a major league stadium with the winner taking home the trophy? For a 17- or an 18-year-old, it doesn’t get much better than that.”
Bay Area journalist John Wildermuth graduated from SI in 1969.
By John Wildermuth
From January 29, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
