Ten years gone, Part 5: memories of The Boot

The post title is erroneous: what I am writing about tonight is now 11 years gone. (Unless I can think of anything else I want to write regarding my high school career or senior year, this will be the second to last edition of this series. It has dragged on long enough.) It is also untimely as hell, but whatever.

Though many City High fans left the annual Battle for the Boot early this year, satisfied with the romping of the rival Trojans from across the river, I stayed to the final whistle to watch the Little Hawks victoriously hoist the iconic golden boot. It was a sight I only saw once while in high school, and it came the year it counted most.

In the mid- and late-nineties, the Battle for the Boot was the premier high school football rivalry in Iowa. Each game drew massive crowds of eight or nine thousand, and usually pitted the first and second ranked 4A teams against each other. From what I can recall, the rivalry, which dates back to 1968, started heating up in 1995. After years of awful mediocrity, Reese Morgan had built West High’s football program from the ground up and the Trojans were able to compete with their cross-town rivals. The Little Hawks notched two straight 4A championships in 1993 and 1994, and the hype around the ’95 Battle was so great that the game was broadcast live on KCRG; it was the first regular season high school football game in the state to be televised. It was an epic battle between the two best teams in the state, and the Trojans prevailed 14-0. (I am using City High’s fall athletic program as a reference.)

I remember watching that game on TV and being pleased by the final result. I am a fan of underdogs, and the underdog Trojans had beaten City High for the first time since… (The records section of the athletic program does not go that far back.) It was sometime in the late-eighties, so the win was huge for West. I especially remember West High students trying to tear down the goal posts at Bates Field, but to no avail. Later that year, the Trojans beat City High again in the playoffs en route to claim their first football championship.

The Little Hawks returned the favor in ’96, retaking the Boot and beating West in the playoffs en route to CHS’ third state championship in four years.

The next year, ’97, was my freshman year at City High. At the spirit assembly the day of the Battle, I remember the band played The Go-Go’s “We Got the Beat,” but the lyrics were changed to “We got the Boot.” We did not have the Boot much longer because the Trojans took it to the west side after beating CHS 24-14 at home.

Though City High beat West later that year in a rain-soaked playoff game, the victory was bittersweet since the Boot remained on the west side. It was where it would stay in ’98 and ’99, too. (On the morning of the ’99 Battle, in my Economics class, legendary City High economics teacher Dale Hibbs asked a starting linebacker what he was going to do to West’s quarterback. “I’m gonna make him piss blood,” was the answer. Needless to say, it did not happen. West beat us at home that night and later that year in the playoffs, both times in front of massive crowds. To my knowledge, West’s quarterback never pissed blood.)

At that point, the ol’ Class of 2001 was 0-3 in the Battle for the Boot. In the spring of my junior year, in 2000, I remember telling Mervgotti that we could not be happy graduates having never won the Boot. It was, of course, totally out of our hands since were not football players, and we would have been happy graduates regardless. But having never won the Boot and rushing the field, as we watched West High’s students do so often, would have no doubt cast our high school careers with a slightly gray tint. (We also joked about wanting our varsity boy’s basketball team to beat West at least once. City High had not beaten West in varsity boy’s basketball since 1993, but I’ll get to that later in the post.)

Enter my senior year. The Trojans were the two-time defending 4A champions, but Iowa football head coach Kirk Ferentz had snatched Reese Morgan away from West. (According to Morgan’s profile on the Iowa football website, the Trojans had a 62-7 record from 1994-’99, and were riding a 26-game winning streak when he left.) City High’s football team was a top contender in 2000, and I remember there being state championship predictions. As I drove Mervgotti and Bobblehead to West High’s Trojan Field for the final Battle of our high school career, we had high but uneasy hopes. (Before heading to the game, I remember we stopped at the North Dodge Hy-Vee and got snacks, which we ate in my Jetta parked at the empty First Avenue-Scott Boulevard interchange before “the extension” opened. I ate Fig Newtons and Bobblehead, I think, had a bag of Bugles. I have no clue why I remember that.)

I do not really remember much about the game except a couple things. West High’s center always broke from the huddle first and got set in his stance long before the rest of the offense lined up. It was odd, and it made me very nervous. We were losing at halftime, but I do not remember the score. In the third quarter, West missed a field goal and our star running back broke free on the first play of the ensuring possession for an 80-yard touchdown. As he sprinted down the field, I went ape-shit crazy. Later, Mervgotti and Bobblehead told me I had gone a little over the top, attracting disapproving stares from others in our section. Nearby, a mentally challenged student had a homemade sign made from a school notebook. On one set of pages were G-O; when he turned the page to the next set, it read CI-TY. It was actually quite clever, but people of course made fun of him for it.

Somehow, City High took a commanding 24-14 lead. As the minutes wound down and the chances of a comeback slimmed to nothing, the anxiety that had racked me all game turned to overflowing excitement. In the final minutes, the CHS students poured out of the stands and rushed to the nearest gate in the fence surrounding the field. There was a bit of confusion regarding what gate to go to, and Bobblehead, Mervgotti, and I initially went to the wrong gate. As the final seconds ticked off, I sprinted behind the visiting stands, where a little kid threw an empty Mountain Dew bottle at me for some reason, to make it to the right gate and rush the field. When I got there the game was over (City High added a pick-six on the last play of the game and no extra point was attempted, making the final score 30-14) and the initial crowd had already made its way across the track and onto midfield. I ran with my arms held high, Bobblehead and Mervgotti somewhere behind me, and joined the revelry. I do not remember seeing it, but City High players had no doubt rushed across the field and nabbed The Boot. It was being held high in the crowd, and at one point I think I touched it.

We stayed on the field for a while, savoring the moment. I remember seeing a group of former newspaper staffers whooping it up. Having spent all spring talking about how they could not wait to graduate, I remember thinking how odd and pathetic it was for them to be on the field posing as high schoolers. (It was the same way I felt when they showed up to the first couple newspaper paste-ups like they never left.) The rush crowd slowly made its way across the field and left. Mervgotti and I had ripped huge chunks of grass from the field and held them high in our fists as we crossed the congested parking lot, much to the ire of the West fans who heckled us. We did not care, though. We were too happy. (I have no clue what happened to my fistful of grass, but Mervgotti put his in a baggie and pinned it to a wall in his room. Over the coming months, the grass dried and became peppered with gray spots. For a time it looked a lot like a baggie full of weed. For all I know, it could still be pinned to that wall in his parents’ basement.) Afterward, we went to the McDonalds on Riverside and drank pop.

That was the only City High football away game I have ever attended, and it is one of my most cherished memories of my senior year. A few months later, I attended the only away basketball game as a Little Hawk: a varsity boy’s victory over West, the first in eight years. Our boy’s basketball team would go on to beat the Trojans at home and then in the sub-state playoff to sweep the series. (I sadly did not go to the home game. The next morning I emerged from Mervgotti’s basement, hung over like mad from a night of raucous drinking, and read about the victory in the paper.)

So we graduated happy. Very happy.