Boarder Wars

Those in the Twin City's still on the sunny side of 50 don't have the context to appreciate how important and bitter the Crystal City Hornets vs. Festus Tiger annual football game was. It was the single most important event on the area calendar. The last game between the two was contested 36 years ago.

Fifty falls ago, Coach Rodney Mills, a 1955 Hornet grad himself, gathered us seniors together before the Monday practice and said, "Friday night you will play Festus. For the rest of your lives, you will carry with you YOUR senior year Festus game." It was that important. At their Homecoming, we shut them out 28-0.

The two “Twin Cities,” separated only by a single street; played each other 45 times between 1946 and 1989, twice in 1947, the second game on Thanksgiving Day. The rivalry was intense. Older fans, for example, still debate the legality of the “sleeper play” CCHS pulled off in the 1949 game. The Hornets dominated the early years, the Tigers the later.

From 1963 to 1967, CC pitched five straight defensive shutouts over Festus. Go back seven years, 1961 to 1967, and the totally outmanned Tigers crossed the Crystal City goal line only once; scoring a grand total of only six points, an average of less than one point per game. The Hornets won all seven.

In 1989, the annual border war was discontinued by mutual agreement. The Tigers won the last ten played. As Festus’ enrollment grew and landlocked CCHS’s dropped, the game became no longer competitive. The final tally stands as a draw, 21-21-3, perhaps, a perfect ending to the greatest sports rivalry this community will ever know.