Thanksgiving Football Rivalries
Tolman High School shared a 73 year old Thanksgiving Day football rivalry with nearby private school, Saint Raphael Academy. Throughout the 90's, however, due to the trend in lopsided games resulting from a more powerful private school, it was decided in 2001 that Tolman's new rival would be Shea High School, the city's second public high school across the Blackstone River. Saint Raphael's had been leading the series 38-34-4 before it was dissolved and had won the final 8 meetings by a combined score of 270-6.
In the summer of 2010, due to realignment by the Rhode Island Interscholastic League and request by Saint Raphael Academy, Saint Ray's dropped from Division I to Division II B, the same division as Tolman. On September 17, 2010, for the first time since 2001, Tolman revived it's rivalry with Saint Ray's. Tolman won the contest with a score of 37-0.
In the days of the old rivalry on Thanksgiving Eve, Tolman students would participate in the annual Burning of the Casket ceremony on the Blackstone River. This ceremony would take place after the Homecoming dance and involved the release of a burning casket down the Blackstone River. The tradition of the burning of the casket however, was abandoned in the early 2000s. The traditional pep rally held prior to the game was canceled in 2009 but returned the following year.
Read more about this topic: William E. Tolman High School
Famous quotes containing the words thanksgiving and/or football:
“Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,
From North and from South, come the pilgrim and guest,
When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board
The old broken links of affection restored,
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before.
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty’s torch. In football you run over somebody’s face.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)