The OG on Rye Football: Garnets Face the Panthers of Pleasantville, Saturday, November 11th at 3:00pm

The Garnets face the Panthers of Pleasantville at Arlington High School in Lagrangeville this Saturday, November 11th at 3:00pm. Can’t make the game? Watch it online.

Miss our Rye Lifer interview with Rye football Coach Dino Garr? Read it!

For the game preview, we turn to the Steve “The OG” Feeney:

RYE GARNETS VERSUS PLEASANTVILLE PANTHERS – SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 @ 3:00PM @ ARLINGTON HIGH SCHOOL, LAGRANGEVILLE, NY

Back in the days of the SWIAC (Southern Westchester Interscholastic Athletic Conference), the Garnets and PLEASANTVILLE PANTHERS scrapped and scratched for thirty straight seasons from 1936 to 1965. Then for more than the next thirty campaigns the rivalry went dark due to differing student enrollment counts. Pleasantville’s numbers assigned the Panthers to Class C, while Rye’s student enrollment survey solidly placed the Garnets in Class B. For over twenty-five years since 1998, these former rivals have met only three times (2004, 2008 and earlier this 2023 season).

For those younger and newer Garnet fans, during the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s Rye/Pleasantville was the second most intense rivalry on Rye’s schedule and was traditionally slotted as the fourth game on Rye’s eight-game season. Titanic battles between the Green and White, coached by Pete Kurachek and Rye’s Bedini Boys were the rule and never the exception. Back then there were no sectional playoffs or New York State football championship play. Your season started in late September and ran for eight weeks ending just before Thanksgiving. In Rye, preparation for the Pleasantville game included a separate pep rally, a distinctive, witch-like jinxing mascot called the “Hoo-Doo”, and a special fight song just for the Panthers, that went like this:

For it’s the Hoo-Doo

The famous Hoo-Doo

The jinx that always rests on Pleasantville

It makes them stumble

And fall and fumble

When ‘ere they turn the dreaded Jonah loose

As legend recalls, the Hoo-Doo was introduced to Rye football by Garnet Head Football Coach and Dean of Boys Fran Walsh (1933-1948) who, as the story goes, imported the dreaded Jonah character from his football days at Colgate University. If you ever noticed the dedication plaque, it is the Walsh Bridge that spans Blind Brook on the RHS campus.

For a second time this season, the Garnets face the reigning 2021 and 2022 Section One Class B Champions and two-time New York State Class B runner-up. These Panthers will not be trapped without a fight, even though over the years Rye’s Garnets have clawed the Green and White by a 27-10-2 (.730) margin. Facing another cat fight with a quad-Panther pack, Ardsley twice and now Pleasantville for a second time, it will be a close, hard-fought rivalry renewal, but.

IT’S THE GARNETS BY A CAT’S WHISKER UNPLEASANTLY OVER THE PANTHERS – 17-14