The Garnets head out to stalk the Pleasantville Panthers for a 6:00pm game this Friday, September 22nd at Parkway Field. Can’t commute to Pleasantville? Watch the game.
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 SAFARI TO CAGE THE PLEASANTVILLE PANTHERS – FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 @ 6:00PM @ PARKWAY FIELD
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 placed the Garnets solidly in Class B. Since 1998 these former rivals have only met twice (2004 and 2008). Notably those two contests as well as this Friday night’s fray have all been scheduled for Happy Town’s Parkway Field.
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 (after you know who), and was traditionally slotted as the fourth game on Rye’s eight game season schedule. Titanic battles between the Green and White and the Garnet and Black 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.
The Garnets face the reigning 2022 Section One Class B, Champions, and these Panthers will not be trapped without a fight, even though over the years Rye’s Garnets have camouflaged the Green and White by a wide 27-9-2 .750 margin. It will be a close, hard-fought rivalry renewal as the:
GARNETS CLAW THE PANTHERS – 21-17
