After this past summer’s FHSAA redistricting, Trinity Prep and Lake Highland are now in the same district in six different sports.
This action has brought back a long time inner-city rivalry in full force. On January 24, the Saints Varsity Basketball team hosted a home game against the Highlanders that drew the biggest crowd of the season by far. There is a special feeling in the stands when two rival teams play and also a boost in attendance ratings, which is not a surprise.
The same environment can play out on a larger scale. The in-town rivalry between Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) is known as the best rivalry in NCAA Men’s Basketball. Duke is located just eight miles north of the UNC campus, which means that when these teams play it draws a huge crowd. The only problem is that Cameron Indoor Stadium, Duke’s home court, holds about 9,000 people. This can problematic when nearly the entire state of North Carolina wants to go to this game. So in order to get tickets, Duke students in 1968 started camping out in front of the stadium. This has now gone to an extreme.
About two months before the game, students will start camping out in front of Cameron Indoor in tents. This has become known as Krzyzewskiville, named after Duke Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski.
In order to keep all the students in line, Duke created rules for the campout. Even though some students may camp out for a week, they still might not make it into the game. UNC Head Coach Roy Williams was once quoted saying that he would rather beat their in-town rival than eat.
Former editor of Esquire and UNC graduate Will Blythe describes the intense rivalry.
“To legions of otherwise reasonable adults, it is a conflict that surpasses sports; it is locals against outsiders, elitists against populists, even good against evil… The rivalry may be a way of aligning oneself with larger philosophic ideals — of choosing teams in life — a tradition of partisanship that reveals the pleasures and even the necessity of hatred,” Blythe said.
In another rivalry, the University of Florida and University of Georgia’s football teams play each other once a year. Each year, both teams play at Everbank Field, home to the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, as a neutral location for the game.
Even though the stadium is home to an NFL team and can hold about 75,000 fans, tarps are placed on the top sections of the farthest north and south stands in order to sell out games for the Jaguars. The average attendance at a Jacksonville Jaguar game is about 60,000 people with the tarps on. For the Florida-Georgia game, the tarps are taken off and extra seating is even added for fans. Up to about 78,000 people are normally in the stands for a Florida-Georgia game for the special competition.
The Trinity-Highland rivalry may not be this intense, but it is still something special. Head coach of the first place sixth grade boys basketball team Brandon Burmeister is a former Lake Highland student and Trinity graduate.
“It’s a fun thing. I love coaching against them especially when it’s guys you know,” Burmeister said.
Both coaches and players enjoy the special games.
“We all know each other when we play them,” said senior Roger Holler, co-captain of the Boys Varsity Basketball team. “Those are the kind of guys that we like to hang out with on the weekend. It’s a fun experience.”
At the January basketball game, the student section overflowed into the opposing team’s student section, which was also filled up with both Highland and Trinity Prep students. Both parent sections were completely filled as well, and some fans were forced to stand throughout the game due to lack of seating. Both fan bases were cheering back and forth until the end. The Highlanders eventually pulled off the victory led by the UNC-bound Joel Berry.
“I respect how Trinity came out and competed tonight,” Joel Berry tweeted the night after the game.
The team still held their heads high, as did the fans, and both sang the Trinity Prep alma mater at the end of the fourth quarter. This rivalry has been around for more than 30 years, and it certainly won’t be going away soon. Both schools may not realize it now, but they are apart of a truly special experience. Rivalry makes competition and performance better.
