EXTRA! EXTRA! Tiny Acorns, Mighty Oaks & Knotable Knights

Author's Note: This is an Extra! edition of the two-part series 53 Years Later, A Rivalry Revealed, detailing the story of one seemingly innocuous high school football game played between two communities with little in common on October 14, 1955.

ROYAL OAK -- 53 years ago Royal Oak was the place to move to. It had a movie theater with a brightly-lit marquee and the Farmer's Market was the place to be on Saturday morning. A Friday night win got a player a free Saturday trim at the barber shop. Fish 'n chip dinner at the local diner and phone numbers that began with LI or MI exchanges. Woodward Avenue was best cruised with a four-seat Bel Air or convertible Thunderbird by kids fashioned in letter sweaters and crew cuts.

In 1955, Royal Oak was teeming with families forged from the post-World War II baby boomers. The city's school board approved a second high school, the uproar over its name a Royal Oak argument second to none. It was determined that Royal Oak High would be renamed for Congressman George A. Dondero and be called the Oaks, and the new school would be christened for School Board President Clarence M. Kimball under the theme of Knights. Royal Oak's annual Thanksgiving Day tilt with Birmingham would be replaced by the Oak Stump Game between Kimball and Dondero.

A rivalry was born and dividing lines had been drawn, but in '55, Royal Oak was still a one-school town. From the '55 Royal Oak roster that night was one Darrell Harper, a gifted, fleet-footed halfback who was an consensus All-South Oakland County pick. Harper would go on to be a starter at the University of Michigan and earn three varsity football letters, first under Coach Bennie Oosterbaan and then Chalmers 'Bump' Elliott. Harper played with Michigan greats Ron Kramer and Don Dufek, and was followed to Michigan by Kimball's Wally & John Gabler, Dick Ries and Craig Kirby. Harper later became the head coach for the Chargers of Southfield Lathrup High.

Royal Oak was coached in '55 by Jim Manilla, who won the last five Birmingham - Royal Oak Turkey Day games by a combined count of 105-26. Manilla hung up his whistle & knickers following the '56 campaign to accept the district's athletic director post. His first order of business was appointing two varsity football coaches. Ivy Loftin took of the reins at Dondero, going 151-79-8 in 27 seasons. Prentice 'Pin' Ryan was awarded the job at Kimball, going 48-16-5 in eight seasons. Manilla tabbed Paul Temerian to replace Ryan at Kimball in '65 and Temerian went 131-39-1. Loftin and Temerian, assistants under Manilla in Royal Oak High in '55, retired in 1983, when they were part of the inaugural class of inductees of the Michigan High School Football Coaches Hall Of Fame.

The three coaches (Loftin, Ryan, Temerian) combined to win 26 league titles and earned 12 appearances in the season-ending Associated Press Top 10 poll, but it would be an unheralded halfback and assistant coach who would make the most significant mark in Michigan's sports annals from the Monroe - Royal Oak game on October 14, 1955.

Herb Deromedi.

An Acorn in '55, Deromedi was playing his senior season behind Harper and halfback Ralph Forbes during an 7-2 campaign. Deromedi would accompany Harper to Michigan as a common student, roommates for each other's freshman year. As a U-M senior, Deromedi earned a position under Jack Stovall at Ann Arbor's University High. He followed that with a stint at Bryon High.

In 1964 Deromedi returned to his Royal Oak roots at Kimball as assistant to Ryan with Temerian, who had coached Deromedi in '55 in the same role. After a 7-1-1 mark in '64 that landed Kimball a league title and the AP's 10th spot, Kimball marched to a 9-0 showing in '65, Temerian's first as head coach, and was rewarded with another league title and the state's 4th-place ranking in the AP poll. Deromedi and sister, Sue, then a Kimball cheerleader, are pictured here after Kimball pasted Dondero 33-0 at Kimball Stadium.

Opening with two consecutive losses in '66, Kimball's Knights rallied to a 6-2-1 mark in winning the Southeastern Michigan Association (SMA) crown. That season Deromedi helped Kimball thwart his former school, Dondero, from winning the state championship by tying the No. 1 Oaks (8-0-1 in '66 / 5th AP) in front of 10,000 fans at Cass Field. The '66 game was perhaps the most memorable game of the series. After a potential winning score by Dondero had been called back thanks to an assisting the runner call, Kimball raced to Dondero's eight-yard line when the referee's gun sounded the end of the 14-14 thriller.

The same gunshot that ended Dondero's dream also ended Deromedi's high school coaching career. Roy Kramer, who had spent a night in Grand Rapids at a coaches' clinic talking football and diagramming plays on a blackboard with the young Kimball assistant that summer, was named head football coach at Central Michigan University in 1967. The first person he called to join him was Deromedi. No one knew it then but the young man, who had played behind Harper and Forbes, who never played a down of college football, had earned the break in a career that would lead to making him the dean of the Mid-American Conference (MAC), a conference that arguably owns the best lineage of legendary college football coaches.

After 10 years as faithful assistant, Deromedi was named head coached when Kramer moved on Vanderbilt University as athletic director. Deromedi won three MAC titles and lead the Chippewas to back-to-back victories over Michigan State in 1990 and 1991, the only losses the Spartans have ever suffered in MAC tilts.

Deromedi's Chippewas were an amazing 25-4-1 versus in-state rivals Eastern and Western Michigan. His 110-55-10 record, including 110 wins overall and 90 wins in the competitive MAC are bests for any MAC coach in both categories. The legendary coach followed Monroe's Dick Waters and Royal Oak's Jim Manilla and Pin Ryan when he hung up his whistle and clipboard for CMU's athletic director's post in 1994. Deromedi retired from CMU in 2006 and was inducted into the college football Hall of Fame in 2007 in South Bend, Indiana.

One high school football game between the city high schools of two towns separated by 61 miles. Monroe, almost exclusively rural compared to today and removed from the big city like TV's Mayberry was removed from the real world. Royal Oak, emerging as a suburban nesting spot, with top-down cruisers and car hop service at restaurants and filling stations. Mt. Pleasant, still 20 years from Division-I football, then a sleepy, suitcase college for teachers.

The Monroe - Royal Oak game was played among hundreds of others locally and thousands nationally, but October 14, 1955 produced emerging story lines and leaders who created memories in three separate Michigan communities to last for generations to come.

(Picture courtesy 1965 Royal Oak Kimball High School Lancer yearbook)

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing.

53 Years Later, A Rivalry Revealed, Part II

Author's Note: This is the second part of a two-part series on the stories behind the names of the men who played in the Monroe - Royal Oak high school football game on October 14th, 1955, won by Royal Oak's Acorns 34-6. A newly-added 'bonus' to the series comes out Saturday morning!

MONROE -- Few, if any four-page game programs at all, from the high school SockHop era come with as many decorated story lines as Monroe's encounter with the visiting Royal Oak High Acorns in October of 1955. Certainly few games as one-sided as this one contain as many colorful characters on both sides of the gridiron. Monroe's sideline is filled with homespun stories of favorite sons, hometown coaches and one Eugene 'Red' Davis, a man so revered in Monroe his memory eternally fills the hearts of so many Trojan faithful. Royal Oak, by contrast, is a tale of established leaders, a lineage of sweet fruit from the wide-branched tree of success. They young men and boys that played under them went on to be the foundation of one town's success and one college's rise to prominence.

The only player to score for Monroe that night? Richard 'Bud' Jeric, No. 46, who ran in from four yards out after Royal Oak fumbled and Monroe recovered at the Acorn 32-yard line. It took 10 plays for the Trojans to score in the 3rd quarter, already trailing 21-0. Jeric went on to play at Western Michigan University and would return in the late 1960s to become Monroe's varsity football coach. One of his players was a young man named John Ray, now better known as Dr. John F. Ray, Monroe Athletic Director. Also playing for Monroe that night was Ron Gruber, No. 48, who's family owned Gruber Grocery Store, later sold to Food Towne Stores. Harry Herkimer, No. 50, was a tackle in '55 and now owns Herkimer Radio, a store specializing in two-way and short cell equipment.

Monroe's Athletic Director in '55 was Dick Waters, also the Monroe varsity track coach, for whom the Dick Waters Relays are named for. Monroe also named the school's pool for Waters, who ironically, couldn't swim. Head coach for the Trojans in '55 was Cleo Winchell, who was also a high school math teacher. It would be safe to assume Winchell enjoyed X's and O's no matter if they were of the algebraic or off-tackle variety, before and after the day's final school bell. Winchell passed away in the final days of 2007. Paul Wilder was also an assistant football coach and served as the school's baseball coach for many years later on, including when Ray played for the Trojans. Wilder passed away five years ago.

And then there was Eugene 'Red' Davis, listed as an assistant coach in the '55 program but clearly a man who was an icon in the Monroe athletic annuls for many years after his coaching days ended. Ole' Red Davis enjoyed a pipe from time to time, and was never at a loss for a few feet of homespun yarn. When he wasn't on the gridiron, he was the Trojan varsity baseball coach and served as the school's athletic director for many years, including the years Ray attended Monroe, from 1967-1970.

Ray recalls the Grosse Pointe football game of 1954, when Monroe traveled up to what is now Grosse Pointe South and came up on the short end of a hard-fought 12-7 decision. After the game, the Grosse Pointe students decided it was time to mix it up with the downtrodden visitors from Monroe, until Red Davis entered the fray. "He came up on this ruckus and said, 'Now listen here, I can't take all ya' on at once, but I'll take on every one of ya' one at a time -- now who wants to go first?' That was the end of that right then and there," Ray recalls with a chuckle.

One of the players Davis coached on his baseball teams was Dean Duffey, who in '55 was voted Monroe's Most Valuable Player in that spring campaign. Exactly 50 years later, Duffey's son, Dustin, would follow in his father's footsteps, earning the honor of Monroe's Most Valuable Player.

Monroe is all about its' favorite sons, but like any school, there are those who have left Monroe to fill other positions at other schools. One such name that comes to mind is Charlie Jestice, a native son of Oklahoma and Monroe assistant coach, who applied for the head coaching position but didn't get it. John Ray offered his opinion: "Maybe it was his country-western drawl that some had trouble understanding, but he left Monroe and took the job at Dearborn Fordson and hated Monroe for the rest of his life," Ray told me today. "I do know he was inducted in an Oklahoma Hall-Of-Fame recently that he and (former Fordson head coach) Jeff Stergalas attended together." Obviously the seeds of the Fordson-Monroe rivalry have been well-planted over the years. When Monroe's football job opened this past fall, it was rumored Stergalas could become Monroe's new leader, which would have stoked the game's flame even more.

One man who left the Trojan fold from the '55 Royal Oak - Monroe game was Trojan assistant football coach Vince Sigren. Two years after the Acorns thumped Monroe in '55, Sigren was named varsity basketball coach at the newly-opened Royal Oak Kimball, stocked with half of the players that had been Acorns two years earlier. Sigren would hold the Kimball post for seven years, going 40-71 with a district title in 1961 before ceding control of Kimball to Dave Gunther before the start of the 1964-65 season.

One of Sigren's players in the 1959-60 campaign? A junior named John Scott Cameron, who also played for Prentice 'Pin' Ryan in football.

The author knows Cameron by a different name: Dad.

BONUS: Check back in two days for the Royal Oak side of the story, including how two assistant coaches became bitter rivals and how the last man standing became a Central Michigan University legend.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing

53 Years Later, A Rivalry Revealed, Part I

Author's Note: This is the first of a two-part story of a football program, the game it featured and the season of 1955 for several metro Detroit schools. The 'golden age' of high school football was the period that stretched post-World War II into the late 1960's.

MONROE -- If you noticed the dateline, you already know Oakland County's prep sports scene these days has few ties to Monroe, Michigan, but that wasn't always the case. And as it relates to high school football, the 1955 game between the host Monroe Trojans and the Acorns of Royal Oak High played on October 14th reveals the story of rivalries since lost and a platform for so much Michigan sports history.

Why the Royal Oak - Monroe game of 1955? I came across an eBay listing for the program featured here. I bid on and won the program's auction and decided this would be a fun, internal fact-finding mission. What I discovered was a significant piece of local and statewide history, hidden neatly in a garden variety, four-page, high school hopsock-era program.

The victory on this night went to Royal Oak's Acorns by a 34-6 count. The win put Royal Oak in a three-way tie for second place in the now-defunct Border Cities League (BCL) with Grosse Pointe High and Wyandotte, thanks to Wyandotte's 17-0 blanking of the Pointers. That left the Tractors of Dearborn Fordson High atop the BCL, a league former Royal Oak resident and Detroit Tiger broadcaster Paul Carey called, "the toughest league in the state, hands down", in a recent 2008 interview. Royal Oak got a pair of touchdowns each from halfback Ralph Forbes and tailback Darrell Harper. Oakland County residents will recall that Harper went on to star at the University of Michigan and would return to south Oakland County as head coach of Southfield Lathrup's gridders. Harper passed away late in 2007.

Also of note is Royal Oak's No. 29, Herb Deromedi, who played but wasn't mentioned in the game's recap found in Royal Oak's Daily Tribune. Royal Oak's Jerry Snider netted Royal Oak's last score, a 37-yard touchdown. Monroe tailback Richard 'Bud' Jeric notched Monroe's lone tally. Joe Vestrand also earned praise for Royal Oak.

The Tractors would best Royal Oak for the BCL title in '55 with an 8-1 slate, one game better than the Acorns' 7-2 ledger. Fordson earned a No. 8 ranking in the Associated Press season-ending state poll. Birmingham High, now renamed Seaholm High, took the state's No. 5 spot with an 8-1 mark, including a perfect 5-0 as champions of the Eastern Michigan League (EML). Ann Arbor High was the top-ranked team in the AP poll with an 8-0 record. Lincoln Park's Railsplitters earned the state's No. 9 slot to round out teams from the metropolitan Detroit area in '55.

Royal Oak was a perfect 4-0 in '55 against their Oakland County counterparts. The Acorns ran around Hazel Park's Vikings 25-7, blanked Ferndale's Eagles 20-0 and earned a 26-2 decision over the Chiefs of Pontiac High at Wisner Stadium. Finally, in their annual Turkey Day game, Royal Oak survived a gritty showing by the then-undefeated Birmingham High Maples in the last Thanksgiving Day affair played at Maple Field, 27-20. Birmingham was coached by Vince Secontine, whose son Marc operates The Varsity Shop, a downtown Birmingham staple and the source of letter jackets for scores of Oakland County youth. The Varsity Shop also houses the old Royal Oak - Birmingham Game trophy, a red, white and blue-painted jug.

Royal Oak's '55 showing was part of a five-year span from 1952-56 that saw Royal Oak go 35-9-1, claiming a share of the BCL title in both '53 and '54. The contests of 1955, as recorded by The Daily Tribune, revealed the school's future name as the paper began referencing Royal Oak High as Dondero before the school was re-christened in the name of Royal Oak Congressman George A. Dondero in September of 1957. That fall the Acorns would become the Oaks and gain a bitter crosstown rival, a school christened for the Knights of Royal Oak Kimball, named for former Royal Oak school board president Clarence M. Kimball. The famed Royal Oak home at 1705 Greenleaf Drive is still referenced in the city's municipal building as The Kimball House.

The BCL champion Tractors completed a rivalry hat trick in '55 by virtue of their 19-0 win over Monroe, a 21-0 blanking of neighboring Dearborn High and a 42-6 pasting of Dearborn Edsel Ford, the inaugural year of varsity competition for the Thunderbirds.

Monroe, by contrast, was suffering through one of it's worst spans of football in their long history. From 1954-1958, the Trojans went 9-29-1. Royal Oak defeated Monroe consecutively from 1953-1956. Monroe's lone victory from the '55 campaign was a 7-o win over the Adrian High Maples, a rivalry that dates back to 1896, easily making the game one of the longest-running feuds in the entire state. To date, Monroe's rivalry with Adrian has been played 106 times, with Adrian holding a narrow 51-49-6 margin through 2007.

Part II: A look at the many participants from the 1955 Royal Oak - Monroe football game and how the players and coaches from a single HS football game went on to play pivotal roles in Michigan's local and statewide sports scene for years to come.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing

It's A Matter Of Who, Not When In Oakland County

As the high school baseball season winds down in Oakland County, the question is which teams will emerge to challenge for the state crown in June.

Obviously, Lake Orion has more than defended their state championship of 2007. The Division-I champion is leading the OAA's toughest division. The Dragons have handled challenges from a highly-regarded group of Ravens from Royal Oak High, the young Colts of Troy and their arch rivals, the Wolves of Clarkston. The Dragons are probably best suited for the playoff format, with depth, talented players that benefited from last season's championship experience and therefore, probably face the least chance of upset in the district.

Northville and Novi's Detroit Catholic Central staged a hard-fought district battle last season. In 2007 Novi was down, but the Wildcats are up this season and with Northville still offering a strong squad, the two rivals seem primed for another playoff battle. Add the always tough Shamrocks from CC, who compete in the rugged Central Division of the Catholic High School League, the Novi-Northville entries from the public and private sectors could stage some playoff drama.

In south Oakland County, Coach Bob Riker and Birmingham Brother Rice are firing on all cylinders. Rice was defeated by West Bloomfield in last season's suspended district final, where the Lakers and Warriors resumed play after a rain delay and West Bloomfield upset the Warriors three days later. That West Bloomfield team went on an impressive march towards Battle Creek before bowing in the quarterfinals. While a repeat of West Bloomfield's '07 success might be asking a lot, few figured the Lakers to be within a game of the championship rounds in '07, so who's to say it couldn't be done again?

To the south of Rice, Coach Brian Gordon's Royal Oak Ravens are again a fundamentally-strong team, a crossover from the Kimball teams Gordon coached after assuming the reins from former coach Frank Clouser. If there's a close game that comes down to execution and fundamental strategy, Royal Oak will be a tough out. Below Royal oak is Madison Heights Lamphere, who earned a a Top 10 ranking in the state's coaches poll to end April.

Rounding out the entries to consider are White Lake Lakeland, lurking quietly in the shadows of a final Kensington Valley Conference season but loaded with talent prime for a tournament run. The Walled Lake schools are not to be taken lightly and of course, there's the private schools like Royal Oak Shrine and Orchard lake St. Mary's, quiet of late but always dangerous after the tougher Catholic League battles.

Of course, baseball and basketball tournaments lend themselves to natural, annual rivalries, because unlike football, every school makes the state tournament and anything can happen when two schools familiar after many years re-engage a battle that plays itself out in many different sports.

~ T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing.

Game Four Remains The Toughest Officiating Assignment

Any official worth the stitches in their britches will tell you what they think is the toughest assignment in the officiating circles they work within. Having worked football, basketball and baseball, I think it's Game Four behind the plate of a collegiate conference weekend.

It's the toughest game of the weekend with the least resources available. The teams are tired. The coaches are tired and the umpires are tired. Both teams are down to their fourth or fifth best pitcher at the start of the day and it's the game no one can afford to lose. One team is down 3-0 or 2-1, making Game Four a must-win situation for the team trailing the series. The difference in splitting a four-game series or losing three of four is huge, just as salvaging one of four as opposed to being broomed is a huge swing.

In high school baseball, schools play what I think is an archaic, backward rotation of games in terms of importance. High school teams play their more important league games during the weekday and leave the weekend for non-league doubleheaders and tournaments. Often times issues like weather, drive-time traffic and school-related conflicts interfere with the league game played mid-week.

Unlike football or basketball, where the speed and emotion of each play is like a wave crashing upon the shore over and over, baseball is more akin to a slow, simmering pot, one that you're never really sure if or when it's ready to boil over and flip it's collective lid.

This past weekend Oakland University hosted Indiana-Purdue at Fort Wayne (IP-FW) in a Summit League conference series. Save for one inning, a frame resumed after a 30-minute rain delay where Oakland blew a close game apart, each school played each inning of the four games with no more than a two-run difference and most of the time the difference was one run or tied. Oakland took three of four but IP-FW could have just as easily split of taken three of the games. The game Oakland dropped was a 2-1 decision in the nine-inning opener Saturday afternoon.

When I first entered umpiring, I can honestly say I didn't have a strong appreciation for just how great it is when you can work a weekend series or a mid-week doubleheader without anything or anyone going sideways or ballistic. It's taken some trial, error and a healthy does of failure to acquire the appreciation I have for being able to walk off the field without feeling like you've stepped through a mine field.

As an official, one of the worst things you can do is look to make a call that is borderline just to prove you can make a tough call. There's plenty of opportunity to make tough calls without trying to cut a piece of hair in half just to prove you're that good. It's the many games that allow you to walk off the field with little or no incident that make you thankful for the handful of times you have to jump onstage and make a call that doesn't get questioned, scrutinized or ridiculed for no other reason than it wasn't a popular decision.

This season, more than any I can remember in a long time, there hasn't been a lot of discussion about this ruling or that decision, which is nice. It means either the games have long been decided or that the teams in the area of metro Detroit and the Great Lakes as a whole, both at the collegiate and prep level, are taking care of their own business by making plays instead of needing an umpire's call.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing

Oakland County Baseball Needs OU

This weekend I get an up-close look at the destination of many an Oakland County prep student, Rochester's Oakland University. The Golden Grizzlies welcome Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne (IP-FW) for a four-game set this weekend.

The neat, professional-looking campus is a reflection of the county footprint it's nestled within. The tony stores and quaint retail districts of Rochester and neighboring Rochester Hills, plus the manicured lawns and jaw-dropping residential communities that surround Oakland University are unique to just about any collegiate campus in the state. In short, there's no 'student ghetto' at OU. In fact, I've yet to see a fraternity or sorority house on or near the campus, although I do see the letters BMW, SAAB, and H3 quite a bit. I'm fairly certain nearly any college student would take that over what a beer-stained frat house could offer.

Yesterday's first game was rained-out, meaning four games will be played in the next 31 hours, starting with today's first pitch at 12:00 p.m. Oakland's varsity field has long been known to be a liability to just about every coaching staff the school has empowered since the days the school was better known as the Pioneers and was a Division-II powerhouse in many sports. Per usual, the weekend will be played with fingers crossed and eyes wandering to the sky, hoping prayers for no more rain will be answered.

It shouldn't be like this. I know Michigan is in the midst of a one-state depression and even mighty Oakland County feels the pain. That doesn't mean progress can grind to a halt, too. In my near-10 years within college baseball, I've watched three different head coaches struggle to recruit the best talent available in Oakland County to OU because of facility offerings. Nate Recknagel was a freshman team All-American at OU; He's at the University of Michigan now. This week he had a single, double and home run for the Wolverines in a mid-week victory over Western Michigan. Several county student-athletes like Recknagel have chosen schools like Eastern Michigan, Western Michigan and Central Michigan because of facilities.

Players don't chose the aforementioned schools over Oakland because of academics. OU's got tremendous offerings in the undergraduate programs it features. Three years ago the University of Detroit canned their baseball program, giving Oakland a better pool of players to pick from against the other five Division-I schools in the state.

Oakland needs a new facility, a legitimate facility, if they expect to compete for any of the county's best baseball players. Oakland County is chock full of collegiate-quality baseball players. Look at the most recent statewide poll from the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association, at http://www.mhsbca.org/, dated 4/30/08. Four of the top 10 teams in the Division-I poll pull their players from Oakland County, including top-ranked and defending state champion Lake Orion, also ranked No. 26 of the top 50 teams in this week's nationwide poll at Rivals.com. The state's No. 10 team in Division II is Madison Heights Lamphere.

Times are tough -- I get that. College baseball is not a revenue-producing sport in this part of the country for any school, that is also fact. I don't pretend to have all the answers and the truth is, the answers are hard to come by. None of what I'm saying is news to the leaders at Oakland University and I'll be the first to admit I'm not going to be the one the writes the check to solve the problem. But as an Oakland County resident, I can also say that OU is a jewel in the rough, tucked away behind the glam and glitz of a well-to-do county. The school could be a regional, collegiate powerhouse at the Division-I level.

Oakland has a tremendous swimming facility and a perfect basketball facility, one that helped Coach Greg Kampe's Grizzlies to a win over the University of Michigan a few years back. Oakland's won conference championships and NCAA invites in other sports, proving it can be done.

Here's to hoping there's a way to create a better opportunity for the county's best players to stay at home and play college baseball at OU.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing

Parochial, Private Schools Add To Oakland's Aura

Last week I umpired a Catholic League doubleheader between visiting Orchard Lake St. Mary's and Birmingham Brother Rice, played behind the Birmingham YMCA Center. Rice took a pair of victories from the Eaglets, who are rich with young talent but not yet blessed with the depth and experience that befitted Coach Bob Riker's Warriors last week. Orchard Lake St. Mary's will be ready when it counts, because they usually always are and are led by good coaches.

In researching my book, Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th of this year, I interviewed hundreds involved on a daily basis within Oakland County's high school sports infrastructure. Naturally, a few good-hearted souls took up the cause to lament the Catholic League's advantage of plucking students from public school boundaries for the betterment of wins and losses in after-school athletics.

I listened and did my job as the dutiful reporter, but a couple of points stuck out to me. First, does anyone else notice that it's never the 0-9 football team that is complained about, just the playoff qualifier from a private school like Rice or Detroit Country Day? Naturally, this is a bit hypocritical, and no public school ever complains about their fate when their team's results are average or worse. Many public districts are openly courting students in today's open-district, open-enrollment, school-of-choice fight for survival. Michigan's economic woes have created a virtual free-for-all within competing districts and private institutions.

But the other point makes me proud to be from Oakland County. Just how lucky are we to be in this county to have so many outstanding public and private schools in one square swath of land called Oakland County? Think about it -- most counties would love to have just one private school the caliber of Novi's Catholic Central, Royal Oak's Shrine High, Madison Heights Bishop Foley or Waterford's Our Lady Of The Lakes, in addition to the aforementioned private schools above. Certainly space prevents me listing all of the worthy candidates on either side.

Then you have tony districts like Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, West Bloomfield, Farmington Hills and Troy. Clarkston, Lake Orion and Oxford are all immaculately maintained with highest standards for achievement and opportunity. The same can be said in Walled Lake, Novi, Northville, Rochester, South Lyon and many other Oakland County public school districts. How many Oakland County schools have played for and won the MHSAA"s football tournament? Last season Farmington and Lake Orion staged perhaps one of the greatest baseball finals in the state's biggest division and it was just the latest example of an Oakland County school shining brightly on the state's big stage.

I could write an entire column on the academic achievements of Oakland County schools in our state and national scope. And yes, Wayne and Macomb counties would argue they have some strong entries into this debate as well.

We get caught up in winning and losing in our hyperactive, American culture -- it's in our blood, I suppose. And yes, I'm doing a bit of cheerleading, but maybe that's what we need in Michigan right now. There hasn't been a lot of good news in the past few years as it relates to the issues that matter most in our region. So it's nice to drive home from a hotly-contested game and realize that competition we stage and officiate produces the opportunity to excel against the best the county has to offer.

As a parent, that's what any parent wants for their children, to be able to offer then the opportunity to get to the highest level of competition and achievement. Oakland County certainly affords a parent or student those opportunities. This alone should make everyone worry less about balls & strikes and safes & outs.

~ T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25th, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing.