Today I had the opportunity to talk with former Hazel Park and Birmingham Seaholm football coach Chuck Skinner. I was on the trail of setting up a Birmingham signing event when I caught up with Coach Skinner. It turns out he actually purchased Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries two days ago from a Barnes & Noble after a former player called to let him know he's now famous because of my book.

I'm kidding.

But seriously, Chuck Skinner, the toughest screw to ever march the sideline of Maple Field at Seaholm. The coach who went to college at Eastern Michigan University, who played football for Hurons with former Royal Oak High assistant coach and longtime Royal Oak Kimball head coach Paul Temerian. The man who is responsible for former Central Michigan University football coach Herb Deromedi being enshrined in the Collegiate Football Hall Of Fame in South Bend, Indiana.

Huh?

OK, it's a stretch, and I fear that Skinner told me the story better than I'm going to tell you, but here goes. It was 1976 and Seaholm is working on it's fourth coach in eight seasons (or so it seemed) when a handful of applicants applied for the position at Seaholm. It went to Skinner, and therefore Deromedi stayed at Central Michigan University as assistant coach under Roy Kramer for the 1977 season instead of returning home to South Oakland County. Skinner turned Seaholm into the biggest league rival of Ferndale, Kimball and Hazel Park overnight. Deromedi? He was left in the dust when Kramer went to Vanderbilt University, and went on to become a Top 10 coach in the history of Division - I football for winning percentage, all because Skinner got the job at Seaholm 30 years ago.

Coach Skinner had plenty of good stories to recant, like his 1974 Vikings, the top-ranked team in the state according to the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) paper playoff. The '74 season was a test run for a football tournament that became official in 1975.

"I had the No. 1 ranking in '74 in the Free Press and AP until Week No. 8 of that season, when for no good reason, Birmingham Brother Rice went ahead of us. We crushed Center Line 42-0 on Friday. Rice played Madison Heights Bishop Foley the next night (Saturday). Foley had Fracassa's son at quarterback and my son playing in the backfield, so what happens? His own kid throws five picks and Rice won 35-0 to steal the state championship from us," Skinner remembers with a laugh.

Football was really important back then with huge crowds and larger-than-life memories of the games, but it wasn't a live-or-die situation, either. Today what would be the outrage if an undefeated, top-ranked team didn't win the state title, much less didn't make the playoffs? In '74 The Vikings shutout seven of their nine opponents by a 214-25 margin while Rice tallied a 270-48 point differential. Among the victims of that Hazel Park campaign was a 6-0 whitewash of Lake Orion (6-3, Oakland-A North champions), a 20-0 triumph over Royal Oak Dondero (6-3, Metro Suburban Athletic Association champion) and an 8-0 shutout of Southeastern Michigan Association rival Royal Oak Kimball (7-2 in '74, 2nd SMA).

A different era to be sure. So were the rivalries, as Skinner remembers heartily.

"Pin Ryan was the coach at Kimball in the 1960s, and he hated to lose -- you couldn't even joke about it with him," Skinner recalls. "So competitive he was, but one week, Kimball gave up 40 points (most likely Kimball's 38-27 loss to Birmingham Seaholm on September 20, 1963), which never happened to them back then. Now back then, we would swap film with our opponent from the last week, and we (Hazel Park) were getting ready to play at Kimball. I called Ryan at his house and asked, 'Is this the Kimball defensive coordinator?' He was still so mad he could barely speak.

"Well, a few years later, we're playing Dondero and we botch three punts, and the Oaks pick up all three and take them in for touchdowns -- we got walloped. The next day, sure enough, the phone rings, I pick it up and I hear, 'Is this the Hazel Park special teams coach?'

"He got me back good."

Today Skinner spends summers up north on or around the golf course and remains in Oakland County during the cold season. The stories of motivating his Maples and Vikings, the championship tilts involving Dondero, Kimball, Ferndale, Hazel Park and Seaholm remain his fondest memories.

"You know, when I was at Hazel Park, we would play Dondero in the second game of the season every year, and if they won the game, his players would carry (head coach Ivy Loftin) off the field on their shoulders singing 'Happy Birthday'," Skinner said. "So 10 years later, I'm playing Dondero in the second-to-last game of the season before we would play Groves and they would get Kimball, and if he beat me there, they would carry him off the field singing 'Happy Birthday' and I couldn't figure it out.

"That was (Dondero assistant coach) Fred Fuhr, who told all those Dondero players to win the game for Ivy Loftin because it was his birthday, against two different schools six weeks apart on the schedule for over 10 years and not one Royal Oak kid ever figured it out!"

Like so many other coaches, life has slowed for Skinner, but the fire remains.

Content updated at 9:28am on September 16, 2008

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, available at Barnes & Noble, Border's Books and The Varsity Shop in Birmingham, Michigan

(Photo courtesy Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries/Gary Caskey)

Writing a book about high school football was an eye-opening experience on many fronts. It's created a small buzz within the prep football community, and everyone seems to have an opinion. I've tentatively decided to file that under the "all news is good news' category.

Yesterday I was yakking on the phone with Marc Secontine, owner of The Varsity Shop in downtown Birmingham, Michigan. Secontine's father, Vince, was the coach of the Birmingham High School Maples in the 1950s. For those that don't know, Birmingham High became Birmingham Seaholm. Secontine's also related to Birmingham Brother Rice football coach Al Fracassa.

Here's where the story gets good. Fracassa and I bumped into each other while I was walking out and he was waling into Eastern Michigan University's Rynearson Stadium. Naturally I shared the book with Coach Fracassa. His wife saw the copy I handed to Al and bought a copy for Secontine and had Al sign it for Marc. Little did she know that Secontine had purchased 20 copies from Arcadia Publishing directly to sell in his store.

The Varsity Shop has produced a table banner that will be making it's debut soon at a number of signings. It's this kind of enthusiasm for the book that warms my heart and tells me that, no matter the opinion of my book or my ability as a writer (or official for the matter), high school football is an important part of the community spirit in metro Detroit.

Library Event Nets Coach & Stories: This past Wednesday in Royal Oak I was fortunate to host a signing at Royal Oak's Public Library. Among the attendees were former Royal Oak Kimball HS/Royal Oak HS coach Terry Powers. Among his comments from Wednesday:

"We had good kids to pull from in Royal Oak, and I never had to ask my kids at Kimball to hit. That's one of the things about our teams that makes me proud. Win or lose you knew you had played Kimball."

Powers also talked about being hired at Kimball as it relates to the old Kimball-Dondero rivalry and what it was like to follow a legend.

"When I was hired the program was down, but it was made clear to me, 'That's the game you win, that Dondero game', and there was no two ways about it. I remember hearing the story about (Coach) Paul Temerian saying he was going to retire at the end of the 1982 season, but Dondero beat Kimball 35-0 (in the Silverdome). After the game he told Chuck Jones that he would coach another year -- that's a rivalry, making you stay another year so you don't go out like that against a rival."

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, available at retailers everywhere.

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.