Some call it the Golden Age of high school football in the Upper Valley, a time when teams carried on rivalries that dated as far back as World War I and big crowds showed up for games that were expressions of civic pride as much as athletic contests.
From 1979 until 1993, the Connecticut Valley League (CVL) flourished, with five teams initially on either side of the river playing for a league championship. On the Vermont side were Bellows Falls, Springfield, Windsor, Hartford and Woodstock, and New Hampshire members were Fall Mountain, Stevens of Claremont, Newport, Lebanon and Hanover. Later, Monadnock of Swanzey joined.
The league fostered traditional rivalries that far predated its founding. Bellows Falls against Fall Mountain was a season’s highlight; Windsor and Stevens had battled it out for generations; and Lebanon or Hanover against Hartford — teams all less than five miles apart — could generate crowds of 2,000 or more.
But from its founding, the CVL was disrespected and resented beyond its territory, and eventually, screws began to be turned against it, first in New Hampshire and later in Vermont. Victories over an opponent on the other side of the river would be disallowed in calculations for state championship playoffs. There were calls from fans to litigate on behalf of preservation of the CVL, but one by one the principals and school boards gave up and quit the league venture to the point where there was nothing left.
The CVL owed its origins to the thinking of two legendary coaches, Dale Perkins of Windsor and Gregg McCanna in Hartford. They envisioned a league with teams from New Hampshire and Vermont sides of the river playing one another, and with the longest trip for every school of less than an hour on the road. They believed crowds would be large and traditional rivalries would jazz up fan interest even further.
Perkins and McCanna had it right: when Stevens in Claremont began playing night games against CVL opponents, crowds of more than 2,000 became commonplace. The league title was on the line in 1980 when Fall Mountain and Bellows Falls went at it amid a torrential downpour. No matter, 2,500 fans still showed up to watch the game.
Their desire to cut down on travel came on the heels of the OPEC oil price shocks of the 1970s and school administrators were looking everywhere to restrain costs. Long bus journeys with their rising expenses for fuel, maintenance and drivers were getting close scrutiny and the relatively compact footprint for the CVL made a lot of sense for budget writers.
But CVL schools had backed away from scheduling games with schools in other areas of the two states, and those schools would mount a determined battle to punish and isolate the upstart league. Years of meetings and proposals to work out the complicated situation went nowhere as the non-CVL schools steadfastly refused to yield an inch on playoff eligibility. Hopes for a compromise that could preserve some of the CVL’s cross-river rivalries were rejected summarily.
As the behind-the-scenes struggle dragged on, the level of competition was consistently balanced. Weak teams one year would post winning records the next. Over the life of the league, every school would compete for its championship at one time or another. At the same time, soccer was rapidly gaining popularity, and many boys with athletic talent were bypassing football as a fall sport, yet those schools with smaller enrollment still managed to keep participation numbers up for football, unlike the shrinking interest that prevails today at most Upper Valley schools.
Those who were around in the heyday of the CVL almost uniformly lament the decline in fan interest and student body support that infects the former conference member schools today.
Jim Jette coached Lebanon gridders through the entire lifespan of the CVL; he took in a Lebanon home game one recent Friday evening.
“The stands were half empty, hardly any students,” he said.
“I remember going down to Claremont to play Stevens at Barnes Park. They said that night they thought there were 5,000 people there to see the game. Today it’s like ‘Where’s everybody?’ ”
Besides the fan interest, Jette sees the biggest benefit of the CVL system as the savings in travel time and expense. Every other year, Bellows Falls and Fall Mountain would have a one-hour trip north to play Hanover or Woodstock; today, those teams can face road trips in excess of three hours one-way. The same goes for parents determined to travel in support of their kids’ teams.
Steve Hardy, a retired University of New Hampshire professor of kinesiology, has studied the history of sport and its relationship with communities for many years. In medieval England, entire villages would rally around in support of men and boys waging rugby-like skirmishes with neighboring towns, he said. The object of contention would usually be an animal bladder, which served as the equivalent of today’s leather football.
“You could say it was a very unorganized precursor of today’s American football, but it was a very popular activity, and it was often connected to a religious holiday,” Hardy said. “There’s ample evidence that those games a thousand years ago were similar to today’s with their ability to stir up civic engagement.”
The CVL’s struggles over which teams and where they could play have a long history in high school sports nationwide. Hardy recalls Waltham, Massachusetts’ high school booked a game with Nashua’s three-quarters of a century ago, provoking a lengthy court fight with governing bodies that Waltham won but led to ever-stiffer barriers to competition between teams across state lines.
Upper Valley teams long ago occasionally played clubs from far off, old-timers recall. Lebanon once took on Rutland, Vt., and Sanford, Maine, teams, and Hanover had a go with a squad from Boothbay, Maine. These exotic matchups usually were played in the morning so the visiting players could attend a Dartmouth game in the afternoon.
Village vs. village could take on some amusing dimensions during the CVL Glory Days. The White River Junction Ford dealership, Gateway Motors, would assemble its team of sales and service people for a photo to place in a Valley News display ad. All those with ties to Hartford would assemble on one side, the Lebanon people lined up on the other; all would be gazing at a football, ready to be kicked off at the big Saturday HHS-LHS game.
Fuel for a homecoming bonfire once was laid at Hartford two nights before the face-off with Lebanon, but hooligans from across the river crept in and set it ablaze. At one point it looked like a rumble was in the offing, but cooler heads eventually prevailed.
Matt Potter was a versatile performer on both sides of the ball for some great Hartford clubs in the early years of the CVL. Later he was an assistant coach for the Hurricanes, and he’s maintained a deep interest in the school’s gridiron program ever since.
“I have many great memories,” Potter said. “I remember games like beating Hanover 13-12, and losing to Woodstock, a school we battled a lot, by 6-0. There was the first game of the season where we went to Bellows Falls, the defending champions, and we upset them.”
Potter laments how things have changed since those times. He blames cellphones and video games, which keep kids from getting out and engaging in recreational and organized sports.
Derek Stone was a defensive back on the Lebanon High team in the mid-1980s when the CVL was at its peak for fan engagement and competitiveness and he holds fond memories of those days.
“Football was more popular then. More kids played football, though there was a good balance with soccer, which had been rising fast. Hartford, Hanover, Lebanon all had some great teams, and some guys went on to play college ball,” Stone said.
Crowds filled the bleachers and jammed all along the sidelines, he recalls. The Shrine Maple Sugar Bowl pitting New Hampshire high school all-stars against Vermont’s at Dartmouth’s Memorial Field in August was a factor in building excitement for schoolboy football in the Upper Valley, he notes. It included a massive parade through downtown Hanover, but it’s all gone to a far-off venue in Castleton, Vt., today.
Lebanon High football has been a family affair for the Stones since the 1950s. Derek Stone was a defensive back who went on to play four years at Plymouth State. His father Charles was a Raider running back in the early 1960s and his son Jackson quarterbacked LHS and now plays safety and on special teams for the UNH Wildcats. An uncle, Bob, was a two-way tackle at Lebanon in the mid-1950s and was a standout lineman at UVM when football was played there; he rated an invite to a fledgling American Football League tryout camp, but wrapped up his football days as a Vermont high school coach.
A CVL soccer organization operated alongside the football conference during the 1980s, but it foundered primarily because of the overwhelming power of the Hanover and Lebanon programs. Vermont schools gradually pulled away after consistent shellackings by the Maroon Marauders and Red Raiders. The no-cross-border strictures in both states finally ended interstate competition in soccer.
So could a regional amalgam of Connecticut Valley football programs like the old CVL ever come back?
No chance, in the opinion of Doug Beaupre, athletics director at Stevens High School.
“That would be very unlikely unless there was a major energy crisis, or some such. The way things are structured now it would be very difficult to ever bring the league back,” Beaupre said.
“Which is too bad, because people really loved the CVL.”
Occasional Valley News contributor Steve Taylor resides in Meriden. He follows sports at all levels.