Humdinger or ho hum?
Hillsboro vs. Marion no longer rivalry of old
Staff writer
As any lover can attest, getting back together after breaking up changes things.
The relationship may well thrive with a second bite of the cherry, but there is always an eerie feeling hanging over it all — the idea of what once was, and then what wasn’t anymore.
A similar feeling hung over the high school gym as Marion and Hillsboro’s basketball teams took to the court Thursday night.
The schools have enjoyed a rivalry dating back to when teams traveled by rail to away games.
The first seeds of discord were sown when the long-standing Cottonwood Valley League dissolved in 2004.
Marion and Hillsboro, perhaps clinging to halcyon days, joined the Mid-Central Activities Association, but just six years later they broke up for good.
Marion joined the Heart of America League, while Hillsboro went to the Central Kansas League.
Why the schools moved to different conferences was, as with all breakups, complicated.
The MCAA, always slightly unstable, fell apart after Peabody-Burns and Goessel departed.
Hillsboro, the larger and perhaps more aspirational of the schools, likely sought better competition at CKL, which featured heavyweights like Halstead and Pratt.
Marion instead chose HOA, which then-activities director Tod Gordon said was mostly for better competition and shorter driving distance.
“Our thinking was, ‘why would you want to travel an extra hour and a half and possibly play bigger schools?’” Gordon said.
He added that Marion would have been on the geographical outskirts of the Central Kansas League.
“When you’re in a league, you want to be in the central part,” Gordon said.
Marion drove an average of 64 miles to each MCAA school. While travel time did decrease after the Warriors joined their new league, it has increased again in recent years as more distant schools have joined HOA. Marion now drives an average of 55 miles to attend away games.
More important, Warrior sporting events now lack local tension.
After leaving the tight-knit CVL, which included Hillsboro, Remington, Peabody, Chase County, Herington, and Council Grove, games against Classical School of Wichita (60.4 miles from Marion) and Bennington (80.4 miles) feel distinctly less interesting.
Hillsboro and Marion still play each other in sports a few times a year to round out their respective schedules. They also can draw each other in substrate tournaments, as they did Thursday.
“When you’re 10 miles away, it’s going to be a rivalry, regardless of whether you’re in a league or not,” Gordon said. “Everybody’s related; everybody knows everybody.”
But those who remember the old days of Marion playing Hillsboro recall a much more fevered atmosphere.
Gene Winkler videotaped football games against the Trojans back in the 1990s.
“It was like getting down to blood each night, they wanted to win so badly,” he said. “You could just feel the tension every night we played Hillsboro, that something was going to go on.”
Lou Thuston, who graduated from Hillsboro High School in 1976, remembered a hard-fought rivalry.
“The contest went back and forth,” he said. “The two years that I played varsity football for Hillsboro, my junior and senior year, we did not prevail against Marion. That was personally a little heartbreaking.”
The schools played pranks on each other, he said, and “Marion students were over here trying to meet our Hillsboro girls, and vice versa.”
Since the teams have drifted apart, the mentality surrounding their games has changed.
“It’s softened,” said Jared Jost, who graduated from Hillsboro High in 1996. “I think the emotions are a little calmer.”
Thurston agreed, though he added that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“I would like to think it’s a less virulent rivalry,” he said. “I think folks love to have those bragging rights, but at the end of the day, I don’t think that it keeps people from Hillsboro and Marion from working together.”
Thursday’s game, which took place in a gleaming Hillsboro gym befitted with a large “Central Kansas League” decal, was essentially a formality.
Marion’s team was scrappy but couldn’t hit shots. The Trojans steamrolled the Warriors.
Inside the gym energy was good. Both teams pressed each other high up the court. Marion coach Kevin Dasenbrock bore an uncanny resemblance to a young Matthew McConaughey as he shouted at refs and egged on his players.
“Foul! It’s a foul! Come on now!” yelled a Marion parent.
“Put it in the hole!” chanted the Hillsboro student section.
The Trojans obliged, draining three after three and coasting to victory.
“I grew up playing Marion,” Hillsboro coach Kyle Kroeker said after the final whistle. “It’s always good to rekindle some rivalry.”
That’s just it, really. The rivalry is barely burning these days, the embers of a former blaze.
Speaking to Hillsboro’s student section, it became clear most Trojans didn’t even consider Marion to be a rival.
“Marion’s not very important,” Logan Rodgers said. “They might think it’s a bigger deal, but it’s just Marion.”
Angel Rivera said most students considered Hesston a far bigger rival than Marion.
“It hasn’t been much of a rivalry for a while, because they suck,” he said. “Back in the day, it was way bigger. It used to get violent.”
Hillsboro senior and small forward Seth Driggers agreed that Marion had become somewhat of an afterthought.
“We never play them,” he said.
Hearing words like these, it’s tempting to cry out for the reinstatement of the Cottonwood Valley League.
But as Gordon pointed out, population change in Kansas means the most local leagues are often the most imbalanced.
“You’d like to just take a map and say, ‘OK, here are the eight schools that are closest to you. They’re your league,’” he said. “But if you did that, those eight schools wouldn’t necessarily be anywhere close in size.”
When does competitive desire outweigh competitive balance? Kroeker said many of his players Thursday grew up playing with those on the Marion team. Rivera and Driggers both added that they’d like to be in the same conference as the Warriors in the future.
“I mean, they’re close,” Driggers said. “It’d be a good game.”