The Lower Merion High School Football Team ended a few nasty losing streaks at Prevost Field in Radnor on Saturday (November 4). Radnor’s 11-game unbeaten run in the Main Line Fall Classic is over. And with this win, Joe Augstine’s Aces finished the season at 6-5, their first winning season since 1992.
Radnor versus Lower Merion. This yearly football conflict is recognized by many as the longest consecutively played public scholastic football rivalry in the country. The first game was in 1897. After missing 1901 and 1905, for lack of players and illness respectively, Radnor and Lower Merion have met on the gridiron for the next 115 straight years.
For those outside the ten-mile or so bubble that encompasses these two Pennsylvania townships, invoking this football rivalry means very little. But for those within its modest ambit, it is woven into the fabric of their towns and the evolution of the rivalry over more than a century is in many ways a reflection of their changing communities. Fathers’ footsteps on the football field were followed by sons, grandsons and great grandsons. The rivalry found a willing foil in the two townships’ newspapers – The Suburban and Wayne Times and The Main Line Times — that followed this game as front page news and trash talked each other as well as any Twitter patrons. For decades the teams met on Thanksgiving day and the game was a galvanizing community event. Radnor Football History
In Saturday’s 129th Lower Merion – Radnor Game, Lower Merion jumped out to an early lead and never looked back.
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