The field hockey season for many teams builds up to the end of the season where most schools have scheduled their biggest rivals. Except for 2024, where we’re seeing more local derbies being contested in the first few days of the season than we’ve ever seen before.
Sure, the nature of the “rivalry game” has changed over the years, with school districts rising or falling in size or reach, with some districts splitting like cells in mitosis. It’s hard to know which is or which is not a primary rival sometimes. Heck, the people who make the schedule even kept the Back Mountain Derby between Kingston Wyoming Seminary (Pa.) and Mountain Top Crestwood (Pa.) off the regular-season schedule for a few years in the mid-2010s because of conference realignment.
And last week, one of the games that used to define the Suburban One title — and often the No. 1 seed in the District 1 Tournament — took place just after Labor Day. That’s when Levittown Pennsbury (Pa.) took on Langhorne Neshaminy (Pa.) in the latest of one of the great rivalries in suburban Philadelphia.
Today, there’s another series of regional derby matches. One sees Ann Arbor Skyline (Mich.) take on Ann Arbor Pioneer (Mich.). Pioneer is one of the greatest championship teams in the recorded history of scholastic field hockey, having taken home 26 titles over the years. But Skyline, a school which opened in the mid-2000s to relieve overcrowding at Pioneer and Huron, has played some fine hockey in recent seasons and is a true rival to their city schools.
In another game to watch today, Oakton (Va.) takes on Vienna James Madison (Va.) in a meeting of two schools literally a mile and a half from each other. Used to be this game took place in October, when conference seedings were in doubt. But this year, the Cougars and Warhawks will meet twice before the end of September.
Yeah, I know. Field hockey isn’t like football where you’ll find the biggest rivalry games — Army-Navy, Ohio State-Michigan, Harvard-Yale, Auburn-Alabama, Cal-Stanford and the like — in late November or early December. But if you’re a schedulemaker, don’t you want your seasons to culminate in a good rivalry match for the sport of it?
Heck, I read where one of the most established of the Thanksgiving Day football games in southern New Jersey — Florence (N.J.) Memorial and Riverside (N.J.) was played in Week 2 of their seasons instead of it being their big rivalry game, which it had been since 1942.
I guess rivalry games in high-school and college sports, thanks to conference changes and other prioriries, are now as disposable as napkins and cheap appliances.
Sad, isn’t it?