XAVIER  33  -  FORDHAM PREP.  0

Turkey Bowl MVP

Senior William "Trey" Solomon #3 RB/FS

Wins the President's Trophy

32 carries for 222 yards. Scoring 4 Touchdowns. Adding 5 Tackles on Defense.

A Final Word...

Over the course of helping NYU journalism student Jaewon Kang line up interview subjects and source material for her semester capstone project on the Xavier-Fordham Prep football rivalry— a project she has now expanded to include the Xavier community's response to Hurricane Sandy— I had the opportunity to revisit what, for those who were there, will always be remembered as the best of times and the worst of times.

I recommended to Jaewon that she visit http://departments.xavierhs.org/athletics/football/2012results/index.htm, and I recommend that you do the same. There you will find the 2012 Varsity Knights Schedule. Click on the scores for the last three games— the hard-fought quarterfinal playoff win against Mount St. Michael, the semifinal playoff victory over Fordham Prep in last year's Turkey Bowl, and that final triumph over St. John the Baptist in the CHSFL AA Division Championship Game— and you will find articles, photographs and video clips from Good Morning New York, ESPN Sports Center and MSG Varsity documenting three games that will forever live in Xavier gridiron legend. Indeed, you will even find a link to the entire MSG Varsity championship game telecast.

Watching those videos again, looking at those great photos taken by Yvonne Fuentes and reading those articles (Do not miss the Yahoo Sports account of the 2012 Turkey Bowl.), I was reminded once more, as if I needed to be, how long ago and far away that cold December night at Mitchel Field seems now.

We all know the story of the 2012 campaign; how it began in tragedy with the death of beloved football coach and athletic director Rod Walker and how, just as the playoffs were about to begin, the season was stopped in its tracks by the fire and floods of Hurricane Sandy and the nor'easter that buried New York in snow just days later.

We all recall how the Knights, with a quarter of their players homeless and their practice fields gone, spent more than a week helping their families, friends and neighbors dig out from an unprecedented natural disaster. And we remember how the team then rallied around each other and their coaches, rededicated themselves to their mission and, against all odds, went on to become the champions of a division in which they had finished third during the regular season.

No matter what the 16th Street Kids managed to achieve this year, there is no way anyone could or should have expected them to have anything like the season that has already achieved near-mythic status. That was true even before this year's Knights were handed one of the toughest schedules in Xavier football history— a schedule that included four CHSFL AAA Division opponents in their first five league games, and five overall— and it was certainly true after they lost a half-dozen (two-way) starters to injury in the first few weeks of this campaign.

This year's football team will finish with a losing record no matter what happens at Aviator on Thanksgiving morning, but they have nothing to be ashamed of. These Knights have played with courage and ferocity all season long. They have persevered through all the hardships that come with playing for a school with uncompromising academic standards and no practice fields. They have stayed true to themselves and their teammates. They have fought the good fight.

And now the 2013 edition of The Team Formerly Known as the Kaydets... and then the Bruins (Est. 1882) finds itself on the eve of their last battle. Not long after noon tomorrow, this year's seniors will take their places in The Long Maroon and Blue Line, as former running back John Murray '67 likes to refer to the many hundreds of gridironmen who have played for Xavier over the past 132 years.

Every football season is a story in itself, with a beginning, middle and end. It is a story that belongs to that team alone— and a story that the members of that team will carry around with them for the rest of their lives. The more skeptical among today's players might question what I say. Football is just a game after all. With all that life will bring after Xavier— college, career, love, marriage and family, success and failure, triumph and tragedy— surely this season will fade in comparison as the years go by and inevitably recede into memory. 

You would think. And you'd be right. Mostly. For the reasonably well adjusted among us, all those other things do take precedence as time goes on and we get older.

But I can almost certainly guarantee this year's Knights, and especially the seniors, that you will indeed always carry this season with you, however deep in your pocket it may settle. And whenever you and your teammates get together— be it next year, five years from now, 10 years, 25 years, 50— you will bring this season out and talk, tell stories, tease each other, argue and laugh about it. And, at some point, maybe even shed a tear. It's why you will remain closer to your teammates than almost anyone else in your life outside your own family. Don't ask me why. It's just the way it is.

The good news for this year's Knights is that there is one final chapter to be written before the book is closed on the 2013 season, and the great thing about the Turkey Bowl is that one memorable day can take a lot of the sting out of an otherwise disappointing year.

Case in point: I played my last game for Xavier 45 years ago this Thanksgiving and the story of that 1968 team was very similar to this season. Xavier played in something called the Catholic Football Conference and The Daily News picked us as preseason favorites to win the league title. But like the 2013 Knights, the 1968 Kaydets were hampered all season long by injuries to key players (including an All-City quarterback, fullback and tailback, and a linebacker who went on to captain his team at Lehigh) and we limped into the 1968 Turkey Bowl with a 1-5-1 record. (There was no O.T. in those days.) All our losses were close— 38-30, 12-7, 26-19, 13-12; the worst was a 20-0 shutout in which we had two TDs called back on penalties— but they were losses just the same.

To make matters worse, the 1968 Thanksgiving game was also the WPIX (Channel 11) High School Game of the Week (scheduled back when we were supposed to be good) and the legendary broadcaster Marty Glickman would be calling the game. The same Daily News that had picked Xavier to win it all in August now had us as two-touchdown underdogs to the Rams.

But unbeknownst to The Daily News, all our injured players were healthy and, for the first and only time that season, the players who were supposed to be starting all along were in the line-up. Better yet, as our starting offense waited underneath the main grandstand to run onto the field and be introduced on camera before the kickoff, some of the younger Fordham Prep alumni who, you will be shocked to read, were drinking, began to rain insults— and cups of beer— down upon us. We quickly became, shall we say, motivated. Final score: Xavier 32, Fordham Prep 0. On television. We couldn't have asked for a better way to end our season and our high school football careers. We were still a 2-5-1 team, but we sure didn't feel like one.

But lest any of the 2013 Knights (or 1968 Kaydets, for that matter) be tempted to feel sorry for themselves, spare a thought for the seniors who were supposed to play theirlast game for Xavier 70 years ago tomorrow, in the 1943 Thanksgiving game. 

Xavier, like many other schools in those days, graduated two classes every year, in January and June. My father, Tom O'Hara '43, graduated from Blessed Sacrament in January, 1940, and entered Xavier the same month. In May, 1943, he was a senior about to go on summer vacation. In August, he and his teammates would return for football camp. My dad and his classmates on the team were looking forward to a successful senior season before they graduated from Xavier in January, 1944.

But America was fighting for its life in those days. The Second World War was raging all around the world and millions of young men were being drafted to fight the Axis powers. In those days, not only were college students not exempt from the draft, as they would be during much of the Vietnam War, neither were high school students. Once you turned 18, you could be drafted at anytime, right out of high school. No exceptions.

So one day in that month of May, 1943, my dad and his fellow members of the Xavier Class of January, 1944 were called to a meeting with the school president, who informed them that they would continue going to school throughout that summer and graduate in September, 1943. No Xavier student was going to be drafted out of 16th Street without his diploma, if that president had anything to say about it

My dad and his classmates on the football team were furious. They were picked to be good that year, and my dad, who was slated to start at center, would not turn 18 until February, a month after his scheduled graduation. But the president, a fierce old Jesuit, would not be dissuaded. The Class of January, 1944 entered Xavier together and they would leave Xavier together— in September, 1943.

My father and his teammates from what became the Class of September, 1943 never got to write that last chapter in their Xavier football stories. They all went into the service (My dad was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Navy at the age of 19.), and eventually went on to lead exemplary and what we would consider successful lives. But I can tell you that missing that last football season at 16th Street irked my father to the very end of his life. He was still ticked off about it when he was 80 years old.

Again, that's just the way it was. And still is. Don't ask me why. And did I mention that Fordham Prep beat Xavier 19-18 in 1943?

The good news for the 2013 Knights is that you will be able to write that last chapter of your Xavier careers on Thanksgiving morning. Tim Crowe '74 likes you guys to win 19-14. Me? Let's just say I like how your story ends.

Stand by...
Tom O'Hara '69