Loyola University • New Orleans • Volume 97 • Issue 7 • October 19, 2018
THE MAROON FOR A GREATER LOYOLA
Jesuit High School students show intense school spirit during a rival football game against Holy Cross High School on Sept. 29, 2018. High school rivalry is a prominent aspect of growing up in the New Orleans area. NATALIE WOLFE/The Maroon.
Legacy, Tradition, Community A history of rivalry among New Orleans' Catholic high schools By India Yarborough iayarboro@my.loyno.edu There’s one question New Orleans natives can’t escape: “Where’d you go to high school?” It’s a seemingly simple inquiry, but for many, the answer is rife with history. New Orleans native Ryan Gallagher never doubted he would attend Brother Martin High School. It was where his father, grandfather and uncles went, and he grew up checking high school box scores because Crusader football and basketball were “a big deal” to his family. “I was raised to bleed crimson and gold,” he said. Gallagher still remembers the first Brother Martin game he attended. It was 1994, years before he became a student. Brother Martin played Jesuit High School, one of two schools Gallagher considers to be his alma mater’s biggest rivals. “We won three to nothing against Jesuit,” he recalled. “It was just a regular football game, middle of the season. We kicked a field goal early in the game and held on.” According to Gallagher, now
Brother Martin’s principal, family tradition plays a large role in New Orleanians’ high school experiences, especially for those attending Catholic schools in the area. “When it comes to Catholic high schools, it’s a really big deal in families to continue the legacy you’ve grown up hearing about,” Gallagher said. “You can see the history of a rivalry even in elementary schools when kids talk about where they’re going to go.” Loyola junior Greg Fortier, who graduated from Jesuit in 2016, said New Orleanians seem to internalize school identity. “Needless to say, they want their high school to be better than others,” Fortier said. “It’s a representation of yourself.” Catholic rivalries, he added, are “another world.”
The Catholic League Many schools across the country have rivalries — those that warrant disparaging humor aimed at the opposing team, those that pack stands and leave fans hoarse from cheering
for their alma mater and t h o s e that require students demonstrate their school pride weeks in advance of “the big game.” However, according to Ken Trahan — owner of crescentcitysports. com and host of the statewide radio show Ken Trahan’s Original Prep Football Report — there’s nothing quite like a New Orleans matchup. “In the New Orleans area in particular, when people ask you the question ‘Where did you go to school?’ and you answer the question with ‘Loyola,’ they say ‘No, I want to know where you went to school,’ meaning high school,” Trahan said. “That’s unbelievably unique to
this place,” he added. “High school sports are a tremendous passion here. They have a great following, and there are a lot of community schools, too, that are live and die with their athletic programs.” Trahan, an alumnus of Archbishop Rummel High School and Loyola University, has been covering New Orleans’ Catholic League for about 40 years. He understands the league’s school dynamics better than most. “Some of them are neighborhood rivalries. Some are simply great traditional rivalries,” Trahan said. “Everyone has a natural rival in [the Catholic League] by and large.” The Catholic League is an all-boys league in the Greater New Orleans area consisting of John Curtis Christian School and six parochial high schools: Brother Martin, Jesuit, Holy Cross, Archbishop Rummel, St. Augustine and Archbishop Shaw. “Every Catholic League game is a big game,” Gallagher said. “All of the stu-
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dents have grown up with each other at the different elementary schools and at the playgrounds, and now they’re finally split on different teams. “You have to bring your ‘A’ game in a Catholic League rivalry game, or you’re going to get beat, no matter who might be the better team on paper,” he added. According to 2016 Brother Martin alumnus Joey Michel, now a music industry junior at Loyola, at least a year’s worth of bragging rights are on the table during Catholic League games. He said “sports are the big thing,” but suggests the spirit behind cheers and chants are the true measure of school pride. “If it was a big game, we would have a pep rally, sometimes games to build up to the event,” Michel said. “They were always really pushing and really encouraging people to fill up the student section… Whether kids actually did show up to the game or not, I think it ingrained a sense of togetherness, brotherhood.”
More than a game Gallagher graduated from Brother Martin in 2000. He has experienced Crusader football on all sides — as a kid growing up, as a student,
See High School, page 6