The November 28, 1957, football game between Little Rock Central and North Little Rock had been poised to be memorable for a few years.
With the 1957 opening of Little Rock Hall High, the Tigers would switch their rivalry on Thanksgiving Day from a cross-river one to a cross-town one starting in 1958. So the 1957 edition of Tigers vs. Wildcats was set to be historic as the end of a 24 year tradition.
The events at Little Rock Central in September 1957 added a new layer of history to everything that school year. The 101st Airborne was sent in by President Eisenhower in the evening of September 24 to ensure the Little Rock Nine were able to attend classes. But President Eisenhower did not intend the Army to be there indefinitely. On Wednesday, November 27, the soldiers left Little Rock. The National Guard was now charged with keeping the peace at Central.
The first day without the US Army was also Thanksgiving Day, and the final Bengals vs. Cats game. The sports coverage of this game however belied all the drama off the field. News reports focused on Turkey Day as the final game between the longtime rivals and on the fact that it had a morning start time instead of the traditional afternoon start time.
In the end, the Tigers had the same result as they did in the first Turkey Day meeting: a win. The Bengals scored 40 while the Cats only managed 7.
On November 27, 1958, the Central High Tigers and Hall High Warriors faced off for the first time in a Thanksgiving Day football game.
Playing on Thanksgiving had been a Central High tradition since 1914. But for Hall High, in only its second year, this was a new occurrence. The Tiger-Warrior faceoff on Thanksgiving would be a 25 year tradition.
The games were always played at Quigley Stadium, which was at the time the home stadium for all of the Little Rock School District’s high schools (the third high school Parkview opened in 1968). Each year Central and Hall would alternate which was the “Home” team.
The week leading to the game would feature skits and pep rallies at both high schools. Pranks, rumors of pranks, and threats of retribution would abound between the schools. Cars wrapped in orange and white would circle the Central campus one day, while black and gold cars would encircle Hall’s campus another day.
On game day there would be special performances at the stadium by the drill teams, cheerleaders and bands of both schools. The Tiger and Warrior mascots would taunt each other. Friendships between students at the rival schools were put on hold. It was all about the tradition and THE GAME. Church services, family dinners and any other activities were scheduled around the festivities at Quigley.
Hall High opened its doors and started playing football in 1957. As a new school with a largely younger student body, it only played smaller schools that initial season. The first Hall vs. Central game was set for Thanksgiving 1958.
With the future of Little Rock’s high schools in doubt, there was some hand wringing about whether the 1958 game would be not only the first meeting between Hall and Central, but perhaps also the last. In only its second year of playing, Hall was undefeated and poised to win the state championship heading into the Thanksgiving game.
Central surprised the Warriors by winning 7-0 before a crowd of 5,000, which cost Hall the undefeated season and the championship (El Dorado became state champs). This game set the tone for the high stakes of the rest of the series.
The next year classes were back in session at Hall and Central. The future of the series was not in doubt.
Since the early 1960s, the Arkansas Activities Association had been discouraging the playing of games on Thanksgiving Day. With the advent of state playoffs, these Thanksgiving games were an interruption. By 1982, only one such rivalry still existed. The Little Rock Central vs. Little Rock Hall game. Both schools were in the largest classification (5A) which did not have playoffs.
With the changes of state athletic conference classification, the 1982 game was announced as the final Thanksgiving Day game between Hall and Central. The top two classifications were being combined which would necessitate conferences and playoffs to determine the state champion. This would mean that Hall and Central would need to meet before Thanksgiving. Going into the game Hall led the series with 13 wins to Central’s 8 wins.
The 1982 edition lived up to the hype. Played on November 25, 1982, this was the 25th edition of the Hall and Central rivalry. While there was no doubt that Hall would end up with the most wins, Central wanted to make sure that they ended it in the way they started it in 1958 – with a win.
Central boasted a 4-1 record. Pine Bluff and LR Parkview were both 4-1-1. Hall was 3-0-2. As long as Central or Hall won outright, the winner would be state champ. A tie (and there had been three previous ones) would result in a four-way tie for first place. Hall’s coach C. W. Keopple had led the team since 1964 and amassed a 10-6-1 record against Central. The Tigers were mentored by Bernie Cox who was 4-3 against the Warriors since taking over in 1975.
Nearly 9,000 fans packed Quigley Stadium for a cold but dry day. As the buzzer sounded after four quarters, the Hall High Warriors were jubilant. They had won the game 14-3 after putting together a nearly flawless offensive effort. The win moved them into first place with a 4-0-2 record. Central, which had sat atop the conference most of the season, ended up in fourth place with a 4-2 record. The defeat also ended the Tiger’s hopes for a third consecutive championship. This game, like so many before it, provided high drama and excitement as it confounded some pundits yet also lived up to billing.
And with that, the series concluded. In the end, Hall had fourteen wins while Central had eight. There were also three hard-fought ties. Central achieved four shutouts of Hall, while the Warriors blanked the Tigers three times. In the twenty-five games, Central scored 228 points, and Hall scored 297 points.
From 1983 until 2005, Hall and Central continued to play each other in football. This time, they played for the ceremonial bell in what became known as “The Battle for the Bell.” Today, the bell is proudly displayed at Quigley Stadium. After 2005, Hall moved into a lower classification than Central. This put them on separate trajectories facing different sets of teams.
100 years ago, the Little Rock High School Tigers football game on Thanksgiving was against a group of soldiers from Camp Pike.
The game took place on Thursday, November 28, 1918. The Great War had ended a little over a fortnight earlier, but the game had been scheduled while hostilities were still going.
The Tigers, who had never lost on Thanksgiving Day after starting a tradition of playing on the day in 1914, were for the first time the underdogs. The soldiers of the 13th Training Battalion were slightly older and much bigger – an average of 20 pounds bigger per player.
Going into the game, the Little Rock High School team was down a key player. Julian Adams was out with wrenched knee. Another player John Ward was also absent (though the newspaper accounts do not indicate why).
Coach George H. Wittenberg was missing along the sidelines due to illness. He was not the first coach to be absent that season. The regular coach, Earl Quigley, had been drafted and was stationed in South Carolina during the season. Wittenberg, was a faculty member at the time. He had lettered for the football team when he had been a student a decade or so earlier. Later, as an architect, he would be one of the designers of the new Little Rock High School, now Central High School.
The game took place at Kavanaugh Field (a baseball field also used for football). Though it is now the site of current Central’s storied Quigley Stadium, this was nearly a decade before the high school moved from Scott Street to Park Street.
The Camp Pike gridiron team dominated the game before a crowd of 1,000. The soldiers made three touchdowns in the first quarter, two in the second, one in the third, and one more to cap off the game in the fourth.
The closest the Tiger eleven got to scoring was in the second quarter when Hershell Riffel caught the ball at the 12 yard line and team captain and quarterback Alvin Bell advanced another six yards. Camp Pike held them there. Just before the game ended, Bell injured his knee and was taken out of the game.
Also that day, the University of Arkansas beat Kendall College (now the University of Tulsa) in Tulsa by a score of 23 to 6, West Tennessee Normal (now University of Memphis) defeated the Jonesboro Aggies (now Arkansas State Red Wolves) by a score of 37 to 0, and Hendrix College bested Henderson-Brown (now Henderson State University) by a score of 9 to 7.
Thanks to Brian Cox’s book Tiger Pride: 100 Years of Little Rock Central High Football for filling in some of the players names which were omitted in the newspaper coverage.
Thanksgiving 1969 marked not only the Culture Vulture’s first foray into the holiday, it saw three high schools and the University of Arkansas all playing football games in Central Arkansas. November 27 was a day for football in the Rock! It appears this was the only time this feat happened.
Little Rock Catholic took on NLRHS north of the river with a 10am kick off. The Rockets, under head coach George Loss, were 9-2 heading into the game. The Wildcats (coached by Ken Stephens) were 5-4 and had won four in a row. At the end of the game, NLR was triumphant by a score of 21 to 12.
The teams had met earlier in the season with Mann triumphing 13 to 8. Mann had a record of 2-8, playing in the larger AAAA classification. Jones, with a record of 4-6, played in the AA classification. It is notable that by 1969 the teams were in Arkansas Activities Association classifications and playing integrated schools.
Quigley Stadium was less than three miles from War Memorial Stadium. With a 10am kickoff before a sold out crowd, people who had wanted to go to both the Hogs game and Hall/Central game also had the option of listening to the high school gridiron competition on KARK radio.
Prior to the game, Hall had captured the AAAA State Championship. CW Keopple was the Warriors’ coach, while Gene Hall was the Tigers’ mentor. The damp field and high stakes of the game turned it into a defensive slugfest. Hall had 2 fumbles while Central fumbled four times.