Painting the Black: Are classic prep rivalry games coming to an end?

This is kind of a breakup story. Well, it hasn’t happened yet, but it could in the very near future.

The recent reclassifications — along with the movement and creation of new leagues — have created one giant, glaring hole in the world of area prep football: Are rivalries a dying breed?

Every year, these have been the biggest games in the area — the Fish Bowl (Gig Harbor vs. Peninsula), the Spaghetti Bowl (Capitol vs. Olympia), Lincoln-Wilson battles and more locally, the decades-old game between Puyallup and Rogers high schools.

But ever since the realignment, district athletic directors have been trying to accommodate schools as best as they can.

For the Sunset Chev Bowl, featuring the high schools from the Sumner School District, Sumner and Bonney Lake, its 10-year-long rivalry may be coming to a close this fall.

“We were lucky to have Sumner draw a week one bye, because if they drew anything outside those first two weeks, we wouldn’t be playing them,” Bonney Lake coach Jason Silbaugh said.

See, the new 4A SPSL has nine teams in the league, and the 3A SPSL has eight. The uneven number of schools in the 4A don’t for more than a single bye each year, meaning teams have to schedule eight league games per season.

Sumner’s bye week, like the rest of the league, was done via a draw system. For the Spartans to schedule their chief rivals, they had to get lucky as the 3A has its bye weeks during week one and two of the season.

“We know many of the players on their team. It’s easy to get pumped for those games because of that fact,” Sumner linebacker Ben Wilson said.

Again, Sumner and Bonney Lake were lucky. But not all teams were as lucky — or other sports, for that matter.

Gone is the soccer rivalry (boys and girls) between the Spartans and Panthers, and the one in volleyball is another story in itself. Yet, football is the penultimate sport in high school, and the rivalries on the gridiron often define a school year.

“Obviously math doesn’t work perfectly (between the two leagues). For football, for example, you have nine weeks to get eight opponents in, and what that means, when you have an odd number (like 4A SPSL), it means that somebody has to have a bye every week,” Sumner School District athletic director Tim Thomsen said. “They have to find a game for that bye. But if Sumner didn’t have a bye in weeks one or two, then they wouldn’t play each other. Fortunately, Sumner got the first-week bye.”

That fortune might run out after the 2016 football season, as future seasons have yet to be determined. But it begs to ask the question again.

Are rivalries a dying breed?

With Gig Harbor and Peninsula moving into the same league, the region’s top game has been preserved. The same can’t be said for the Spaghetti Bowl, as Capital and Olympia’s rivalry has been put on hold (for now).

Is that the same fate Sumner and Bonney Lake will have in 2017 or beyond? Who knows?

“To me, it wouldn’t be the same not having to schedule the Sunset Bowl,” Thomsen added.

It would be a shame if this feud ended on chance.

This story was originally published June 22, 2016 at 3:32 PM with the headline "Painting the Black: Are classic prep rivalry games coming to an end?."