Park-Horlick matchup two times in one season happened before - 65 years ago

By Peter Jackel
Journal Times

Saturday, November 1, 2008 11:55 PM CDT

When Park and Horlick play today in a 1 p.m. WIAA second-round high school football game at Hammes Field, it will mark only the second time in the 80-year history of this rivalry that these two teams play twice in one season.

The first occasion was 1943, when players representing these two still relatively new schools faced the prospect of being drafted into the military after graduating and getting shipped overseas to the battlefields of Europe.

Considering playoffs weren’t introduced for high school football in Wisconsin until 1976, what were the circumstances for the first occasion? An issue that is relevant more than ever 65 years later — a shortage of oil.

“There wasn’t enough fuel to have buses or cars take us to games out of town, which we used to do all the time,” said 83-year-old Pete Mandli, quarterback of the 1943 Park team who still lives in Racine. “We’d have our first game in Milwaukee or South Milwaukee or one of the places nearby. But everything was gas-rationing then and there were ‘A’ stickers and ‘B’ stickers and ‘C’ stickers and you were allowed so many gallons of gasoline a month and that was it.”

So on Sept. 17, 1943, the two teams opened their respective seasons at Horlick Field for what was billed as a “warm-up” game that would not count in the Big Eight Conference standings. That didn’t matter to fans in Racine, as a reported 4,000 were on hand to watch Park follow up its 3-0 victory in 1942 by defeating Horlick 24-6.

In The Journal Times the following morning, it was written that, “Washington Park and William Horlick high schools played a football game just for fun last night at Horlick Athletic Field as a warmup for the Big Eight Conference season and the contest was both an athletic and financial success.”

It was even better Nov. 3, when Park and Horlick wrapped up their regular seasons against each other with their annual conference showdown — as was the tradition in this rivalry for many years. It turned out to be almost a mirror image of the first game, with Park winning 24-7 before a crowd estimated at 6,000.

“It was pretty much that almost the entire student body would be represented there from both schools,” Mandli said. “There would be three or four thousand kids there, plus some of the parents and whatever. It was a great rivalry all the way around. It was more so than probably what it was today because there are three high schools here (Case opened in 1966) and it gets kind of lost in the mix a little bit.

“The Park-Horlick game was like the event of the year, as far as the kids were concerned.”

But today’s game could be remembered at the biggest ever in this rivalry because Park and Horlick will be meeting in the playoffs for the first time. And Mandli, who retired from the Racine Fire Department in 1984 after 33 years, will be among those in what is expected to be a capacity crowd at Hammes Field.

Mandli’s prediction?

“Just from what I read in the paper and things that happened during that first game (which Horlick won 35-28 Oct. 3) and the way it was explained, I think Park has the better chance,” he said. “I just enjoy seeing what the kids are doing out there, but I would like to see Park win.”

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