Jesuit vs. Christian Brothers: Why the 51-year-old Holy Bowl is the area’s best rivalry
The Holy Bowl lives on and it endures because it matters. Other rivalries have come and gone, but have died off.
Not this series. The Holy Bowl resonated on grass fields in 1969, the first game between Christian Brothers and Jesuit. It’s been played in the mud and muck, the heat and on field turf, meaning this game has resulted in a rumble without any grass stains.
The Holy Bowl mattered when it was a league contest and it carries on as a nonleague show circled on everyone’s schedule. The final score matters, sure, because why have a scoreboard, right? What sticks is the experience, the setting, the crowd, the memories. The Holy Bowl is the culmination of a week of campus rallies, of alums stopping by to share stories. It is brothers and cousins and fathers and uncles and grandfathers reminding today’s players that this is the game you don’t want to faceplant in.
It is the best high school football rivalry going in the Sacramento region, Jesuit’s red against Christian Brothers blue, the parochial schools competing on the field and in the stands with dueling and creative student sections and with creaky old alums squeezed into their lettermen’s jackets, rubbing out aches in replaced knees or hips and swapping stories.
Schools strive to have home games on their campus, all the better to collect the gate receipts and concession stands. That won’t work for the Holy Bowl. Since it’s inception months after man first landed on the moon, the Holy Bowl was too big to host at a high school. It’s been played at American River College, at Sacramento State and in recent years at Hughes Stadium, where the venerable old venue holds the crowd noise within its concrete walls. The region’s best stadium should have the best prep game. A crowd of some 15,000 watched Saturday night as Jesuit prevailed 21-7 behind touchdowns from Trenton Dewar, Jagger Shaddix and Anthony Seibles.
A big game demands a big venue. Imagine the outrage turning away thousands on Holy Bowl night on a home campus..
“High school football is made for Friday nights,” said CB athletic director Dale Milton. “But this is the exception. It has to be here. This is so nostalgic. The Holy Bowl is such huge, huge, huge tradition.”
Smoke concerns and cancellation fears
There were concerns that the 51st Holy Bowl might deal with smokey skies from the Mosquito Fire that led to the cancellation of Friday night games. The idea of canceling this game created a sense of dread on both campuses.
What to do? Pray. Both sides did.
This game would not have been pushed to Sunday — that’s church day for these schools and Sunday competition is otherwise prohibited in this state. It would have been scratched for the first time since 1978, when the series was delayed two years due to the creation of the Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs.
The Holy Bowl is also about sportsmanship, of unity. Before kickoff, both teams joined hands to form a large circle at midfield. Everyone took a knee. There was a joint prayer and there was a moment of silence to remember one of the great players to compete in this series. That was for Spencer Webb, the one-time CB tight end who died this summer in a cliff-diving accident weeks before his junior football season with the Oregon Ducks.
And there was a moment when both teams cheered the longest zig-zag play of the night, late in the third quarter when a shirtless student raced onto the field, snagged the ball and bolted toward the south end zone and into the night.
The Holy Bowl almost didn’t start
Remarkably, this series took years to get going. Administrators expressed concern that the game would become too intense and take away from the primary goal of kids being students. Now, as Jesuit has on its Holy Bowl website, the Holy Bowl is, “Easily the most important day in the life of any football player and student of either school.”
The Holy Bowl endures while other rivalries have come and gone. This series started when Jesuit was 6 years old and CB was 93. Hughes Stadium from 1937-75 hosted the biggest rivalry of that era, the Turkey Day Game between McClatchy and Sacramento. The series continued as a Metro League game into the 2000s but the programs no longer play the contest.
Cordova and Christian Brothers basked in the region’s most intense rivalry throughout the 1980s. It’s been years since those teams played. In the 1990s and 2000s, the most anticipated rivalry was Grant and Nevada Union, but league realignment ended that series. Del Oro and Granite Bay and Del Oro vs. Rocklin resonate in Placer County. The Holy Bowl resonates all over. And there is intensity when Oak Ridge and Folsom play, but no one matches the longevity of the Holy Bowl.
CB defensive coordinator Cody Galea played at Franklin High, at San Diego State and in the NFL. He still looks the part of an athlete, and his broad grin spoke of his excitement for this game, the ultimate test for his young team. Said Galea, “I went to a Holy Bowl in high school to watch and it was a big deal. It’s such a cool thing for these kids. It’s odd to me that anyone around here hasn’t heard of it.”
CB head coach Larry Morla reminded that one of his best friends is Isaiah Frey, the one-time Jesuit star who reached the NFL and now coaches defense for the other guys in red. They’re pals all year except for this game.
The Holy Bowl endures because of who plays in it, who coaches it, who supports it. Take Joey Elftmann. He was the starting quarterback for Jesuit in 1999 when Jesuit beat Christian Brothers. Today? He’s in blue. He’s the dean of students at Christian Brothers. Could he have possibly seen this sort of blatant defection back in the day?
“No chance!” Elftmann said amid laughter. “To find myself at CB now, it’s wild. I remember my Holy Bowl and thinking how cool it was, that we made it to this game, such a huge deal. A helicopter dropped off the game ball.”
He added, “It’s the experience more than the game. It’s tradition, it’s family, it’s teammates, it’s relationships, It’s generational interest. We had special events this week, a class of 1947 guy who’s now 95 stopping by. It’s the Holy Bowl.”
This story was originally published September 11, 2022 at 6:06 AM.