A rivalry for the ages
IT'S BELLARMINE VS. ST. FRANCIS FOR
50TH CONSECUTIVE YEAR

By David Kiefer
Mercury News
Posted October 3, 2007
Link to Mercury News

Bellarmine College Prep and St. Francis High don't play for bones, bells, buckets or any other symbol of football rivalry.

They play for championships.

In 49 seasons, the winner has gone on to capture the league championship 36 times, including 25 consecutive West Catholic Athletic League crowns from 1975-99. Ten times they met in the playoffs, four in Central Coast Section championship games.

Now, in the 50th season of the longest uninterrupted rivalry between Santa Clara County teams, the Bells and Lancers meet with familiar stakes: The winner of Friday night's game at St. Francis takes sole possession of first place.

"The kids work all year," former Bellarmine Coach Walt Arnold said. "And it all comes down to one game."

In the beginning

When the series began in 1958 at Santa Clara's Townsend Field, it was hardly a rivalry at all, at least not to powerful Bellarmine.

"It was only a big game if we lost," said Leo Hanley, Bellarmine's quarterback that year.

But to St. Francis, the motivation was much different, due to a popular belief that the school filled its early enrollment with students Bellarmine turned down.
"Bellarmine rejects, how are you?" was a regular greeting from the Bells' rooting section.

Joe Franzia, a boarding student from Ripon who later became a vintner of Charles Shaw wine - a.k.a. "Two Buck Chuck" - scored the first touchdown on a 10-yard run in the third quarter of a 14-0 victory. Later, at Santa Clara University, he became a roommate of Ron Calcagno, the future St. Francis coach who would beat the Bells 18 times in 24 seasons.

The Lancers, defeated in each of the first nine meetings, finally made a dent in the Bellarmine domination in 1964. Before 10,500 fans at Buck Shaw Stadium, a Bellarmine team in the midst of a 31-game winning streak won - barely.
Final score: 3-0.

"That game proved to us that we could play with the big boys," said Bill Delaney, a St. Francis basketball standout in the mid-1960s and now the school's alumni director. "We were a school struggling to find an identity, and I think we measured that identity by our ability to compete with Bellarmine."

Momentum shifts

In 1977, that transformation seemed complete.

On the third play, Bellarmine's Tyrone Forte swept around the end, and everyone thought he was gone except one defender. Ryan Buhk refused to give up on the play, caught the speedy tailback and dragged him down just short of the goal line. Bellarmine failed to punch it in and settled for a field goal in a game St. Francis won 20-19.

"There was no reason he should have caught him, but somehow he did," Calcagno said.

That play became a fundamental lesson of perseverance at St. Francis.
While the Bells failed to reach the playoffs because of the loss, the Lancers went on to win their first CCS title, a landmark achievement that not only cemented St. Francis as a premier program, but also ignited a surge of success in all its sports.

"You always tell your team, 'A football game is made up of a lot of plays,' " longtime defensive coordinator Steve DeMaestri said. " 'One or two will be a turning point, you just don't know when. You don't want to have any regrets when that play happens.' "

But St. Francis' rise collided with a Bellarmine resurgence, creating a golden age of Santa Clara Valley football.

Heated battle

Coach Walt Arnold's Bellarmine team - with future NFL players David Diaz-Infante, Erik Howard, Randy Kirk and Jim Wahler - was ranked No. 1 in the state in 1981.

Coach Calcagno and St. Francis earned the same honor in 1983, helped along by a 9-7 victory over Bellarmine that Wahler, a UCLA star and five-year NFL defensive lineman, called "the toughest loss I've ever had in my life."
The teams settled into a series of defensive stalemates, with no team scoring more than 21 points from 1974-89.

"The hitting that went on in those games was unbelievable," Wahler said. "You'd knock them down, and then pick them up."

Every point and possession were magnified, especially with championships at stake.

"They were nightmares," Arnold said. "Whether you won them or lost them, they were all nightmares."

'A special game'

To a young Bellarmine fan named Tom McNeil, a 5-3 loss to the Lancers in the 1984 CCS Division I final was "devastating."

"It was ingrained in me at an early age that this was a special game," said McNeil, whose father and older brother played for Bellarmine.

McNeil gained a measure of revenge when, as a quarterback, he led the Bells to two victories over St. Francis in 1990, the final in the CCS Division I-4A title game at Spartan Stadium.

"I had a best friend, Steve Luthman, who was an outside linebacker at St. Francis," McNeil said. "In that first game, in the first quarter, I dropped back to pass and, two seconds after I threw it, I was seeing stars. He late-hit me.
"He had to show his teammates he was there for St. Francis, and I was for the Bells. I totally understand why he did it. Afterward, we were best friends again."

The play came up at Luthman's wedding recently, as they often do in this rivalry. Somehow, those memories transcend years in a rivalry that, in at least one player's eyes, was unmatched at any level.

"High school is always going to be the purest form of football," Wahler said. "You play because you love to play. There's a special magic that's different than college or pro. As you get older, you just get jaded - even college can feel like a business.

"But that rivalry was special, I don't think anything compares to that."

Check out David Kiefer's After School blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/hssports. Contact him at dkiefer@mercurynews.com

Link to After School: 50 years of the Bellarmine-St. Francis rivalry