Another piece of local tradition bids farewell Friday night

One of the best pieces of news I've heard so far this football season is that even though Hampshire will be moving to the Fox Valley Conference next year, the Whip-Purs' long-standing rivalry with Burlington Central will continue when the two meet on Opening Night next fall.

One of the worst pieces of news I've heard so far this football season is that tonight will be the final football contest between Elgin and West Aurora.

Tradition just took a big slap in the face.

While one may say this is just a sign of the times, it's just sad that tradition is no longer a mitigating factor in cases like this.

Elgin and West Aurora have played football since 1895, making it tied for the third longest football rivalry in state history with the Ottawa-Streator rivalry. Only the East Aurora-West Aurora and Hyde Park-Englewood series have run longer.

Elgin and West Aurora played the first night football game in state history on Oct. 28, 1898 when lights were strung on wires above the field at Elgin's King Park.

Elgin's Larry Sullivan once set the state record for longest field goal in a game (which has since been broken) when he nailed one from 56 yards out to beat the Blackhawks at Memorial Field on Sept. 27, 1986. That was on a Saturday afternoon with gale force wind at his back and the reason it was on Saturday afternoon is that someone backed into a utility pole and knocked out the lights at Memorial and they couldn't finish the game Friday night.

No, the Elgin-West football series doesn't have some of the magic that others do. We'll grant you that. And since West left the Upstate Eight in 1997, it's never been a game with playoff implications on the line.

But when your schools have done something together for 115 years, it just seems wrong to pull the plug.

West Aurora chose to end the contract and the Blackhawks will play St. Charles East - West coach Buck Drach's former school - in Week 2 the next two years. Elgin, meanwhile, will play Bartlett, which ended up off the Maroons' schedule with the newly aligned Upstate Eight splitting up the U-46 schools.

"A major part of the decision was Elgin's declining numbers and that Elgin hasn't had a freshman B team for several years," said West Aurora athletic director Andy Lutzenkirchen. "We've had to scramble to find a team to play and it's getting tougher and tougher to do that every year."

That's the only explanation Lutzenkirchen offered for ending the contract with Elgin. And while we can empathize with that reasoning, is that enough to pull the plug on 115 years of tradition?

"We just decided to go in a different direction," said Drach. "We're trying to fill our schedule at all levels and the numbers are against (Elgin) a little bit."

Curiously, West offered Elgin athletic director Gwen Poore no explanation, so Poore was at a bit of a loss when we talked earlier this week.

"It wasn't our decision," Poore said. "We'd love to play them. We like playing them. They didn't give me a reason."

Poore also suggested that attendance may have been an issue. Football, after all, is the biggest revenue-generating sport high schools have.

"I know last year when we went to West we didn't have a lot of people," Poore said. "But we had a nice crowd at Dundee-Crown to open this year."

So tradition gets kicked in the teeth again. Maybe it is a sign of the times, and maybe in the end both schools will be better off. West Aurora and St. Charles East will draw better attendance than Elgin-West Aurora, and Elgin gets a chance to play Bartlett, a sister school in U-46 that it wouldn't play the next two years under the UEC's new setup.

But I can't help thinking how sad it is to see yet another time-honored piece of our local sports scene give way to the times. "A sign of the times" seems to have become a crutch more and more lately, but I guess it's just something we have to accept and deal with - albeit reluctantly on this end.

However, if Central and Hampshire ever decide to go the way of Elgin-West Aurora, I might have to start thinking about retirement.

Football, after all, is built on tradition and we need to stop messing with it.