Late again

Once again, I did not post for a very long time. I have got to stop doing that. My birthday is tomorrow (officially, it's at 9:16 a.m.) and maybe one of my resolutions for my 37th year on this planet is to update my blog in a more consistent manner. It might be tough tomorrow with the Mid-Continent League volleyball tournament at Phillipsburg, but I'll do my best. I promise.

I'm still at 1224 North Brooks, because tonight's football game is only over at Fort Hays State University, Russell at Thomas More Prep-Marian. I'm riding with Russell principal Larry Bernard to the game and then we're going to eat after. This is only the second Russell game I've seen this year, the first was at Belleville against Republic County, which I left at halftime. It also happened to be the only game which Russell won this season. TMP is also 1-5. But it's the start of district play, meaning everything the first six weeks is meaningless, at least in terms of qualifying for the playoffs.

Russell and TMP have been playing each other in sports for a very long time. TMP-Marian began its life as St. Joseph's Military Academy, colloquially referred to as the Hays Cadets. The school was an all-male institution under the control of St. Joseph's Catholic Church, which is the largest church in Hays. It's a magnificent cathedral located on 13th Street downtown, and it attracts Catholics from all over the area. The Cadets routinely played Hays High, the public school, in those days as members of the West Central Kansas League. Russell was also in the WCKL, with Dodge City, Garden City, Great Bend, Larned and Pratt.

In 1970, the military academy became Thomas More Prep, but stayed all-male. The WCKL split in 1973, with the larger schools--Dodge City, Garden City, Great Bend and Hays--forming a new league, the Western Athletic Conference, while Larned, Pratt, Russell and TMP picked up Hoisington, Lyons and Nickerson to form the Mid-State Activities Association.

The WAC eventually took on Liberal, which is too big to be playing with nearby schools like Hugoton, Scott City and Ulysses, and the Mid-State League basically stayed unchanged until 1996, when Scott City and Ulysses came on board, forcing Russell to leave and join the North Central Activities Association.

TMP merged with the girls Marian High School in 1981 to form the co-ed TMP-Marian.

The Russell-TMP rivalry was usually most heated in boys basketball, where both schools enjoyed great success in the 1950s, '60s and '70s. Football was never the strong suit of either side, save for Russell's trip to the Class 4A state championship game in 1979, and a deep playoff run by TMP in 2002.

However, there hasn't been a period in the last 30 years where both schools have been strong at the same time in the same sport, save for maybe last year, when the schools' girls basketball teams met in a sub-state semifinal at Lyons.

Time to pack up the computer and get ready to go. I don't want to be late. Maybe I can catch up when I get to Lewis Field Stadium.