Connecticut Football – America’s Oldest High School Football Rivalry New London High School vs. Norwich Free Academy

Editor’s Note: This column features accounts of longstanding and interesting high school sports rivalries. If your school has a special game or event of historical significance, and you would like to have it considered for publication, please send information to Nate Perry at nperry@nfhs.org.

Football historians are quick to recite the facts about the first game ever played; a showdown that pitted Rutgers University against the College of New Jersey (later renamed Princeton University) in front of roughly 100 spectators on November 6, 1869.

And while this game is rightfully remembered as the origin of America’s most popular sport, what’s lesser known is how quickly football was introduced at the high school level, and how that introduction simultaneously ignited a rivalry that still stands as our nation’s oldest.

Less than six years after that groundbreaking Princeton-Rutgers clash, New London (Connecticut) High School (NLHS) – known at the time as Bulkeley School for Boys – and Norwich (Connecticut) Free Academy (NFA) played the inaugural high school football game on May 12, 1875.

And from that point forward, the two communities – which sit just 15 miles apart along the Thames River in southeastern Connecticut – were swept with high school football fever. In fact, by 1883, the event had already become so popular that the New London Northern Railroad offered a 50-cent round trip to that year’s matchup at Williams Park in Norwich, where “a large assembly (was) expected,” according to a New London Telegram article.

Playing within the primitive football framework of the times, the early years of the series featured a number of folkloric moments. Many of them revolve around lopsided scores and/or undercover faculty members suiting up to gain a competitive advantage, but undoubtedly the most famous tale is derived from the 1889 meeting.

Somewhere around the midway point of the contest, a heavy snow began to fall that greatly affected visibility. Both offenses were stymied as the conditions grew increasingly worse. After an NFA drive stalled, the Wildcats’ punter sent the ball high in the air to the point that it vanished from sight and disappeared into the snowy abyss. A search ensued but the ball was never found, and since neither team had a spare, the game was brought to an abrupt end. To this day, members of both school communities continue to posit theories about where the ball may be located.

The early 1900s brought a slew of additional memories, including one from 1909 that may be humorous now, but certainly wasn’t at the time for the New London faithful. Still searching for its first win in the series, Bulkeley (New London) clung to a one-touchdown lead in what seemed to be the waning moments of the contest. However, the game continued on inexplicably, allowing the Academy to punch in the tying score. Afterward, the timekeeper, an NFA supporter, was found to have extended the game by an additional 13 minutes and reportedly “ran for his life” when the jig was up.

Bulkeley would respond with its first “official” win of the series the following year – a 6-0 decision – and would begin to turn the tide with five victories in the next six meetings from 1912 to 1914, according to the game-by-game results published by The Norwich Bulletin in 2010.

The overall ledger is disputed as a result of the sporadic record- keeping from the early years, but according to those listings from The Bulletin, NFA won the first 30 official meetings and leads the series at 78-71-8. However, New London holds a 71-48-8 advantage since that original triumph in 1910.

The game was made into an annual Thanksgiving Day tradition starting in 1921, which also marked the onset of Bulkeley’s first run of success in the series as winners of eight of 12 matchups from 1922 to 1933. After Bulkeley’s decisive 33-0 win in 1923, NFA alumnus Charles F. Noyes pledged a $5,000 donation to his alma mater under the proposition that NFA defeated Bulkeley in both football and baseball the following year. News of the deal reached New London in no time and motivated the Tigers, who made sure Noyes’ financial assistance never came to fruition with a mirror-image 33-0 shutout of NFA in the 1924 encounter.

NFA would take back control with seven consecutive victories from 1933 to 1940 and did so in convincing fashion, outscoring New London by a combined count of 105-35. However, that would be the last period of sustained dominance for the Wildcats for almost SIX decades, as Bulkeley/New London would take hold of the head-to-head with a vice-like grip.

Bulkeley, which merged with other community schools to form New London High School in 1951, beat Norwich Free Academy 45 times in 59 tries from 1941 to 1996, including 11 wins over 12 renewals from 1964 to 1975 and an 18-1 stretch from 1979 through the end of the era.

Though the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference did not crown its first official football state champions until 1976, a look at the Conference’s year-by-year results underscores New London’s dominance. The Whalers – the school’s post-merger nickname – appeared in six CIAC state title games from 1983 to 1992 and hoisted the championship trophy four times (1983, 1989, 1991, 1992).

Since that time, the series momentum has swung back toward NFA, which owns an 18-9 advantage over New London since 1997. The Wildcats rattled off seven straight wins from 1997 to 2003 and closed that stretch with a bang, winning the final three games by an impressive 116-18 overall margin. Their 28-7 victory in 1998 also pre-empted the program’s first-ever state runner-up finish.

New London won five of the next six meetings to temporarily “find their footing” in the series, including a 34-3 victory in 2005 that brought a very literal meaning to the expression. A snowy day in Norwich made for slippery conditions on NFA’s AstroTurf playing surface, and for whatever reason, New London players showed up with shoes unfit for the weather. However, since the New London sideline had not yet been cleared of snow and the snow removal process was slowed due to a lack of equipment, the Whalers lobbied for a delay and ultimately won out, allowing time for their cleats to arrive from downriver before marching on to victory.

That march continued all the way to the state championship game for the Whalers, who finished as state runners-up. New London would come up just short again in 2007, before exacting their revenge a year later with a 27-18 victory over Seymour High School for the CIAC Class SS state title.

New London would return to the CIAC championship game again in 2010, but this time, NFA would get the better of the Whalers first. The Wildcats, who came into the game undefeated at 9-0, got 215 rushing yards and one touchdown from running back Anthony Facchini to key a 20-14 triumph.

While New London would prevail in the rivalry’s 150th installment – a 9-7 defensive struggle – the series has since belonged to NFA, which used victories over NLHS in 2012 (28-7) and 2014 (63-40) as springboards to the state finals in those respective years.

Ever since their victory on Thanksgiving Day 2014, the Wildcats are 7-2 against New London, which included a four-game winning streak that was snapped this past year with a 35-13 defeat at the hands of the Whalers.

The Thanksgiving Day tradition will bring both communities together again this coming season, when the Whalers and Wildcats square off in Norwich to add (what’s believed to be) the 162nd chapter of the nation’s most storied high school football rivalry.