They’re separated only by a bridge and a few miles — 11.2 to be exact. But the battle between Bainbridge and North Kitsap in football has been as fierce as the Hatfields and the McCoys.
Other high school sports have also taken to the rivalry, and the soccer, baseball, fastpitch, tennis, basketball, lacrosse and swim teams all enjoy contests with one another, despite being in different leagues.
But nowhere does that rivalry become more prominent than on the football field, where the contest enjoys the highest gates of the season.
And unfortunately, it hasn’t always been pretty.
When Steve Frease takes the sideline in his NK coaching debut versus the Spartans Friday, he’ll have about as unique an understanding of the rivalry as anyone in attendance.
A lifetime resident of the island and a former star player for Bainbridge, Frease has three children who have been Spartans and even helped coach the 1981 team that beat NK for the last time other than last year’s stunning upset. However, he’s spent more than two decades as a North Kitsap teacher and coach and he’s seen what happens when things get out of hand.
He mentioned that in the late ‘70s, near riots broke out after games, which included “rocks and tire irons.†It took the coaches, including Jerry Parrish, who coached the NK team for 32 years, and Gordy Prentice of Bainbridge, to calm the student bodies down, the skippers traveling to each other’s schools to speak at pep assemblies to help tranquilize the violence.
“As with any neighboring district, there is a rivalry,†he commented. “Our (Bainbridge and North Kitsap) kids have always competed in youth leagues, so there’s familiarity.
“It’s like two brothers,†he added. “And you want to take it to your brothers.â€
Bainbridge athletic director and former football coach Neal White also took steps to ensure things wouldn’t get out of hand.
“I had to speak at a North Kitsap assembly in my first year (in ‘83) at the school to calm down the heat,†he said. “I don’t want to stir it up again. We have a rock and they have a rock. They paint it in their colors and we paint theirs in our colors.â€
Andy Grimm, the current Bainbridge football coach, has lived on the island since he was 2 and played for the Spartans from ‘82 to ‘85. He has heard about the stories, but also notes he had several friends on the North Kitsap side during his time on the team.
“Through some mutual friends I had six or seven guys I knew very well,†he said. “In the summer we would go water-skiing or go to a game. But that Friday night whenever we played, it was a war.
“I love the rivalry but I’m a proponent of doing it the positive way,†he said, noting that games haven’t broken out into fights between players and fans that mar other rivalries. “I’d rather see it blossom on the field. And it’s been that way the last five to 10 years and I know it’ll be that way even more with Steve on the field.â€
On the field, however, it’s gone one way — North Kitsap’s.
Before last year’s victory, the last time the Spartans defeated the Vikings was in 1981. If you take a look at the entire series, which dates back to the early 1940s, even with the teams being in different divisions for many years, it turns into a version of the UW-WSU rivalry — North is ahead in the series by a lot.
Tom Paski, who started coaching the team back in 1947 — the same year the Olympic League was formed — remembers his first game very well.
“We were loaded,†he said. “We had a good team and then they came in and wiped the floor with us 40-0.â€
The next year wasn’t pretty either, as future WSU and New York Giant standout Harland Svare led the way for the Vikings with a 40-24 victory.
But the third year of his coaching tenure was the charm, as his squad shut out NK 12-0 on the day before his birthday. The win made the front page of the Review the following week.
“From then on, they won most of the ballgames,†he said. “We were usually outmanned.â€
“They were always tough, they were always big,†he continued. “We were a small school at the time. Where they had 22 kids that would play offense and defense, we had 15 that would have to go both ways.â€
Another memory that stands out was a game in 1958 when Herb Allen hit Viking quarterback Steve Maddox real hard.
“Maddox was trying to play a double reverse and our kid (Allen) hit him so hard right at the exchange he split his Riddell plastic helmet in half,†he said, chuckling at the memory.
“We didn’t win too many, but the ones we did win, we were pretty proud of them.â€
Virg Taylor, a coach in North Kitsap for more than four decades, recalled the 1976 football season when Bainbridge beat North, 15-14. He said when basketball season came around, the Spartan fans chanted the football score the entire game just to rub in the defeat a little longer.
And then there’s the off-the-field antics. Taylor can remember the team buses being egged — in both directions and for both teams. But it demonstrates just how personal the team’s contests can be, he said.
“It’s been a monster rivalry over the years,†Taylor said. “They’ve always been a great rival and I expect it to continue.â€
White also has his share of memories.
“We went to North in my third year,†he said. “We had a sophomore quarterback Greg Fisher and we ran a run-n-shoot offense. He had a great first half and we led 21-7, but they came back and beat us.â€
He also remembers last year’s victory very well, a wild contest that had NK’s Jared Prince and the Spartans’ Grant Leslie combine for 500 yards and 10 touchdown passes before the Spartans squeaked by on a Angelo Ritualo field goal, 44-41.
“Last year was as great a game as I’ve ever seen,†he said. “It had everything. It was a great shootout.â€
Grimm felt it was one of the biggest wins of his coaching career, but not in the way a championship win defines it.
“It was big in that sense just because it had been a long time,†Grimm said. “As a former player, I never beat North, but it was fun for my staff at the time, as three of my staff were former players who had never beat North either.
“My wife teaches with Steve in the PE department, so I got to razz him all year.â€
He still gets people, including former BHS grads, to come up and talk to him about the game, but he doesn’t want to gloat about the win too much, because he knows there’s always next year.
“You can joke about it and have fun but you can’t (rub it in), because that stuff bites you if you feed off that stuff all the time,†he said. “It becomes a karma thing.â€