Gardiner’s Chris Whalen (1990-92), left, and Cony’s Norm Merrill (1930-33), the all-time leading scorers for their respective football programs, pose for a photo together prior to the 1992 regular season meeting between the Tigers and Rams. The 1992 regular season finale was a highly anticipated affair with the Kennebec Journal, which published an 18-page section previewing the game and highlighting the history of the rivalry. Kennebec Journal file photo
AUGUSTA — Somewhere, copies of these pages are probably sitting in an attic or storage facility, most likely stuffed away along with dozens of other old newspapers in a box or desk area. Wherever they are — or if they still are — they tell a story of this game’s past that can’t be forgotten.
The 18-page special section wasn’t a usual addendum to the Kennebec Journal, which in fall 1992 would consist of anywhere from 30-40 pages. Yet the back end of the paper’s 66-page Oct. 30, 1992, edition is a tribute that shows the true stakes and fanfare of the Cony-Gardiner football game’s 100th anniversary with black-and-white pictures, a timeline and stories of the rivalry’s history, as well as words of encouragement from local advertisers.
“I remember putting that section out,” said Jerry Lauzon, the sports editor for the Kennebec Journal at the time. “I had to get busy because, after I found out how many pages it was, I had a week to do it and put it out. That was a big game, and those two teams were very good teams. Everyone wanted to read about it and buy advertisements.”
Yes, these were two outstanding Cony and Gardiner football teams, possibly two of the better ones in the histories of their storied programs. The two games between the rivals in 1992 mark the last time that the Rams and Tigers both had winning records when they faced each other in the regular or postseason.
That drought will come to an end Friday when Cony (4-3) hosts Gardiner (4-3).
It’s been a rollercoaster of a rivalry between the teams over the past three decades. For much of that time, the Rams and Tigers alternated periods of success with one team up while the other was down. Between those alternating patterns, preseason and postseason matchups and even a canceled football season, it’s hard to pinpoint times when rivalry meetings happened when both teams were going strong.
The 1992 season, though, was certainly that. Entering the Halloween regular-season game in Augusta, the Tigers were defending Class A East champions at 7-1 with one of central Maine’s all-time great players in Chris Whalen. Cony, though, was 6-2 and would beat the Tigers 18-7 to set up a Pine Tree Conference semifinal rematch, also at Alumni Field. The Rams would then win the rematch 14-6.
“I would go out on a limb and say those two teams were probably the two best teams playing against each other between Cony and Gardiner, at least during my time,” said Rob Munzing, Gardiner’s head coach from 1986-2000. “The Pine Tree Conference in 1992 was loaded, and we were both right there at the top. We played two tough, hard-nosed, physical games that year back-to-back. They were two wars.”
The regular-season finale, the first in the rivalry at Cony’s Alumni Field, drew particular hype. The Kennebec Journal’s special section for the 100th year went far beyond the usual previews and list of past games in the series. The paper featured in-depth looks at the two programs, their state championship wins and past legendary players. The following day’s newspaper, though much thinner, took a more detailed look at the contest about to unfold.
The pages sold like hotcakes. Lauzon wrote seven stories in that special section alone with other contributors for the paper writing an additional four. Most memorable to Lauzon and Whalen was a package that included profiles and a photo of both teams’ all-time scoring leaders — Whalen, then a senior, and Cony’s Norm Merrill, who played from 1930-33 — posing side-by-side with football helmets and their letter jackets.
“I remember meeting Normie, and it was pretty impressive to hear his story because you could see how the game lasts over the years,” Whalen said. “That game, there was just so much hype around it, and it was a good hype. It was in the paper every day, and it was even on the news. People are always fired up to play Cony, but they were even more fired up than normal.”
As for the game? Well, Cony’s task was to stop Whalen. A career 3,000-yard rusher, Gardiner’s 6-foot-2, 210-pound back and would-be Fitzpatrick Trophy finalist was a wrecking ball. Although quarterback Mike Choate would drop back to pass here and there, opposing teams by and large knew Whalen was getting the ball.
That didn’t mean those teams could stop him — and most of the time, they couldn’t. Making matters easier for Gardiner was the strong offensive line of Todd O’Connor, Chris Bailey, Chuck Burns, Ryan Eldridge, Jerrime Collins and Pat Colwell. Whalen running behind that John Burgess-coached line, Lauzon recalled, was a sight to behold.
“In the 10 years I was a sports writer in Augusta, there were probably three players I would pay to see to play, and Chris Whalen would probably be one of them,” “You knew they were going to run a counter, you knew they were going to run a dive, and you knew they were going to run a sweep, but the question was, ‘can you stop it?’”
One of the few teams that could was Cony, which had been revived under head coach Ralph Peterson after struggling in the 1980s. The Rams limited Whalen to just 41 yards on 18 carries in the regular-season finale, and he would register 66 on 19 carries in the playoff rematch before having to leave the game. Jason Mills (11 tackles in Week 9, 16 in PTC semis) and Todd Bernier (13 tackles in both games) were key in stopping the Gardiner run game.
There was no question that Gardiner was more competitive in the rematch, which was tied 6-6 early in the fourth quarter. The Tigers had some success running the direct snap to Whalen and later to Jim Inabinet, who replaced him in the second quarter. Cony, though, had its own stalwart backs in Scott Harriman and Mike Jowdry, the former of whom broke the deadlock with a 35-yard touchdown in the fourth that would prove to be the game-winner.
“We had a rocket in Scott Harriman, and Mike Jowdry, he’s probably the hardest person I’ve ever been hit by,” Mills said. “For them, Whalen could fly, and they used him as their workhorse. That’s the type of game it was: running up the middle in a head-to-head, aggressive football game. We were probably lucky — maybe not lucky but fortunate, I would say — to win both of those back-to-back.”
Cony, sadly, would go on to suffer a 19-18 loss to Lawrence in the Class A East championship game despite taking an 18-0 lead midway through the third quarter. Lawrence subsequently lost the Class A state title game 6-0 to a South Portland team that Mills felt the Rams could have beaten with its size and run game in the pouring rain. It was, as Peterson told the Kennebec Journal after the game, “a hard one to live with.”
Beating Gardiner twice in the same season, though, can never be considered a bad consolation prize for a Cony player — especially in games of this magnitude against a strong Tigers team. What made it even tougher was having to replicate the emotion of that, whether it was the pep rallies, the mascot draggings or the old tradition of the senior captains spending a day at the opposing school.
“To have to play them and then play them again, it was a little difficult to get that same emotion,” Mills said. “There was also that fear of whether we could win that game twice because they’re a very good team, and they’re hungry after that loss to come out and set the record straight. I think that’s why you saw a closer game the second time.”
Many who played and coached in those 1992 games have passed the torch to those who will be on the field for the 145th edition of the rivalry Friday night. Munzing’s son, Pat, is the current head coach at Gardiner, and Cony’s head coach, B.L. Lippert, is the son of the then-defensive coordinator Bob Lippert. Whalen’s nephew, freshman Eben Whalen, is a backup quarterback and also plays on special teams.
There might not be a packet-sized special section commemorating an anniversary game waiting for those coaches and players when they wake up Friday morning, nor will their teams be meeting in the PTC playoffs the following week. It will, though, be a game with as much on the line as there’s been in some time after three decades that have included unofficial matchups and games between programs that have often been on different trajectories.
“There’s really no high school rivalry like it,” Lauzon said. “Biddeford and Thornton doesn’t really go on anymore because of the enrollment stuff, and Portland-Deering, not so much, but Cony-Gardiner has come back, and there’s still a lot of interest to see these teams. … There’s a foundation of history that’s never gone away.”
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