HIGH SCHOOL

Bordow: Globe, Miami prepare for 100th Copper Kettle game

Scott Bordow
azcentral sports
Winning the Copper Kettle for be quite the prize for the victor in Friday's Miami-Globe football game.

Brandon Powell played quarterback for Globe High School in 1989 and 1990. Later, he spent 17 years as an assistant coach at the school.

His feelings for Globe ran deep as did the community's feelings about him. So when he became Miami's head coach this year, well, there were a few people who crossed him off their Christmas card list.

"For the most part Miami people are happy to have me but there are, for lack of a better word, old-timers who are not happy a Tiger is coaching the Vandals," Powell said.

Those feelings undoubtedly have intensified this week. Globe and Miami will play the 100th game of their rivalry Friday. Globe will wear retro 1920s uniforms, it's homecoming week and the school also is celebrating its 100th anniversary with several events.

How big of a deal is the game? Tickets went on sale last summer, and Globe coach Al Ocampo said extra bleachers are being brought in to handle a crowd that's expected to be between 5,000 and 10,000.

"I think the whole wrapping of the package is what's making this game as big as it's been," Powell said. "It just keeps growing."

Globe-Miami isn't the longest-running rivalry in the state. That distinction belongs to Douglas and Bisbee, which began playing its annual game in 1906. But few rivalries in Arizona are as personal. Heck, the Globe fight song includes this lyric: "We're gonna roll the Vandals out of sight, yes we are."

Miami and Globe are separated by just 4.9 miles. Everyone in the copper mining towns knows everyone else. Family ties are blended; Cecilia Bernal, executive assistant to the city manager in Globe, was born and raised in Miami. She went to high school there. But her two sons have played for Globe.

"Some of the kids on both teams are cousins," former Miami coach Jeremy Johnson said last year. "They're family members. They see each other at dinner and at grandma's house and prior to that week they're hanging out, going fishing and all of a sudden that one week they're not really buddies. Then, as soon as the game is over, they're friends again.

"It's that intense. Because you're the dad and your son wins and you go (to work) in the mines with the dads whose sons didn't win. It's a big deal. It's a pride thing."

The rivalry's history also adds to its allure. The game was played on Thanksgiving Day for 40 years until the state playoffs began in 1965. The letters "G" and "M" that are painted on the town's hillsides aren't there for purely decorative reasons; vandalism had become a recurring problem on game week so school officials and leaders of both towns decided to paint the hills, hoping students would limit their pranks to repainting the letters in their own school color.

Then there's the ultimate prize: The Copper Kettle. The kettle weighs more than 100 pounds and is filled with small football-shaped copper pieces, each of which is inscribed with the score from that year's game.

When I visited Globe High last summer the kettle was the first thing I saw when I walked through the front doors.

"It's big by the very nature of being a cross-town rivalry and there's not a whole lot else up here to compete for interest," Ocampo said. "There's no ASU or UA or pro teams. Everything revolves around the high schools in both towns."

It doesn't matter, then, that Globe is 0-3 and Miami is 1-3. It doesn't matter that Globe has had one winning season since 2006 or that Miami's record is 7-23 the past three seasons. The rivalry doesn't diminish. It is a matter of pride, even in the worst of years.

And now here comes No. 100, with all of its trappings.

"Every year whether one team is up or the other down or they're both down like they have been the last couple of years, it's the main event," Powell said.

As for Powell's relationship with his former school he has received some text messages this week jokingly calling him a traitor. But he also heard from Globe classmates who said they'll wear Globe's orange and black when they sit in the stands but quietly root for him.

Everyone else in Globe and Miami won't share allegiances. You're either a Vandal or a Tiger. And never will that mean more than on Friday.

"There's a lot of people talking about it," Bernal said. "Everyone is excited to see the game."

Reach Bordow at scott.bordow@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/sBordow