Reliving the Dueling Pistols Game rivalry between Liberty and Excelsior Springs football
KEARNEY, Mo. — In the year 1902, Theodore Roosevelt was President. The Treaty of Vereeniging ended the Second Boer War. And the first movie theater in the United States opened in Los Angeles. Also in 1902, Liberty High School formed its first football team. The next year, in 1903, Liberty played their first game against Excelsior Springs. Thus, a rivalry that would last for almost an entire century was forged.
The game was a tradition, formed through the decades from the World War I era into the 1930s. In those years and into the late 1950s, the population of Excelsior Springs exceeded that of Liberty. By 1938, the full-blown rivalry between the schools was codified into what amounted to an annual bowl game. The prize—two cap-and-ball dueling pistols in a trophy case. A traveling trophy. The victor kept pistols for the year. In case of a tie, the pistols would be retained by the previous winner.
It is difficult to describe the hostility between the two schools if one didn’t experience it. These were epic battles. An old man that played in one of the games in the 1930s claimed he was carrying the ball over the goal line and a “rascal” from Liberty tackled him. Under the pile, “he pulled my head from under the chin and tried to tear my head off.”
As the decades progressed, the history, the emotion, the stories, created a tornado of nerves that always permeated the atmosphere of Dueling Pistol games–making them electric.
Damon Owen witnessed some of these epic games. His father, Dean Owen, was the head coach of Liberty football in the 1960s. “The Dueling Pistol game was a big deal,” says Damon. “It reminded me of the Border Wars with Kansas and Missouri. I remember my dad telling the team, ‘If you’re going to beat anybody this year you have got to beat Excelsior.’ Liberty people didn’t like the Excelsior people much and Excelsior people didn’t like the Liberty folks much.”
An entire Spirit week of events, including a bonfire, were dedicated to the annual game. Stories of vandalism and pranks circulated. Some true, others just tales. A delivery of eleven boxed cream puffs to the Excelsior Springs coaching staff was a favorite.
Although there were dominating runs by both schools, many of the games would be close scores despite the records of the teams. From the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, the Bluejays won most of the games. Then Excelsior won a good share of the games in the decades that followed, especially in the Excelsior Bonuchi era when the Tigers went undefeated for 43 games in the early 1960s. A 7-6 win for the Bluejays in 1971 is considered one of the best games ever in the series.
The Dueling Pistols game finally came to an end in 1999. By then, the school enrollment at Liberty was more than double the size of Excelsior Springs. But those who lived through those decades of sensational heart-pounding rivalry will never forget those Friday nights. “Everybody would go to the football game, and then afterwards, everybody would go down to Trail’s Inn,” says Owen. “All the parents would go there, and everybody would go and discuss the game and have pie. Different times for sure.”
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