This Friday the Boone and Edgewater high school football teams will go head to head for their 68th match up. Best known as the Battle for the Barrel, this is Central Florida’s oldest high school football rivalry game.
Even though the two schools are no longer in each other’s district or division conference play, they continue to play for posterity’s sake – or to put it more simply – for bragging rights.
The crosstown rivalry began in 1952 when
Orlando High School split into two high schools to better serve the growing Orlando area: William R. Boone (named after the long-serving principal of OHS) and Edgewater.
Traditionally, Boone and Edgewater played Thanksgiving weekend as the season finale. Known then as the Orlando Championship, instead of winning a trophy, the winner took home a barrel painted in the two schools’ colors, with the date and score recorded on it. Edgewater leads the Battle for the Barrel 46-19-2.
The schools played in the Tangerine Bowl (now Camping World Stadium), so alumni from Orlando High School could attend on neutral territory. The first match up had an estimated 11,000 attendees. The 50th anniversary of the rivalry in 2002 was played before a high school record-attendance crowd of 24,500.
Richard T. Crotty, former Orange County chairman, presented a proclamation recognizing Nov. 8, 2002, as the Boone-Edgewater 50th anniversary day.
Watch the video. (Special thanks to Orange TV for providing the footage.)
Both schools used to play harmless pranks on each other by toilet papering and shaving creaming the other’s campus. However, the level of damage grew throughout the years, so much so that the schools considered ending play.
To remind students at all Orange County high schools that they are part of one district, Superintendent Barbara Jenkins encouraged coaches push
#OCPSRivalryLove. Born from this movement,
Boone and Edgewater directed their energies to hype videos on social media rather than destroy property.
In early October,
Edgewater football players and coaching staff sent a get well message to Boone’s coach, Andy Johnson, who is battling cancer. This is the type of classy sportsmanship the district hopes continues between the schools during the rivalry week.