WORCESTER—Even with modern technology, there is no way to determine if the Pilgrims played football on Thanksgiving.
It seems unlikely.
However, modern technology gives us a fair idea of when turkey day football as we know it today — the high school variety — arrived in this city. The best available information has the date as Nov. 26, 1891. That morning, a team from Worcester High School took the 7:55 train to Westborough to play that town’s high school.
Worcester prevailed, 12-0, in a game in which touchdowns counted for four points. The three TDs were scored by Fritz Zaeger, J.F. Ager and H. Davis. Thus, what has become a 133-year tradition was born.
Westborough is still playing football. Worcester High is gone but its various descendants live on. Four will be playing this holiday — North, South, Doherty and Burncoat. There are, in total, four Thanksgiving games featuring Worcester schools this year.
Three are actually on Thanksgiving Eve. They are Abby Kelley Foster versus Worcester Tech, Saint Paul versus St. Bernard’s at Assumption, and South versus North.
Doherty and Burncoat play Thursday.
All the schools have more than tradition and adrenaline going for them as they prepare for the holiday
This is the fourth game in the Saint Paul versus St. Bernard’s series. The Bernardians have won the three previous meetings.
Saint Paul is 5-5 in its fifth season and a victory would set a school record. The Knights were were 5-0 in 2020, their first year of play, and were just 2-18 combined in 2022 and 2023. The Bernardians are 4-6 after opening the year with three straight losses.
Saint Paul probably has the longest to-do list but is trying to avoid prioritizing.
“They’re all equal,” quarterback and captain John Walsh Karam said. “Obviously, having a winning record after a couple of tough years is big, but so is winning for the first time on Thanksgiving. They all add the same amount of power to it, and if we win one, they all happen.”
First-year coach Gary Senecal is looking forward to playing the traditionally tough Bernardians.
“We’re trying to build something like they have,” he said. “We’re focused on trying to compete with a really, really good program and for us it’s a good litmus test. Where are we at?
“That it’s on Thanksgiving matters a lot to the kids, but I don’t think that’s different than any other group of kids in Massachusetts who are playing Thanksgiving football. There are teams in the playoffs playing Thanksgiving football and teams like us not in the playoffs, and for us this is it.”
Doherty and Burncoat are meeting for the 27th time on the holiday. Doherty holds a big edge at 20-6-0 and has won the last 16 in a row. Burncoat, however, heads into the game with an 8-2 record. That marks the Patriots’ most victories in a season since they went 12-0 in 2004.
Burncoat has posted its first winning full-season record since it was 6-5 in 2006, although the Patriots were 4-1 in the 2021 Covid spring season. They have set a new school scoring record with 349 points. That surpasses the 326 scored in 2004.
North takes on South for the 25th time on Thanksgiving. That series is dead even at 12-12-0. The Colonels have won the last four Turkey games to tie things up. Last year was one of the closest in series history as South prevailed by a touchdown, 20-14.
In 2024, South is 3-7 while North is 4-6. The Polar Bears are on a three-game winning streak.
The list of city high schools that have played on Thanksgiving is a long one. Some of the schools, and the rivalries, are defunct. That list includes Holy Name, St. John’s (now in Shrewsbury), St. Peter’s and its descendant St. Peter-Marian, Holy Cross Prep, Worcester Boys Trade (now Worcester Tech), Sacred Heart, St. Stephen’s and Commerce.
The most notable of the Worcester city rivalries was St. John’s-St. Peter’s. It was inaugurated in 1925 and the schools played 95 times through 2019. The series continued after St. John’s moved to Shrewsbury and after St. Peter’s merged with Marian, a girls school.
When it ended the matchup was the oldest parochial school rivalry in the country.
St. John’s dominated. The Pioneers ended with a 59-30-6 edge and won 16 of the last 17 meetings. The game was always scheduled for Thanksgiving and always scheduled to be played at Fitton Field where crowds often were 10,000 or more.
Weather occasionally changed the location and the date was sometimes moved to accommodate the Holy Cross varsity. Nothing in the city’s annals comes close to that Thanksgiving rivalry in impact and significance.
Senecal played for St. Peter-Marian in 2002 when it beat St. John’s, 34-20, and also in 2000 when the Guardians won, 32-29.
“So much has changed in 22 years,” he said. “We played at Fitton Field and thousands of people would go to the games. You’d look around at how many people filled the seats. They were great games, fun games.”
The city’s public schools rarely played on Thanksgiving in the 20th Century. There were some odd, brief, rivalries. Norwich Free Academy in Connecticut played Commerce and South in the 1940s. South also played New Bedford. Boys Trade lost to Beverly Industrial, 6-0, in 1912 and later took on Gardner.
Worcester High often played against club teams such as Kalumet Boat. It beat Marlboro in 1892 and Gardner in 1898. The parochial schools were active, as well. Sacred Heart beat Murdock in 1908 in front of a crowd of 600 and lost to Milford in 1914.
Through the decades, schools and rivalries have come and gone. Today’s Thanksgiving crowds are smaller, but the game’s importance has not changed, especially to the players on the field.
“You look forward to this every year,” Karam said, and that time of year is here for the 133rd time.
Bill Ballou covered the Red Sox for the Worcester Telegram from 1997 through 2018. He has covered pro hockey in Worcester since 1994 and currently does a weekly column for the Worcester Red Sox. Ballou can be reached at vetgoalie@aol.com
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