There has been a lot of hype around Athens hosting East Limestone for the first football game of the season.
Football season is still a month away, and everywhere you go, you hear something about it. That’s a lot of hype for a game that hasn’t even been played yet.
The community is latching on to the fact that this is the first time Athens has ever played a Limestone County school in football.
There are already T-shirts with a logo saying “Battle of Limestone County –East Limestone vs. Athens” floating around, and some East Limestone supporters showed up at Athens spring jamboree with T-Shirts saying simply “Beat Athens” across the front.
It’s really funny that everybody is so excited about the fact that Athens is playing a county school for the first time. They are so excited they didn’t even take the time to check the history books to find out it’s actually not.
I have to say that I even fell into the trap, but was quickly put in my place a few weeks back.
A few weeks ago I ran a column talking about how the tradition of the pep rally in the square got started, and asked if Athens would still have the pep rally since they were playing East Limestone instead of Decatur.
A few days later I had a group of elderly men come and talk with me about some traditions that I probably didn’t know about, in fact, they weren’t sure if there was many who did remember.
They brought up the fact that I was right on how the first pep rally in the square was started, but they also told me I was wrong about this being the first time Athens had played a Limestone County school in football.
The group of men pointed out the fact that Athens played Elkmont in 1939 with the game ending in a 7-7 tie. They said the reason people don’t remember Athens playing Elkmont in 1939 is because that wasn’t the name of either school then.
At that time Elkmont was known as Limestone County High School and Athens was known as the 8th District Agricultural School – which changed to Green University and then to Athens High School.
According to the group of men, that wasn’t the only big program that Elkmont played that year. That year Elkmont finished the year with a 7-2-1 record, with ties against Decatur and Athens. Their only loss came at the hands of Sheffield – a perennial powerhouse in that era.
Elkmont apparently had a better team than Decatur that year, but Shorty Ogle watered the field down before the game to slow down Elkmont’s speed – their team’s strong point.
After finding all of this out, it showed me that no matter how great of a fresh new idea we may think we have, if you go back far enough you’ll find out its already been done.
