Faribault and Northfield Renew Football Rivalry Trophy Game
It's called the Cannon Trophy and was built by a Northfield shop teacher in 1938.
I stopped by the Faribault High School Activies Director office the other day to take a few pictures of the historic trophy that hasn't been played for since 1967.
Faribault won that year and the reason it hasn't been awarded is because the two schools haven't played each other in a regular season football game since then.
Northfield left the Big Nine after that year and was independent for a number of years until the MIssota Conference was formed.
Northfield Activities Director Tom Graupman stopped by Professional Pride Realty in Northfield for a KDHL AM MInnesota program this week and brought with him a book written by a former longtime assistant Northfield football coach.
Graupman noted Northfield wanted to play smaller town schools like Apple Valley, Lakeville and Rosemount.
Shows you how much times have changed since the mid to late 1960's.
Even when I arrived at KDHL in the summer of 1987 Lakeville was not a very big community.
The Cannon Trophy was originally awarded to the winner of the football game but eventually evolved into football,basketball and wrestling determining the winner.
Remember there were no girls sports in those days.
In 1938 a new vehicle average cost was $763. The average income was $1,730 a year. A new house average price was $3,900. Gas was 10 cents a gallon. A loaf of bread cost 9 cents, gallon of milk was 50 cents and renting a home averaged 27 dollars a month.
IN 1938 the ball point pen was introduced and the first superman comic was read.
In 1938 oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia and Adolf Hitler was Time Magazine's Man of the Year.
Things have changed a lot since then.
Graupman told us Faribault dominated the series between the two schools and Northfield decided to leave the Big Nine because they wanted to compete with more similar sized schools.
Rochester was one high school in those days, Mankato was one school and Austin had the biggest high school in the state he said.
The Cannon came about because both Faribault and Northfield are connected by the Cannon River.
I guess it's hard to make a river trophy so the actual Cannon Trophy was born.
Below are some pictures of the trophy from the Faribault Activity Director's office.
Notice the Faribault and Northfield pennants. You can see the trophy was built by Neil Christian by looking at name plate. Pretty cool trophy eh?
Stuffed inside the Cannon was a sheet of very brittle paper now listing many of the scores in the series, but not a complete listing.
You can hear the renewal of the regular season rivalry on POWER 96 Radio, 95.9 FM. www.power96radio.com and by downloading the FREE Radio Pup app on your favorite mobile device.