The Sept. 11 edition of The Courier-Journal chronicles Manual’s most recent defeat of St. Xavier.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 23 years since the Manual High School football team has defeated St. Xavier.
The Tigers have won 27-consecutive games against their intra-city foes, including five playoff winners dating back to Sept. 10, 1993, when the Crimsons recorded a 17-3 win at Manual Stadium.
St. X leads the overall series 58-30-2, and the two teams have faced off every year since 1931, when Manual recorded a 31-12 victory.
Let’s take a look back in time, and hear from some of those who were involved that day:
Pre-Game
St. Xavier came into the game high on confidence. The Tigers won the state title in a year earlier in 1992, going 14-1 and finishing with a low-scoring 3-0 win in the title game over Boone County.
Manual meanwhile was feeling confident as well, having opened the season with a 40-27 victory on August 27 against Ballard. Former Crimsons running back Travis Prentice, who went on to break NCAA records as a tailback at Miami (Ohio) University and become a third-round draft pick, recalled that the win over Ballard propelled the Crimsons into its St. Xavier encounter.
“I think we were actually ranked,” Prentice said in a phone interview. “We hadn’t beaten St. X in a while, and that’s the last time Manual was a contender. We had beaten Ballard earlier in the year and (I think) they were highly ranked in the state. We hadn’t beaten them in a while and that week it was all ‘beat St. X’.”
Before 1993, the last time Manual had defeated St. X on the gridiron was in 1988, when the Crimsons made it to the Class 4-A state title game before falling to Trinity.
“Going into the game, usually St. X is pretty intimidating because St. X and Trinity have hundreds of kids (on their teams),” Prentice said. “They’re football programs while other schools have football teams.”
While Manual had some confidence going into a home game against St. Xavier, the Crimsons were slightly brought back down to earth a week earlier when they tripped up against Jeffersontown, 13-7.
“We had a nice team that year but I didn’t really expect us to be that good that early,”then-Manual coach Mick Motley said in a phone interview. “We had been practicing well that week because it was always a big game playing St. X.
“We didn’t fear (St. X) but we got beat the previous week by J’town so we were coming off a loss and just on the stroke of things, playing J’town and St. X are two different animals. A lot of people on the outside looking in thought we shouldn’t be competing with (St. X) but we were confident.
“We were playing at home and at that time St. X’s games were at Manual stadium, so we certainly weren’t overconfident but I thought we had a great shot. Our game plan was to be as physical as they were and protect the ball.”
The game
There was a different feeling about the game during warmups, according to Prentice.
“I remember (St. X) was in all-white (uniforms) and I remember us just looking at them differently, like they weren’t as intimidating,” Prentice said. “We hung around in the ball game long enough and started to dominate and realize “we can beat these guys, they’re not that tough.”
The game went about as well to plan as it could have for Motley and the Crimsons. The hosts took a 3-0 lead after one quarter via a Greg Shartzer field goal kick and Otis Colvin punched in a score from four yards out to make it 9-0 at halftime (the Crimsons missed the extra point).
But the big storylines from the game were Prentice’s coming out party as a dominant running back, and Manual’s defense forcing an impressive seven turnovers: five fumbles and two interceptions.
“We were just knocking the snot out of them,” Motley recalled. We were taking the ball away and not giving it to them.”
“They had some fumbles and they turned the ball over on the goal line,” Prentice said. “I remember Kyle Walker coming and stripping the ball and we just jumped on it. I held a guy up and Walker came up, he was a better all-around athlete, and he stripped the ball and jumped on it. No team can win with turnovers, not even St. X. That game every ball was bouncing our way and we took advantage of it.”
In The Courier-Journal report from the game, Troy Wade is credited with a forced fumble and Cleo Hall with a recovery, though it’s unclear from the report who forced or recovered the other four fumbles from the game.
On the offensive side, Prentice’s 51-yard, fourth-quarter touchdown run down the right sideline made his teammates believe that a win was possible. Prentice finished the game with 124 yards on 20 carries with a touchdown.
“I remember scoring down the sideline and I remember thinking it was surreal and we’re really doing this,” Prentice said. “The more turnovers we got we were standing a little taller. It went from we could possible win to we’re going to beat them. We took advantage of St. X’s mistakes and we believed in ourselves and decided to win.”
“He was such a special player,” Motley said. “He had come to us and had never played little league football. He had told his mom he was going to sign up for soccer because she didn’t want him to play football and he came out for Football. He evolved into a tremendous player. Physically he was mature and ready to play as a freshman and in the two years prior to playing in ’93 he learned so much. We had some big offensive lineman and we lined him up and gave him the ball a ton and St. X couldn’t deal with him. He was a man amongst boys that night. I remember (then-St. X coach) Mike Glaser talking so much about him afterwards. We had a diamond in the rough, we were polishing him off and junior year he came into his own and senior year he was special. We knew we had an ace in the hole and we knew we had a chance.”
“He was basically the difference in the game,” Glaser recalled in a phone interview. “Prentice was a tremendous running back and he ended up in the NFL. Just an outstanding player.”
The Tigers scored its only points of the game with a Michael Conklin 38-yard field goal not long after, but it wasn’t enough as the Tigers fell.
Postgame
With Manual’s football team and fans wildly celebrating the big rivalry win, Glaser said he kept his team on the field to drive in the memory of this defeat.
“It was a big win for them, and they celebrated tremendously after the game,” Glaser said. “I remember telling our guys to watch it, learn from it, and own it, because they beat us. It didn’t feel good and I don’t think we ever forgot that. I know that was a personal pride thing that I never wanted that to happen again. I always tried to impart that to our players (Manual) was one of the teams we always tried to prepare for and play our best.
“I owned it as a coach and I wanted to prepare them for every game, but that’s one that hurt a lot,” Glaser continued. “Watching them be so exuberant and excited because it was a big win for them. For every loss we ever had I wanted to make sure (the players) knew what it felt like because the difference between winning and losing (emotionally) is big.
“I think that loss helped propel us for years to come in that rivalry.”
Since that defeat 23 years ago, it’s been a one-sided rivalry for the Tigers.
“When you look at 23 years, at the time when we beat them, if you told me it would be this long to beat them again, I would say it’s impossible even as great as their program is,” Motley said. “We always have great competitive teams at Manual. Over the years we’ve let games get away from us. Three years ago my son was the starting quarterback at Manual and St. X won on the last play as the game. We’ve had so many chances and it’s frustrating as heck. But as it goes there’s little doubt in my mind that it will happen again.”
St. X broke Manual hearts in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and in 2014 in the playoffs, and as Motley mentioned, the Tigers won the team’s regular-season encounter in dramatic fashion, 24-23, in 2013.
“It’s not much of a rivalry on St. X’s part,” Prentice said when asked of his thoughts on the rivalry today. “Manual just has to grab a win and believe that it can win. Right now, when it’s so one-sided, one team expects to win, and the other team wants to win but they don’t expect to win. Manual needs to want to win.
“You’ve got to reverse it and make it so you should expect to win. Guys practice the same amount of time, guys put on pads the same way. But it’s just another guy in pads, and it’s just one play. Win that play and everything else will come together. They shouldn’t get caught up in St. X-Manual rivalry because if you’re down two scores it’s like, ‘Here we go again,’ instead of saying it’s just another team. It’s crazy we haven’t beaten them in so long and you’ve got to strip it down to the bare bones of, it’s just another team.”
This year’s matchup
Heading into this year’s matchup, Manual looks primed to pull off their first victory in 23 years. The Crimsons are a perfect 6-0, with convincing wins over everyone except a 21-20 win over Central in the opening game of the season.
St. Xavier meanwhile is coming off another rough defeat in the annual rivalry game to Trinity, and the Tigers have two losses on the season, including a 31-10 defeat at Bowling Green.
“We’ve got a great chance,” said Motley, who has remained on the Crimsons staff as an assistant coach and defensive backs coach. “The kids are as confident as they’ve ever been going into that game. They think there’s no reason we can’t beat them. They want to get it done. I don’t believe in a curse. If we go out and we’re the more physical team and we protect the ball, we’ll look up at the scoreboard at the end of the game and be on the positive end. Things haven’t changed much since those years. We’re still going to try and dominate physically.”
“Manual wins 17-3, ends St. X win streak at 12,” from the Sept. 11, 1993, edition of The Courier-Journal.
“Manual wins 17-3, ends St. X win streak at 12,” from the Sept. 11, 1993, edition of The Courier-Journal.