The Ashland-Boyd County football rivalry has lost its mojo.

What was once the most anticipated area high school football game of the season has mostly turned into a yawner.

The reason being Ashland’s total domination of the series for the past 20 seasons.

Not since Boyd County won three games in a row from 1986 to 1988 has there been much fire.

The Tomcats are 18-3 since then and many of those games have been one-sided.

Boyd County hasn’t won in the series since 2003 when the Lions defeated Ashland 34-14 in coach Leon Hart’s first taste of the rivalry. Two weeks later that same season, the Tomcats exacted revenge in the playoffs, winning 24-15.

After that first loss in Cannonswburg in ’03, Hart’s Tomcats have won six in a row and they’re favored to make it seven consecutive on Friday night.

The rivalry has been going on since 1965 when Ashland recorded a 20-6 victory in the initial game.

But the following season, the Lions pounded Ashland 34-14 and a rivalry was born.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s and even in the 1980s are some of the greatest Ashlasnd-Boyd County games ever played.

Almost without fail, the games from the mid-1970s through the 1980s were some of the biggest because of what was at stake. In most cases, the winner of the Boyd County-Ashland game was advancing on to the playoffs and the loser was starting basketball season.

That’s when the state playoff system took only district champions into the postseason, unlike today when the top four teams from each district advance.

The Ashland-Boyd County game took on larger-than-life status. Everybody was talking the game about it and the crowds would pack the stadiums by the thousands. The interest in the game was paramount to fans from all over.

Tough guy coaches Tom Scott and Herb Conley had some of the greatest Boyd County-Ashland battles.

The Tomcats won 27-0 in 1971 (Herb’s first victory in series) and then again 24-7 in 1972 on the way to the state finals.

Then it was Boyd County’s turn to shine, with Terry Keelin and Rob Chaney leading the way. The Lions won 14-13 in 1973, surviving Hal Kendall’s fumblerooskie play, and went all the way to the state finals before falling.

In 1974, Conley came out in a Wildcat formation before there ever was a Wildcat formation, putting star back Mike Gothard in shotgun formation and running it right at the Lions to start the game.

The gimmick worked for a series, but the Lions, again led by Keelin and Chaney, eventually won 20-8 in Putnam Stadium.

Ashland’s JAWS team demolished Boyd County 43-0 in 1975. At the time, that was the biggest margin in the series. The 43-point margin stood until 1992 when Ashland won 48-0.

Boyd County’s biggest victory was 38-7 in 1986 when the Lions were the top-ranked Class 4A team in the state.

Two years ago, the rivalry got a spark when Ashland edged Boyd County 40-33 in only the second overtime game in series history (the first came in 1989 when Ashland won 18-12). Matt Thomas, you may remember, ran wild in that win for the Tomcats.

But for the most part, a rivalry that once burned red-hot and was the game that everybody looked forward to watching has become a ho-hum affair.

It may become better if or when the teams again are in the same classification. For now, the game is for pride and little else. Adding some playoff ramifications to it would at least increase the importance of winning and losing.

Ashland has won so much in recent years that the rivalry is hardly much of a factor.

Of course, we were saying the same thing about the Ashland-Ironton series until this season.

MARK MAYNARD can be reached at mmaynard@dailyindependent.com.



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