‘It was a blessing’: Frankford and Roman Catholic begin a new Thanksgiving tradition

The last time Frankford and Roman Catholic clashed on the gridiron was 75 years ago, when they played for the 1947 Philadelphia city scholastic title before at least 45,000 at Franklin Field. Gov. James H. Duff and NFL Commissioner Bert Bell were there. Roman won, 40-12, by the way.

The stakes for Thursday’s game between the Pioneers and Cahillites at Frankford Stadium were lower — but not insignificant. This was the first time these two schools played on Thanksgiving, doing their part to keep a fading but cherished local tradition alive.

Not surprisingly, Roman (9-3) beat Frankford (2-10), 34-8, but the outcome was not the point. There was football on Turkey Day in Frankford, and several hundred fans came to ancient Frankford Memorial Stadium for a 9:45 a.m. kickoff to soak in the atmosphere.

“We usually have night games, so it felt good to come out and have some fun,” said Roman senior Jamir Robertson, who scored one touchdown and passed for another.

The Cahillites lost a PIAA Class 5A state playoff game Saturday to Imhotep Charter and would have played their reserves on Thursday had they won. Frankford was a bit of a consolation, but Jamieal Lyons, Roman’s senior defensive end, still was up at 5:30 a.m. Thursday, anyway.

“Thank God we were able to play another game,” said Lyons, who has committed to play at Penn State. “It was great just to be able to put the pads back on.”

With the game between West Philadelphia and Overbrook canceled because four Overbrook students were shot near the school Wednesday, the Roman-Frankford game was one of only eight in the city to be played Thursday.

The Pioneers made Roman work for the victory, scoring the first touchdown on a long pass play and taking an 8-8 tie into halftime. Roman poured it on in the second half, though, and Frankford coach Damon Brockington stopped the game with about two minutes to play.

“I didn’t have any other kids,” Brockington said later, explaining that several players were injured. “You never want to end the game like that, but sometimes that happens.”

Fitting for this day and age, the game came together as the result of a tweet. Roman coach Rick Prete said the Cahillites had been scheduled to play Archbishop Carroll the night before Thanksgiving a year ago, as they had in 2019, but Carroll politely asked out.

So, last Nov. 8, Prete tweeted: “Looking for a game on Thanksgiving Eve. Please contact me if interested.”

Frankford was interested. Thanksgiving morning football games are a standard at Frankford. For 80 years, between 1930 and 2009, the Pioneers played North Catholic on Thanksgiving — sometimes after Thanksgiving if, say, Philadelphia was hit with a snowstorm.

The game between Frankford and nearby North Catholic, which was located a mile and a half away, was sometimes called “The Rowhouse Bowl” because players from both teams probably lived in one. The Frankford-North game was played in 1978 at Veterans Stadium before about 25,000.

That game, the 50th in the series, was such a big deal that the Eagles, coached by Dick Vermeil, announced they would practice that day at Franklin Field. JFK Stadium, which had natural turf, was made off-limits because the Army-Navy Game was to be played there on Dec. 2.

“It’s probably the only traditional scholastic game in the East that keeps getting better with age,” Don McKee wrote in The Inquirer on Nov. 19, 1978.

But North Catholic, which in 1953 had more than 4,700 students and was the largest Catholic high school for boys in the world, closed in June 2010 because enrollment had dwindled to 551 students. Frankford, wanting to keep the tradition alive, looked for another foe.

“Certain traditions, or certain things we do as a school, are very important,” said Ben Dubin, the athletic director at Frankford.

Frankford officials had informal talks with Roman in 2010: “Though the granddaddy of the city’s Public-Catholic Thanksgiving football rivalries is now deceased, a beautiful baby might take its place,” Ted Silary wrote in the Daily News. But nothing could be arranged that year.

So the Pioneers played Samuel Fels from 2011 to 2013; Prep Charter in 2014 and 2015; Conwell-Egan in 2016; Boys’ Latin Charter from 2017 to 2019, and Cheltenham last year. There were also a couple of flag football games between Frankford and North alumni.

Meanwhile, Roman’s Thanksgiving Day football rivalry against Roxborough High School, which dated to 1972, sort of creaked to an end in 2018 because it was no longer competitive. Roman won the last 17 games in the series, with Roxborough’s last victory coming in 1991.

“I’m somewhat old-school. I believe in tradition,” said Prete, who grew up in Norristown. “It’s an opportunity for seniors to truly play their last game. And that [Thanksgiving] tradition goes back to before when I was playing — or anybody here was playing.”

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Prete said he’d heard many Roman alumni thought he was the one who canceled the 2021 game against Carroll, a more competitive opponent than Roxborough, but that was not so. Frankford did fit. Many North Catholic students had transferred to Roman after North closed.

“There’s no one looking forward to, God forbid, the end of the season,” Prete said.

Holding tight to the Frankford-North tradition, kickoff for the Frankford-Roman game was at 9:45 a.m., at least 15 minutes earlier than any other local game. Frankford-North, it was said for years, was the earliest Thanksgiving scholastic football game in the country.

One fan wore his faded red North Catholic hoodie. Another wore a blue T-shirt from a Frankford-North game. Halftime festivities were modest: the Frankford cheerleaders did a dance routine, followed by a performance by the Frankford drumline.

And the Frankford homecoming queen and king, seniors Briseyda McKissick and Angel Hernandez (wearing a crown and his No. 6 football uniform), got to take a lap around the track in an open-top Jeep. McKissick described the scene as “very refreshing.”

“Just being out there cheering with my friend was very comforting,” she said.

After the postgame handshake between the two teams, David Nguyen, a senior center and defensive end for the Pioneers, trudged slowly off the field. It was still a good day: He played football with what he called his “second family” before going home to eat a lot of turkey.

It really made no difference who Frankford played, he said.

“I was happy to take the field with my brothers one more time,” he said. “It was a blessing.”

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