In September 1980, a few hours after my parents had said their last goodbyes and turned the car back toward Cleveland, I met Nancy Halbin.
Her room was around the corner from mine on the 4th floor of Willard Hall, a college dormitory in suburban Chicago. I had been led to her door by my freshman roommate, a social leader who already seemed to know the vitals of everyone on the floor. “You’ve got to meet her,” I recall him saying. “She’s from Shaker Heights.”
He introduced us, making sure to tell Nancy I had graduated from Heights High. She looked at me with a twinkle and said, “Heights bites.”
I smiled back: “Shaker sucks.”
We became good dormitory friends – though we haven’t kept up over the years. But ever since, I’ve enjoyed the surety of the response when either phrase is uttered to the right person.
No rivalry was ever so much fun as that Heights bites/Shaker sucks chant that went on at so many games and matches of my high school career. I could be wrong, but I don’t remember it carrying any of the menace of other rivalries. (Even in my day, Shaw games were staffed up with extra police and always scheduled during daylight hours.)
The Steelers/Browns rivalry may be legendary – like the Yankees/Red Sox. But I marched in the band to support the Heights Tigers. When you sit in freezing rain, playing Tiger Rag as your team drops another one to the Shaker Red Raiders, it takes on more meaning.
***
It was another 10 years before I found myself living back in Cleveland full-time. By then I had graduated, held a few jobs and all but forgot the Shaker rivalry. Until I had kids and they started playing sports.
As my daughters went through their high school years playing field hockey and lacrosse, Shaker games were often highlights even though the teams were generally mismatched (Shaker would kill us in field hockey; we’d return the favor in lacrosse).
Even at the age of 10, playing in the local soccer league, my son confirmed that the biggest games were always against Shaker. They tended to be rougher than those against Solon or Orange and somehow more important. It always felt like a little bit of blood was involved.
But there’s no question the rivalry lost some of its luster. Shaker schools managed to maintain their great reputation while the Heights system wallowed in the ’90s. Shaker managed to hang in there with the haves, while Heights seemed like it was headed the other direction. For awhile, morale throughout the district seemed to be so low that the high school couldn’t even be bothered to field competitive teams. It’s hard to maintain energy for such a rivalry under such conditions.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that has changed. In scholastic sports, as well as academics, Cleveland Heights is making a comeback. Highly ranked football and boys basketball teams have made headlines recently. But other teams – like girls basketball – are doing well too. I know offhand that hockey, girls lacrosse, boys baseball, and both soccer teams have made playoffs in the past year. I’m sure I’m overlooking some, and I know other teams – like girls softball – are now building records of success after years of futility.
But the Lake Erie League has changed too. Natural rivals from my era – like Lakewood, Brush, Normandy and Valley Forge all left to play in the large Northeast Ohio Conference along with Twinsburg, Solon and Hudson to name a few.
I don’t pretend to know the politics of Ohio’s high school athletic alignments, but the conferences seem to develop rosters of similar schools. Today the LEL has a lot of teams in school districts that are at the lower end of the demographic scale: East Cleveland, Maple Heights, Bedford, Euclid, Lorain, Warrensville Heights – Cleveland Heights.
Mentor – wealthy and growing – left the LEL after last year. It joined the Northeast Ohio Conference. (Lakewood is leaving NOC after this year, while Normandy left last year.)
Shaker Heights will leave the LEL after this season, as it follows Mentor to the NOC. It’s disappointing.
***
Yesterday afternoon, the Cleveland Heights boys basketball team won a 25-point victory over Shaker Heights. It was a big deal with state-tournament implications; Shaker leads the LEL standings and was ranked No. 2 in The Plain Dealer Top 25. The Tigers were No. 4 in the same rankings while trailing Shaker in the league.
As a result of the victory, Heights will likely win a better slot in the regional tournament than Shaker – final LEL standings notwithstanding.
But more important, this is the last, biggest meeting between Shaker and Heights in a marquis sport as LEL rivals. It may not mean as much to kids at Heights or Shaker today as it does to those of us who graduated 20, 30 or 40 years ago.
For us, depending on where you went to school, Heights will always bite and Shaker will always suck.
But look who got in the last word.
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