The Hamilton-Middleville football rivalry has been going on for 63 long years and won’t stop anytime soon.
By: Walter Jager
Hamilton has played against Middleville in football for 54 out of 64 years of the Hamilton team, and since Hamilton’s second season when they first met, the rivalry has been growing in popularity even after many hiccups and many losses. Hamilton has proved themselves as a real rival against Middleville in recent years. Although most of these games have been losses, most of these games have been close, nail-biter games that you never want to miss, no matter the outcome.
In 1962, Hamilton had their first season of football. Only having three games, but the following football season, Middleville and Hamilton had their first game. That game was the start of a 63-year rivalry, only broken in 2004, 2008-2011, and 2017-2020. Hamilton’s first win against Middleville was in 1970; the score was 22 to 0. Since then, Hamilton has lost 35 games and won 16 games against Middleville.
The Hamilton-Middleville game in the 1994 football season ended an almost ten-year losing streak for Hamilton with a score of 63 to 14, this was an anomaly of a game. Mr. Joostberns, the football announcer for decades and former social studies teacher, stated, “Everything that probably could go best for Hamilton went good for Hamilton, everything that could go bad for Middleville went bad for Middleville.” This game proved to Middleville that we can stand up to them and won’t back down; this game was a huge turning point in our rivalry with Middleville.
Many students, staff, and community members believe that our original rival was Holland Christian, but that rivalry has only emerged recently due to being moved to a different conference than Middleville and into one with Holland Christian. Despite numerous conference realignments, Hamilton has played against Middleville more than twice as many times as our 3rd most played team, Caledonia, to this day. Alumni of Hamilton High School know that Middleville still stands out as our prominent rival.
