ReitzFootball.com proudly presents “This Day in #ReitzFootball History,” as we look back through almost 100 years of The Mighty Panthers.
On November 20:
- Overall: 2-2 (4 games)
- At Reitz Bowl (1926, 2009): 1-1
- Away (1941, 2010): 1-1
- On Thursday (1941): 1-0
- On Friday (2009): 1-0
- On Saturday (1926, 2010)
1926: Central 41, Reitz 0 (Tiny Ten Conference game)
“A brown bear skin rug, tinged with a little gold, while an exceedingly desirable possession, is not readily obtained when the Bear is full grown and in a belligerent mood. The Hilltoppers learned this yesterday afternoon at the Reitz bowl. They trotted down into the bowl, it is thought with intentions of skinning the Central Bear alive, so to speak. But their aspirations soon went skyward after 60 minutes of combat, they jogged their way back to the Hilltop stripped of about everything save honor.”
– Evansville Journal, Nov. 21, 1926
1941: Reitz 6, Central 0 (SIAC game on Thanksgiving)
“A frustrated Reitz football club staged a comeback Thursday before 9000 fans at Bosse Field in the annual Thanksgiving Day football jamboree and defeated a favored Central team, 6 to 0, on an 89-yard sprint by Halfback Harold Cox which came in the second quarter of the ball game, played on a muddy field.
The victory, first for Reitz in city play, gave Bosse’s Bulldogs a share of the city as well as the SIAC crown along with their football brethren from Central.”
– Evansville Press, Nov. 21 1941
2009*: Reitz 31, Indianapolis Cathedral 10 (Class 4A Semi-State Championship game)
The rumor was that Cathedral wanted to play Reitz on Friday instead of Saturday so they’d have an extra day to prepare for the state championship. Rumor or not, the Fighting Irish were in for a wake-up call when they entered the Bowl that fateful fall Friday evening to see the Reitz Nation at 12,000 strong. The Panthers could do no wrong and won the semi-state title en route to their eleventh state championship.
Cuda Dimmett, the ReitzFootball.com Defensive Player of the Game, set the tone with an interception on Cathedral’s first possession. “We believed,” Dimmett said in the next day’s Courier & Press. Cathedral was nationally ranked and expected to win easily by the Indianapolis media. “You can’t believe what you read in the newspaper.”
Morgan Jones, the ReitzFootball.com Offensive Player of the Game, caught two touchdown passes.
Incidentally, this was Cathedral’s last postseason loss until this year.
2010: Indianapolis Cathedral 56, Reitz 28 (Class 4A Semi-State Championship game)
This time in Indianapolis, the Fighting Irish gained revenge for the prior year’s defeat.
* – denotes state championship season
