By PHIL DUSENBURY

As a bit of a local high school football historian of little renown, I received some information that gave me one of those “Eureka!” moments. It started with a simple question from Cornwall’s third-year head coach Marcus Hughes, a Colorado native, who wanted to know if this Friday night’s match-up between Cornwall and Newburgh would be the two teams’ first-ever meeting. My personal SNF football files go back only to the late-sixties, but I was still relatively confident in replying that I didn’t think so.

Silly me.

A dozen years ago I had researched and ended up writing a book on the history of Port Jervis football (The Red and Black). Being the radio play-by-play guy for the Red Raiders at the time, I was shocked to discover that no folks I talked to in football-crazy Port Jervis knew much about the program’s storied history except for the years they may have participated as players, coaches and/or cheered as fans.

My radio predecessor, Ralph Zelno (with help from the late Middletown football coach-historian John Nania) had done a radio pregame show for the Erie Bell battle one year and kindly turned over to me some of his notes and interview tapes with former players. The documents pointed to 1897 as the birth of PJ football, and my research through tons of microfilmed newspapers started in earnest. I had also discovered George St. Lawrence’s book on Warwick football history at about the same time.

Now back to Cornwall-NFA. For Newburgh, Port Jervis, Kingston, Middletown and Poughkeepsie league play began in 1923 with the birth of the DUSO (Dutchess - Ulster - Sullivan - Orange) league. Eventually, the Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association was introduced its "Village High School League" for the smaller schools with 11-man teams. The original league members were Highland Falls, Warwick, Goshen, Monroe-Woodbury, Walden - and Cornwall. The big DUSO teams never played the smaller OCIAA teams. In 1953 the Village League became the Orange County League (OCL).

After the 1970 season, the DUSO closed. Port joined the OCL in 1970 while Middletown followed suit in 1973 after playing as an independent. Arch-rivals Newburgh and Kingston eventually crossed the Hudson to play in the Dutchess County League. In 1987 with state play on the horizon, Newburgh and Kingston came home and found themselves in the American Conference (large school) of the OCL with Cornwall in the National (small school) Conference.

Cornwall and Newburgh never met in OCL play which led me to believe that they had never played at all. Well, that may be true of the “modern era,” but former NFA coach C.T. Chatham forwarded me this information from Newburgh A. D. Chris Townsend:

“One final historical note regarding NFA Football. According to Richard Durbin's book, The Encyclopedia of Newburgh Free Academy Football, the game this Friday night against Cornwall will be the first time these two teams have played each other since 1920 which by the way NFA won, 35-12.

“In Richard Durbin's book, the first game between NFA and the Cornwall-on-Hudson Union School was played on November 27, 1896 (yes, 1896). The game was played on E.A. Matthiessen's property and according to the ‘Newburgh Daily Journal,’ it ‘was a well contested game and a scientific one.’ Durbin's book also carries the following account of that game:

Bingo! More SNF history has been filled in. Meanwhile the 1896 showdown now adds to our record book and the state’s for the oldest rivalry. Goshen and Warwick had also first played in 1896. Both games were played on November 27^th, Thanksgiving morning no doubt.   Incidentally, both Newburgh and Cornwall played Port Jervis (and possibly Middletown) for the first time in 1905.

So Coach Hughes, there’s your answer. Newburgh and Cornwall have played each other before, but it’s been a mighty long time since the neighbors have met on the gridiron.

As for my “eureka” moment, I again realized that there must be thousands of bites of local football histories still out there to be garnered. Many of the treasures are scotch-taped in old scrapbooks. And almost all of the information can be found in small libraries which house microfilms of old local newspapers, both dailies and weeklies. All we need are a few committed local high school football historians who would love to uncover the heritage of our beloved SNF. Otherwise years of memories will be lost as generations pass on.