By Nathan Mixter and Brett Edgerton – Sports Writers
It’s a rivalry that seems as old as time. But for generations of
Hollister and Gilroy high football players, the memories never
die.
There have been scores of fathers and sons, uncles and nephews,
and even grandfathers and grandsons who put on the Haybaler red or
Mustang blue jerseys for more than 80 years for an annual game that
has become known as the Prune Bowl.
By Nathan Mixter and Brett Edgerton – Sports Writers
It’s a rivalry that seems as old as time. But for generations of Hollister and Gilroy high football players, the memories never die.
There have been scores of fathers and sons, uncles and nephews, and even grandfathers and grandsons who put on the Haybaler red or Mustang blue jerseys for more than 80 years for an annual game that has become known as the Prune Bowl.
Each year for the past several decades, though no one knows exactly how long, the victors claimed a coveted VFW trophy engraved with the name of the winning team and the score.
“It was two small agricultural towns playing for pride,” said Bill Johnson, who coached Hollister from 1982-90 and played from 1965-69. “The talent is much better now. Football was not nearly as sophisticated back then.”
The Gilroy-Hollister rivalry is generally regarded as one of the top three longest-running high school football rivalries in California.
“There’s nothing like this rivalry,” longtime Gilroy special teams coach Craig Martin said. “The kids don’t quite grasp that yet, but they will. They understand that in this town, this is a huge rivalry. The old-timers in town eat and breathe this game. We’ll see the guys who might not come to any game all year, they’ll come to this game.”
The early Prune Bowl days
In the early days of the rivalry, the game between the two teams was always referred to as the “Big Game.” But it wasn’t until 1954 that Gilroy won its first game over Hollister, which had won 32 straight games up to that point.
Before the game, the Gilroy Dispatch predicted in an editorial that a Baler loss would take the rivalry out of the meeting and make it just another game. Boy, were they wrong.
Gilroy native and former Gavilan College coach Bobby Garcia remembers the excitement that echoed throughout Gilroy after the win.
“Gilroy couldn’t ever beat Hollister,” said Garcia, who was in eighth grade when Gilroy High finally pulled off a victory. “And that was a great Hollister team. So people here were going crazy the day they won.”
The rivalry was usually a clean one, although there were the traditional high school antics, Garcia said.
“When we played that game, both towns closed down,” Garcia said. “It was a big rivalry. We hated the Haybalers. They hated the Mustangs. We’d burned G’s on their lawns. They would burn H’s on ours. Trophies would be stolen and stuff. It was good, clean fun, though. Just a lot of G’s and H’s.”
Garcia had a brother-in-law who played for Hollister and one who played for Gilroy.
“We used to get together and talk about it a lot,” Garcia said. “There’s always been a lot of bragging rights.
“Great memories. Great guys. I became good friends with a lot of the guys from Hollister and am still friends with them today.”
With both communities’ populations less than 10,000 at the time, the yearly event always packed the stadiums. Sometimes as many as 5,000 people filled the overflowing stands.
Haybaler linebacker Greg Renz, whose dad and son both also played for Hollister, remembers playing in Gilroy at what is now South Valley Middle School during the 1966 game.
“When the train came through, it kind of drowned out the PA system,” Renz said. “So you had to wait for the train to pass before you knew what down it was.”
Garcia, who played for Gilroy in the ’57 and ’58 games, remembers beating Hollister 34-6 as a senior after losing to them 7-6 his junior year.
During that time, Gilroy home games were played at the Gymkhana Fairgrounds.
“I can still see the people sitting on the chutes, and the bulls and broncos and everything,” Garcia said. “The stands were always full for that game. An unbelievable crowd. You should’ve seen the townspeople. I could hear people betting in the stands.”
The only time since 1920 when the teams failed to play each other was in 1967 when Gilroy and Live Oak began playing in the Santa Teresa Athletic League.
But the rivalry resumed the following year when the teams scheduled a non-league game.
Modern History
The only tie during the last 50 years was in 1986. A young kid by the name of Jeff Garcia, who later went on to play quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers and the Cleveland Browns, threw two touchdowns to rally Gilroy to a 14-14 tie. Hollister would go on to win its third consecutive Central Coast Section title that year.
Former Hollister and Gilroy assistant coach Rich Hammond, the current head coach at Santa Clara High, was an all-league safety at Hollister and played in the Prune Bowl from 1994-96.
Last season, a former teammate of Hammond’s, Brian Baxter, approached him and gave him a rivalry-inspired ultimatum.
“I’m standing there before the game and one of my very best friends from high school, who hadn’t talked to me since I got (the Gilroy) job, shows up with a noose and says, ‘Hammond! Do you wanna hang yourself or should I hang you?” Hammond said. “To this day, his dad still calls me a traitor. They didn’t call me until I got the job somewhere else.”
But the rivalry is a unique one that is seldom duplicated, Hammond said.
“I think it means so much to both communities, because they’re so similar, they’re the same place,” he said. “And because of that, they play a football game and it means so much to both sides.
“It’s a piece of Americana that you don’t get everywhere. I coach at Santa Clara and there’s not a game like that for us.”
Gilroy coach Darren Yafai, who got his first full-time teaching job in Hollister, coached the Baler freshmen football and baseball teams, and was an assistant varsity football coach in 1993.
In Yafai’s senior year in 1985, Hollister finished 13-1 and Gilroy finished 11-2, with both making the section playoffs. Hollister went on to win the CCS Division II championship that year.
One of Yafai’s best buddies was Hollister quarterback Kip Ward, who later became his frat brother in college.
“We beat them 50-28 here at Mustang Stadium. We wanted that trophy. We were fired up. I’ll never forget it,” Yafai said.
So who will come away with their names engraved on the trophy this year? Only time will tell.
“The two teams always get fired up,” said Cameron, who has won eight of the 10 games against Gilroy that he has coached. “Every year is a new year. So you can’t go by past history.”
