The Pointe of rivalries

I covered my first Grosse Pointe North/Grosse Pointe South football game Sept. 5 at North.

I've been to Brother Rice/Catholic Central games, once in Pontiac and once in Hamtramck. Both of those trips were amazing exploits in preps athletics and seemed more like a Big 10 rivalry than a prep showdown.

I've also covered Macomb Dakota and Clinton Township Chippewa Valley, once in the regular season and once in the playoffs, and I could not get over how large of an event these games were. There were more people at those games than many of the Central Michigan University games I went to in college.

This weekend, though, I experienced something a little different from all the other rivalries I've seen, all the North and South fans were literally sitting next to each other.

I sat in the crowd between North and South fans, and I didn't even get a whiff of animosity.

I know there are probably stories of crowds getting out of hand in the past, all schools have a troublemaker or dark day in their history, but this experience was as much fun as I can ever remember seeing such a large group of rival fans have together.

With both sides sharing the same set of bleachers at North, there wasn't even a whisper of foul tempers in a game that was closely contested for over three quarters before the veteran Norsemen wore down a young Blue Devils squad.

Just as was the case with the vast majority of people at the Rice/CC and Chippewa/Dakota games, the GPN and GPS teams acted with as much class on the field as the fans did off it.

In today's age, where we are led to believe community camaraderie and goodwill toward our neighbors have eroded, it's nice to see parents and youths in a community prove all that wrong for a night and actually enjoy something as simple as a high school football game.