Traditions & rivalries / Taft Day · November 2019
Hotchkiss Tied Taft at Home and Won in Massachusetts
Taft Day 2019 ended 6-6 in Lakeville. The deciding points were earned in another state by a JV cross-country team finishing fourth.
Every November, Hotchkiss in Lakeville, Connecticut, plays Taft, and the student paper describes the run-up: the main hallway covered in psych cards, posters and streamers, a pep rally, a bonfire, and on the day, the Blue Mob gathering in Main Circle with cowbells and blue paint. The rivalry began about 40 years ago, after Hotchkiss became coed.
On November 9, 2019, the teams played in Lakeville. Field hockey swept all three games. Girls' varsity soccer scored in the last five minutes to win 2-1. Football went last. Hotchkiss led 20-19 midway through the fourth quarter, and Taft scored a late touchdown to win 25-20.
That left the day tied on campus, 6-6.
If you had driven up for the day and left after the football, you would have gone home with a tie, a scarf and a story about the fourth quarter. You would also be wrong.
The cross-country teams were not in Lakeville. They were at Northfield Mount Hermon, in Massachusetts, racing in the New England championships, and their places against Taft counted. The boys' varsity finished fourth to Taft's eighth. The boys' JV finished eighth, one place ahead of Taft. Taft's girls' varsity edged Hotchkiss by a single place. And the girls' JV finished fourth, two places ahead of Taft.
Final score: Hotchkiss 9, Taft 7. The school's own recap gave the deciding credit to the girls' JV.
Fourth place. JV. In another state. Nobody watching football saw it happen.
The head of school then announced a holiday for Wednesday, November 13, in honor of winning Taft Day "with class and grace." The same announcement reported another result. In the Hotchkiss-Taft Challenge, young alumni from the classes of 2006 to 2019 compete to get the highest share of their classmates to donate. Taft won that one, 19 percent to 16.
So: tied at home, won away, lost in fundraising, one holiday.
Every family I know has a scoring system this complicated. Ours is for Monopoly, and it has an appendix. The middle one wins on property. The eldest wins on cash. The youngest, who goes to bed before it ends, claims a win on "being nicest," and under the appendix this counts, because my wife wrote the appendix.
I have never won. I have, however, been declared a holiday once, when I went to bed early.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Hotchkiss: Taft Day Recap—Tied in Lakeville, Won at NMH hotchkiss.org
- Hotchkiss: Holiday Called for Taft Day Victory hotchkiss.org
- The Hotchkiss Record: The Importance of Bleeding Blue hotchkissrecord.org
- Taft: Taftisms and Traditions taftschool.org