Not many Illinois High School Association football players get to say they played in a college football stadium. After all, that honor is typically reserved for late playoff rounds and the state finals.
However, athletes that are members of both Mattoon and Charleston High School can say otherwise.
On Friday, the two schools, separated by just 12 miles, will renew their annual Apollo Conference rivalry at O’Brien Field, Eastern’s football stadium.
The Green Wave and the Trojans play in front of thousands of students and community members, putting bragging rights and a trophy on the line every year to play in the Coles County Clash. The game is referred to by some as the county’s own bowl game.
“You know the players, you know the fans, you know the teams, and football is probably a great spectator sport at the high school level, so that’s what has made the rivalry so fun,” Mattoon native and current general manager of WEIU TV and radio Jeff Owens said. “So that’s what has really made the rivalry so fun.”
The rivalry exists in every sport, even though only the annual football game between the two schools is dubbed the Coles County Clash. Across all the sports, Owens said, the two schools are evenly matched.
“If somebody beats a team 100 times out of 100, it’s not a rivalry,” Owens said. “But when it’s an even rivalry in all the different sports from our kids from the middle school up through high school, it makes it fun.”
In football, Mattoon leads the all time series 19-7. The two schools first started playing each other in 1933 and played every year through 1939.
Charleston lost the first five meetings by a combined score of 68-0 before posting an 18-12 win in 1938 and a 6-0 win in 1939.
The two played six times in the 1940s with all of them being won by Mattoon. Charleston only scored seven points in that span, a 13-7 loss, and was shut out in its other five meetings.
After 1949, the Green Wave and Trojans didn’t face each other until 1984. They played for the next four years until 1987, and then didn’t play until Mattoon joined the Apollo Conference in 2012.
The first Coles County Clash happened later that year, a 55-28 win for Charleston. Rob Calhoun, the WEIU-FM production supervisor and a radio commentator of Charleston football on Victory 103.9 since the year 2000, said that game sticks out to him when he thinks about the Clash.
The game had to be delayed because of thunderstorms in the area and didn’t kick off until around nine at night. The game was memorable not only because of it being the first Clash, but because of the dense fog that had rolled in.
It got so hard to see, Calhoun said, that he needed binoculars just to see the other side of the field.
“It was hard to see the opposite sideline from the O’Brien Field press box,” Calhoun said. “When they were scoring touchdowns, they were also shooting off the cannon, so that really made it difficult.”
Calhoun says residents of both Charleston and Mattoon take pride in their respective teams and communities.
“If you can beat Mattoon, or if you’re Mattoon and you can beat Charleston, you’re going to feel like you’re on top of the world,” Calhoun said.
Owens, who was the public address announcer for Mattoon football before the Clash started, has some fond personal memories of the Clash. His youngest son played in three of them for Mattoon, winning his sophomore year and losing his junior and senior year. Owens says it still aggravates his son to this day.
“The atmosphere is incredible on that Friday night,” Owens says. “Under the lights, music pumping, five, or six or, seven thousand, maybe even more people in the stands. Lots of giveaways and stuff going on. It’s fun.”
Charleston (3-1, 0-2) will play Mattoon (1-4, 1-1) in the 12th Coles County Clash this Friday. Kickoff for that game will be at 7 p.m. at O’Brien Field.
Gabe Newman can be reached at 581-2812 or at ghnewman@eiu.edu.
