It’s a rivalry that spans through time. But for the generations
of Hollister High and Gilroy High football players, the memories
never die.
Hollister – It’s a rivalry that spans through time. But for the generations of Hollister High and Gilroy High football players, the memories never die.
There have been scores of fathers and sons, uncles and nephews even grandfathers and grandsons who put on the red or blue jerseys for more than 80 years for an annual game that has become known as the Prune Bowl. Each year one of the two teams take home the Prune Bowl trophy engraved with the winner’s name.
“It was two small agricultural towns playing for pride,” said Bill Johnson, who coached with the Balers from 1982-90 and played 1965-69. “The talent is much better now. Football was not nearly as sophisticated back then.”
The early Prune Bowl days
In the early days of the meeting, 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, who had won 32 games up to that point.
In that game, Gilroy dominated, winning 26-0.
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 at the time. “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.”
With both communities having under 10,000 people at the time, the yearly event always packed the stadiums. Sometimes as many as 5,000 people filled the overflowing stands.
“It was the game,” said former Haybaler linebacker Greg Renz, who graduated in 1968. “Back when I played, we didn’t have a very good team. But if you were victorious in the Prune Bowl, you had a good season regardless of what the rest of the season was like.”
The Prune Bowl earned its name because of the many prune processing plants in the area. Many of the original orchards are left. But before Hollister and Gilroy started to grow, they were everywhere.
“A lot of times they would delay school sometimes back to the third week of September if the crop was late,” Renz said. “I remember when the prune dehydrators got going. It was a really neat smell.”
The only time since 1920 when the teams failed to play each other in the Prune Bowl was in 1967 when Gilroy and Live Oak moved up to play in the Santa Teresa Athletic League.
But the rivalry resumed the following year when the teams scheduled a non-league game. The Gilroy/Hollister rivalry is generally regarded as one of the top three rivalries in California.
“There’s nothing like this rivalry,” said Craig Martin, longtime special teams’ coach at Gilroy. “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.”
Ancient History
Many of those who participated in the games’ history will be familiar to locals. Stadiums and gyms bear their names. The storied rivalry first began as a part of the Armistice Day celebration between the two cities.
In one game in 1937 played on Thanksgiving, Hollister’s 11 took on Gilroy, in Gilroy, which earned the nickname of “Prune City”. Hollister continued its streak over Gilroy with a 14-0 victory.
In 1935, in the game played in Gilroy, Hollister, behind coach Andy Hardin, won 32-0. In 1956, Bob Mattson’s Haybalers completed an undefeated season with a 13-0 victory over Ami Leso’s Mustangs. Gilroy had won the previous two matchups.
Modern History
Modern heroes with big-time sports names got their start in the Prune Bowl. A young kid by the name of Jeff Garcia, who later went on to become the San Francisco 49ers quarterback and now the Cleveland Browns quarterback, headed the Mustang team in 1986, which was the only tie during the last 50 years.
He threw two touchdowns to rally his team to a 14-14 tie. But Hollister escaped without a loss when Tracy Day, who went on to play at University of the Pacific on a scholarship, had his field goal blocked by Frank Perez, the current Hollister JV coach.
Hollister went on to win its third consecutive Central Coast Section title that year.
Rich Hammond, current head coach at Santa Clara High and offensive line coach and co-defensive coordinator at GHS last year, coached at Hollister from 99-02. He was an all-league safety at Hollister and played in the Prune Bowl from 1994-96.
Last year when Hammond was coaching with Gilroy High, Brian Baxter, a former teammate of his approached him and gave him an 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 that 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. 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 Hollister freshmen football and baseball teams and was an assistant football coach in 1993.
He admitted that after the game in 1993 when Gilroy won, he felt a little awkward.
“At the end of the game, all the Gilroy fans in the stands were chanting, ‘Yaaaafai.’ They were taunting me, ‘Yaaaaafai.'”
In Yafai’s senior year in 1985, Hollister finished 13-1 and Gilroy finished 11-2 and lost in semis. Hollister was Division 2 champions that year. One of Yafai’s best buddies was Hollister quarterback Kip Ward, who later became his frat brother.
“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 against each,” said Cameron, who has won eight of the 10 games against Gilroy he has coached. “Every year is a new year. So you can’t go by past history.”
