Eleven years. Eleven years is how long it’s been since Cathedral High School played Roncalli High School in regular season football. They haven’t played each other since 2018, in the playoff season where they won 30-10.
The rivalry stems from the usual competition from both being Indianapolis catholic schools. Athletic director Mr. Richard Streiff was asked why hasn’t Cathedral played Roncalli in such a long time and he answered, “A lot of it went to a bad blood between the 2 schools and we had been playing them almost twice a year, so they said it didn’t make sense to play each other, and so for the past 4 years we’ve been trying to find a date and we finally found one.”
Now if you don’t know, the rivalry dates back to the 1900’s which was when familiar teachers like Mr. Nick Jamell, Mr. John O’Hara, and Mrs. Karrie Quenichet attended the schools. There is one teacher in particular that has a very known hatred for Roncalli, Religion teacher Mr. Matt Cannaday. He graduated from Roncalli in 2009 and is very familiar with the rivalry. When asked what the rivalry means to him he said, “When my dad asked me what happens if the only person that wants to hire you is cathedral and I said I would rather go homeless than teach at cathedral, and then when I taught at Roncalli and they didn’t want to me to teach again Cathedral took a chance on me and now I can’t imagine my life without being apart of the Cathedral family.”
He even went on to say, “Beating Chatard is like getting the nicest steak at Texas Roadhouse, but beating Roncalli is like getting the best steak at St. Elmos.”
Another Roncalli graduate who now teaches here is Religion teacher Mrs. Karrie Quienchet. She used one word to describe the rivalry between Cathedral and Roncalli and that was contentious.
She wasn’t the only one that had a single word to sum up what this game meant to them, William Neale the senior class president and football captain said “It will be historic.” Senior Danny O’Neil said, “It is going to be a dogfight.”
Even math teacher Mrs. Lisa Ford, added, “This game is going to be gigantic.” Some teachers even have personal connections with the football team such as, AP psychology teacher Mr. John O’Hara. His most memorable memory from playing Roncalli was, “When we played them my senior year of highschool and we won in overtime in the playoffs.”
There is a lot of excitement over the upcoming game with anticipation of who will come out with the victory.
