Terry Locke
Affiliation: director of communications, Chandler Unified School District.
Interview date: March 31, 2016.
FA: I’m with Terry Locke, who is in charge of communications with the Chandler Unified School District. What has your experience been like with handling the rivalry, and how does it differ from most of the events the district is involved with?
TL: The Chandler-Hamilton football game is one of those events where athletics transcends the actual game on the field. It becomes about school pride, community pride. People that don’t even go to a game all year get into this game. Athletics transcends the actual game, and this case is the best example of it. Our community is buzzing for a week or two [for the game]. It begins at the beginning of the season when every looks at what week the game is. We had a couple years where it was in the middle of the fall break, which was kind of unfortunate and out of our control, but the first thing is, ‘When is the game?’ and traditionally it was the final game of the year. That’s when the excitement begins to build. Both of the teams traditionally have great seasons that build it up and it just reaches a climax as we get into the actual game.
FA: Both teams have been traditionally towards the top of whatever the top division of the state is. How has having two of the top programs in the state competing in the same district improved the rivalry, and how has it impacted the district as a whole?
TL: It’s a great source of pride. It’s one of those things where traditionally people tend to root for all kids from [the city of] Chandler to do well whether it’s AP tests and National Merit [Scholarship] winners and so forth. This is the single event where people tend to pick sides, and it’s typically the loyalty of where they went to school or where their kids are going to school. For years this rivalry, although it was hyped, it really couldn’t live up to its hype for many, many years. Hamilton just dominated for over a decade. The first time it came to a real peak I think was in 2006 when the game was nationally televised on ESPNU. The place was crazy. It was at Austin Field. The place was crazy. It was packed. It was probably 90 percent full over an hour before the game. You couldn’t find a place to sit at least 30 minutes before the game. It was just so electric. The whole atmosphere was, but then the game winded up being lopsided and Hamilton won something like 35–14. That was the first real peak, and then things really took off. That national exposure took this to a whole other level. It really wasn’t until 2009, when we finally had a nail biter, that the game would live up to its hype. In 2009, it was notorious that Hamilton, they were behind 20–10 late in the fourth quarter and they rallied for a 24–20 win and scored the winning touchdown with three seconds left after they drove the length of the field. I think it was Travis Dean who threw the winning pass to Kyren Poe at Jerry Loper Field. Brett Hundley was at quarterback for Chandler. That was the first game that really came down to the final seconds where nobody knew who was going to win, and that really elevated things again. And then to follow up again the next year with another nationally televised game in 2010 on ESPN2, now we’ve reached that really high level of competitiveness and excitement in our community and also getting notoriety beyond our community.
FA: What was the process like to get those games on ESPN2 and ESPNU, how did they approach the district, and what we the results as far as national recognition and developing that national profile?
TL: Both of those games were at Austin Field, and [Dave Shapiro] was involved in the nuts and bolts of it. I can tell you that, in terms of exposure, it was terrific. It was very taxing on the Chandler High School staff because when ESPN came in they had to put up their own permanent lights. They arrived days earlier to put up those lights on the west side, or maybe both sides, of the field because they had to have a different level of lighting. Just the amount of work that was involved to get the field ready for that kind of a game and preparing for ESPN and their needs. I was involved to some extent with some research for the staff and statistics and things of that nature. We took pretty much the better part of that week in terms of planning and so forth.
FA: How did having those nationally televised games impact not just the district, but the rise of the two football programs?
TL: I think it was big. If you look at the amount of overtime we had to pay staff to have people there for the game. We’re going to have a big crowd no matter what, national TV or not, but to me from a public relations standpoint I think it was huge. Having that kind of exposure and the fact that you have a national network thing that we’re televising and people in other states would be interested in this game says a lot. I think 2009, in that nail biter when Hamilton rallied, followed by the 2010 game on national TV for the second time is when this really reached a whole different plateau. It was great getting it in 2006, and that one was crazy and the place was packed, but the game just didn’t live up to the hype. I think [the rivalry] has tremendous value to our district.
FA: How has the rivalry continued to grow? Last year, it was a MaxPreps Top 25 Game of the Week and one of the more prominent games nationally.
TL: When the two teams met in the state championship game for the first time in 2014, we knew we’d reached a whole different level. We built in ’06, we built in ’09 and then 2010 with the ESPN2 game, but to have that state championship with both teams in 2014 and going to Glendale with two schools that are three miles apart on Arizona Avenue. We had just reached another plateau. Chandler had finally won the previous year in the regular season but lost in the playoffs on a Monday night on a muddy field at Highland. They got together on the championship level, and for the first time Chandler had won in a playoff game and it was the state championship. I think Chandler High finally felt like, ‘We’re at the same level. Before we were there and knocking at the door.’ For them to win, it was extremely important for the program. Hamilton’s had a number of championships, but Chandler had last won a title in 1949 and had not crossed that barrier. That was a big deal for Chandler High School.
FA: How did the city of Chandler’s growth and the growth of the school district lead to there being a need for another high school?
TL: Up until 1998, there was only one high school in the Chandler Unified School District and that was Chandler High and it served 80 square miles, believe it or not. It was just grades 10–12 back then because they didn’t have the room to have ninth graders. Those kids stayed in the junior high schools until 1998. But if you lived out at Power and Riggs Road out where Litchfield High School is now, Chandler High School was your school. You would get on a bus or have your parents drive you really the length of the district boundaries pretty much. That was all we needed for all those years, and then we started to have a kind of growth as home development continued, primarily in south Chandler. We opened up Hamilton in 1998, starting off with Chandler High School having 12 square miles and Hamilton having 68 square miles because a lot of that area was still undeveloped. Then, as we continued to grow, we opened Basha and basically broke the Hamilton boundaries pretty much in half. We did a little bit of tweaking to include the Shumway and Sanborn areas, which at the beginning were part of Hamilton boundaries and when we opened Basha we took those boundaries to Chandler High so it would be stable. We gave them everything north of Chandler Boulevard, and we probably won’t have to touch their boundaries ever again. That was something Mike Desper, who was the former girls’ basketball coach [at Chandler] and director of secondary education, had the foresight to do. When we had to open Perry High School, the town of Gilbert went into Chandler Unified boundary and we more or less just broke Basha High School in half and made those boundaries Perry and Basha. It was controversial, because people get to where they love their schools and then we’d start grabbing kids when they’re in preschool. Parents would drop their kids off at preschools where they’re ‘Hamilton Husky Pups’ at four years old in preschool, and the same with Basha and so forth. Most of our growth now is in the far southeast corner, which is south Gilbert and also part Queen Creek, so we opened up Casteel High School last summer. It’s actually in the town of Queen Creek, but it’s within our boundary. That area was annexed by the town of Queen Creek years later, and that’s where the growth is now. It’s a whole different ballgame than it was before 1998 when Chandler was the only school in town.
FA: How difficult was it to decide to create Hamilton, especially considering that Chandler had so much history within that region?
TL: It was very difficult. You had so much tradition and so much history at the school. We had a number of parents who really wanted their kids to have the same kind of education they had at Chandler High School. On the flip side, you had people that lived in south Chandler and wanted to go to a new school. They’d think that maybe it was going to be better without knowing. Hamilton’s been fantastic from the start academically, athletically, so it’s a tough one. The difference with high school boundaries and decisions, unlike elementary or junior high, is that at the high school level that’s going to be your alma mater. That’s your final place, so it’s a little more controversial and emotional and difficult for families and staff as well. We thought that it was also important that when we opened up Hamilton in 1998, it does bring an investment in Chandler High School first. They did some renovations in 1996 and 1997 to Old Main and some other things. We didn’t want to have one school that’s all brand-new and bells and whistles and then the old school in town that was lacking. They both opened with equal capabilities, and that’s always been important to us. We want to reinvest in all of our neighborhood schools, so they had to have the same opportunities of the brand-new school opening like we still do with elementary schools this year.
FA: Chandler is known for its history as it nears the century mark as a school, but Hamilton is closely approaching it’s 20th year being open. It’s been almost a whole generation of people who have gone to Hamilton High School.
TL: You’re hitting a good point. We’ll have social events sometimes like a superintendent breakfast where we’ll randomly go across the room and ask people how long they’ve worked for us and a lot of people are saying they’re graduates of [Chandler.] Now we’re starting to get more of the Basha and Hamilton kids and making us all feel older. It seemed like not that long ago that we built both of those schools, and now we have graduates that have gone through college and are working for us now. We’ve even had the discussion to have a kind of a homecoming for staff that worked for us that graduated from one of our high schools. Perry’s now in that mix, too. They’ve been open long enough that we’re getting those kind of graduates, too, that are coming back to work for us. Casteel is now open this year, and they’re going gang busters already, winning everything at the ninth grade level and have brought in a great staff and great coaches. Spencer Stowers has come in and did such a great job at Westwood High School. Basha High School has been ranked in the top 10 in Arizona for every year in their existence, so they’ve been highly competitive. They’re all such solid programs, and the way the divisions are lined up now they’re going to play each other and beat each other. It’s going to make for a lot of great rivalries.
