The Worldwide Leader
The Chandler-Hamilton rivalry was taken to a different level once it got the endorsement of ESPN.
While Chandler-Hamilton was tearing up the Arizona high school sports scene, it didn’t take long for the national media to take notice.
Part of this was obvious, due to the progress of the team at 3700 S. Arizona Avenue. After all, Hamilton was no stranger to the big stage in their short time as a high school football program, making it to their first state championship game in just their third varsity season at the 5A level and winning their first title two seasons later.
So as Hamilton’s program continued to evolve into one of the best to ever hit the state, the rivalry between them and the traditional Chandler High School natural grew with it. In many ways, it just was waiting for national approval.
That’s when ESPN, along with all the glitz and glam that comes with it, came calling.
“The first time it came to a real peak I think was in 2006 when the game was nationally televised on ESPNU,” Chandler Unified School District public relations director Terry Locke said. “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.”
With the game being set at Austin Field, that meant the onus was on then-Chandler athletic director Dave Shapiro.
“I think it was probably the rivalry series through Under Armour, so they approached the football coaches and then they came to us as administration,” Shapiro said. “Obviously we had to talk to the district to make sure they were fine with it. They did a great job with getting everything set up.”
Added Locke: “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.”
The display drew admiration from all, including Chandler coach Jim Ewan as he saw the job ESPN had done for the first time.
“Obviously, being on ESPN and Fox nationally and one year ESPN brought in portable lights,” he recalled. “When they fired them up, it was unbelievable. That part was neat.”
It was the first rivalry game Steve Belles was a part of as Hamilton’s head coach, instantly setting the tone of the rivalry for him.
“Well my first year here, it was kind of unique,” Belles recalled. “Like I said, I knew about it, but coaching my own program at the time, I never knew the magnitude of it until you’re actually in it. That game was on ESPN2 I think, my first year in 2006 when Jim Ewan was the coach at Chandler. I think it might have been 14,000 people, started at a 6 o’clock start time on a Friday night and that atmosphere was unbelievable at Chandler that night. We somehow came out on top, and it was kind of weird.”
The game instantly elevated the status of both programs, reaffirming the rivalry’s place in the state.
“It’s been pretty damn big,” Shapiro said. “I know that for me it was an awful lot of work, but well worth it. Any time you’re on TV, that’s another feather in the hat. It brings [the rivalry] to a bigger stage. I mean, you were at some of those games. We had to shut down the gates and tell the people to go to a bar and find the game on TV. A lot of people were just, ‘Wow, this game is on TV. It’s got to be good.’ All of a sudden, we’re pulling in professional athletes coming to the game: Larry Fitzgerald, Robert Tate. There’s even a funny story of a security person keeping Larry Fitzgerald off our sideline during the game and [principal] Terry Williams going out and asking me to go get him back on. You start getting all these people, like Tim Hightower who came to a whole bunch of our home games one year. Aaron Boone came to a couple of our games because I remember that [Jim] Culver is a big Red Sox fan and couldn’t stand that Aaron was on our sideline because that was the year he hit the home run in [Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS]. When you can start getting that kind of people to come to the games and stuff like that, it adds more to the excitement.”
The results were staggering, with them being good enough that the ESPNU game in 2006 sparked a return game on ESPN2 for the 2010 version of the game.
The continued tradition of national attention is something that has stood out to current coach Shaun Aguano, who was the offensive coordinator for both of those games.
“That is probably one of the best rivalries [in the country],” Aguano said. “ESPN and FOX and those guys keep on coming to those games to do it because they’ve never been in an atmosphere like that. It’s incredible.”
Chandler-Hamilton has now firmly entrenched itself as one of the nation’s best rivalry, earning U.S. Army “Great American Rivalry Series” honors during the 2015 season. Now, it’s about getting bigger and better.
“Because people have confidently called it the best rivalry in the state, and I think that because it was featured on MaxPreps as a top-25 game a few times, because it was on ESPN, you have kids who are eight, nine, 10 years old who are hearing their older brothers and their parents talk about Chandler-Hamilton being the best rivalry in the state,” Amsden said. “That type of branding for the game, that gets in kids heads regardless of whether or not it is the best rivalry, and there are some really good ones out there that I’ve been to recently.
“A lot of people say that when ESPN endorsed it, but I think that feeling was always there. It was always there for the people who went there because the first year, Hamilton had no seniors so Chandler couldn’t play them. There was a two-year wait for Chandler to be able to play them, so the anticipation that was built into that first game set it up to be a great rivalry from the get-go. It was probably always that way, and then when Chandler just got smacked that’s just when they started a 364-day countdown for until they get a chance to redeem themselves. It didn’t matter how many times they lost or if we’re just talking about football, I think because Hamilton didn’t have seniors and had to wait two years and a lot of those people started out at the same school, it was special immediately.”
