By James Andersen
At noon on Saturday, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags football Assistant Coach David Battle, a decorated former Marine, will assemble the team in the end zone of Zinda Field to pump the players up for one of the most unusual traditions in all of college football – the Stag Walk. Led by head coach Kyle Sweeney and its Captains and trailed by parents, families and fans, the team will march in full uniform and pads through the Claremont McKenna campus, past dorms, classrooms, the dining hall and cheering classmates before crossing Sixth Street and entering Merritt Field, the stadium of their fellow Claremont Consortium scholars and archrival Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens, to go to war for a conference championship and a bid to the NCAA Division III football national championship.
There are many well-known, storied rivalries in college football: USC/UCLA, Ohio State/Michigan and Alabama/Auburn to name a few. There are a few notable ones among high academic schools where the players aren't auditioning for careers on the gridiron. This year's Ivy League title will likely be decided next weekend when undefeated Princeton travels to New Haven to take on Yale, for example. At the Division III level, where the players are talented but generally not quite as fast or as big as those playing Division I, academics come first, and games are played for the love of it, and for pride. Williams and Amherst have met 135 times on the gridiron in what is referred to as the Biggest Little Game in America. But there is nothing anywhere in college football quite like the rivalry between the Sagehens of Pomona-Pitzer (PP) and the Stags of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS).
To understand why this game is different from all others, it's important to know some history. The Claremont Consortium, comprising five undergraduate institutions, Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, Pitzer College, Pomona College and all-female Scripps College, and two graduate schools, is an academic powerhouse. Each of the five "Cs", as they are known, is among the most selective liberal arts colleges in America, with minuscule acceptance rates and students who were all academic stars in high school. The schools are overflowing with intellect and talent in all sorts of disciplines. The campuses are contiguous, the main library is shared, cross-registration for classes is common, students eat in each others' dining halls and there are many Consortium-wide social events. So while each college has its own distinct character they are related like siblings in an unruly family.
Claremont McKenna College was founded in 1946 and competed in athletics alongside Pomona College as Pomona-Claremont, winning four SCIAC football championships as a combined team until 1958 when Claremont established its own athletics program. The addition to the Consortium of Harvey Mudd, Pitzer and Scripps led to today's two team PP/CMS configuration, the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens and the Stags (Athenas for women) of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, each with their own athletic facilities and traditions competing against each other in the Southern California Interscholastic Athletic Conference (SCIAC). As you might imagine, given the history and the unique character of the Consortium, the rivalry between the two programs is intense.
The football rivals always meet on the last game of the SCIAC conference season, with CMS holding a 37-28 advantage, although the Sixth Street Trophy, which is awarded to the victor of each season's contest, currently resides on the Pomona campus. The trophy is a reminder of just how close these schools are to each other since the rivals' stadiums are on opposite sides of Sixth Street in Claremont just a few hundred yards apart.
CMS (7-1 overall and 5-0 in SCIAC play) and PP (7-2, 4-1) are the top two teams in the conference. With Saturday's 42-0 drubbing of last year's champion Redlands, the Stags clinched at least a tie for the conference championship, their first since 2018. A victory on Saturday for Pomona would grant them a share of their first ever football championship in the current split team configuration.
CMS leads the league offensively scoring 39 points per game with PP a close second with 36.4. Defensively CMS far outclasses the league, surrendering a measly 4.4 points per game, but PP has a stout defense as well and is second in the SCIAC at 17.4 points per game. CMS enters the game with incredible momentum having outscored their conference opponents 195-22. On paper, CMS should be the favorite, but when these two teams meet in person, that will all be meaningless.
Even in a truly special rivalry, Saturday's contest will be exceptional since it will be the first time these teams have ever played a game with a conference championship on the line and with the added incentive that the winner will earn an automatic bid to the Division III National Championship tournament.
Saturday's Stag Walk will be an unforgettable event for anyone who participates in it or cheers the players as they march to battle. Regardless of which team eventually hoists the Sixth Street trophy Saturday afternoon, this will be the most memorable game of the season for both teams, full of special meaning only fully appreciated by those within the Consortium. When the final whistle blows one team will turn its sights to another week of preparation and practice for the NCAA tournament. But on Sunday the players on both teams will be back to what they're really experts at tackling: papers, problem sets and labs.
In the future you will likely know many of the names of these Sagehens and Stags, not as NFL celebrities, but as the leaders of government, business, engineering, medicine, science and the arts they are destined to become.
