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It’s Lions vs. Mohawks Friday for first time since 1930

Clear Lakers love their history-- and their football, so this Friday is a special night.  

For the first time since 1930, the Clear Lake Lions will take on the Mason City Mohawks on the football field.  It will be the season opener for the Lions; Mason City lost to Ames in their first game played last week.  The game will be played in Mason City, with kickoff at 7:30 p.m.

A look back in the archives of the Clear Lake Mirror and Clear Lake Reporter provides an interesting perspective to the matchup.

The first game between the two Cerro Gordo County teams took place in 1925.  That’s when Mason City’s “second team” posted a 13-7 win over the Lions.  However, the game was not without dispute, as a small article on the front page of the Clear Lake Reporter details:

“We are informed that two of the Mason City players were from the first Mason City team, and hence were not eligible as playes.  Also, that the coach was not a teacher and was thus not eligible.  This, by the rules of the association, gives Clear Lake the victory, we are informed,” stated the newspaper.

Mason City did not appear on the 1926 or 1927 Lion schedules published in the newspapers, but in 1928 a large front page headline in the Clear Lake Reporter proclaimed: Lions Best Mason City Mohawks 7-6; Local Line Strong-- Breaks Decide Game-- Mohawks Line Crushed.

“Hundreds of horse-throated Clear Lake fans went wild with enthusiasm Friday as field judge Gilbert fired the shot that ended one of the most thrilling, hardest fought football games ever played in Roosevelt Stadium, Mason City, and gave Clear Lake a 7 to 6 victory,”  stated the Nov. 28, 1928 Reporter.  

“More than a football game was at stake.  The prestige of a veteran coach, of an experienced team, a school, of a whole city, in fact, was in the balance.  To have a small school team, coached by a man just out of college, triumph over a neighboring city’s experienced team, coached by a man with years of experience is humiliating, to say the least.  But this happened last year in basketball.  To repeat that defeat in football!  Unthinkable, they said.  But mere words do not win football games, not the training of experienced coaches, when they buck up against a team that is in sympathy with their coach and their school in the fierce determination to win.  Individualism sinks to give place to team-work and the honor of a school.  And as very often happens, the smaller school won-- team-work triumphed!’

The Mohawks got their revenge in 1929, when they defeated the Lions, 27-7.  - Read More Via e-Edition