MIKE BURKE

Allegany Communications Sports

Fort Hill hosts North Hagerstown tonight at Greenway to mark the first meeting between the schools since 2014.

Used to be the Sentinels and the Hubs, which I always thought was a cool nickname, played every season beginning in 1957 as members of the Cumberland Valley Athletic League, better known as the CVAL.

The CVAL was a good league with great schools such as Allegany, Fort Hill, Frederick, Martinsburg, North Hagerstown, South Hagerstown, and then Jefferson, Hedgesville and Musselman later on.

It was a convenient league as far as travel was concerned and it provided league members with at least five games every season, which is a good deal.

For years it was mainly a football league, though there was a CVAL track meet every spring that was always one of the biggest meets of the season. I can remember the home side – then the concrete side – at Greenway being packed for those track meets, as Fort Hill track coach Charlie Lattimer made night track meets a big thing in the 1970s.

Eventually the CVAL expanded to all sports and it was always a treat to watch Martinsburg in basketball and in baseball when Marsalis Basey played. And, oh yeah, he wasn’t too bad in football either. Quite an athlete.

In football, Fort Hill, Allegany and Martinsburg won most years, but then Allegany head coach Jack Gilmore, as the athletic director, pulled Alco out of the conference following the 1989 season. If I remember correctly, Jack was not at all pleased with the officiating (scoop!) at Jefferson the night the Cougars ended Alco’s winning streak at either 19 or 20 and vowed to never return. He didn’t. And the following season, 1990, he proclaimed the Campers to be a “major independent.”

That was also the night Jack called Times-News sportswriter Steve Luse the name that will get you thrown out of a baseball game every time because he didn’t like the question Steve asked after the difficult loss.

Nothing new there on either front, as Jack wasn’t the most calm, cool or collected guy after a loss, and Steve was known to ask pointed questions in not too smooth of a manner. But the back and forth that took place between the two of them was the first thing Steve talked about when he walked through the door at the Times-News after covering the game.

Steve thought it was funny, because he knew and liked Jack. There were no hard feelings, and there was never a dull moment when Jack was around, that’s for sure. On top of that, you could not tick off Steve Luse. Take it from someone who tried for nearly 30 years.

Fort Hill went to Hagerstown to play North in 1976. It was a Monday night game, one of a handful played that season because of all the rain that hit the region, and both teams came out to warm up wearing the same color jersey, which was a problem since North and Fort Hill both wore red and white. So both teams were essentially dressed the same, which the officials said was not good.

The coach of the Hubs at that time was Walter Galbraith, who walked up to Coach Lattimer at the center of the field at School Stadium on the campus of South Hagerstown High, where North played their games, and apologized for the mix-up (which not only was not Coach Galbraith’s mix-up, but not a mix-up at all, if you know what I mean) and said, “Do you want me to go back to school and get our other jerseys?”

To which Coach Lattimer said, “Or, I could drive back to Cumberland and get ours.”

Needless to say, the game was delayed for about a half hour as someone (not Coach Lattimer) had to drive across town to North for the Hubs’ other jerseys, and Fort Hill went on to win the late Monday night game, 31-6.

North and South both left the CVAL in 1989 to join the Monocacy Valley Athletic League, which one young, wiseguy local sportswriter called the Middle of Nowhere League (which he rightfully heard about it), but Fort Hill and North continued to play each other regularly in football through 1996, as Cumberland’s Glenn Cross was the North Hagerstown head coach from 1982 through 2000.

The Sentinels eventually dropped out of the CVAL following the 2006 season to join the newly-formed Appalachian Mountain Athletic Conference, the area football league here that lasted all of two seasons. Talk about the middle of nowhere. What an absolute joke.

Things change, times change and schools change. Everyone has to go their own way. But those CVAL days sure were a lot of fun.

Be that as it may, it’s good to see Fort Hill and North hook up again. Fort Hill leads the all-time series 36-6-1 and won the previous meeting in 2014, 46-8. Prior to that, North rolled Fort Hill, 54-16, in 2012 and 33-13 in the 2003 Maryland 2A West Region semifinals at Mike Callas Stadium on the North campus.

The Sentinels are 3-3 while the Hubs are 5-1.

Sounds like a great night for a sweaty mustard dog and a slab of stadium pizza.

Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT