SIDNEY – For the last 50 years, the Sidney Yellow Jackets football team has faced off with their rival Piqua with the Battered Helmet as the prize.
“We had a really good team in ‘74,” Sidney football historian Dave Ross said. “But at that point we didn’t have an in-season trophy or award to be competing for.”
That was when Ross, who had recently graduated from Sidney, picked up on a request to have a traveling trophy for the Yellow Jackets yearly game against Piqua.
Ross knew of some out of circulation football helmets at Sidney High School and found someone to make one half of the helmet Piqua and the other Sidney.
This became known as the Battered Helmet and has been the traveling trophy signifying bragging rights for whichever team’s high school won for the whole next year.
In the first battle over the helmet in 1974, the Yellow Jackets entered 7-0 while Piqua came into the game with a 5-2 record. Piqua shut Sidney out 18-0 and made claim as the first holders of the helmet.
“I got to go into the Piqua locker room and present the helmet afterwards,” Ross said. “That’s not where I expected I’d be that night but they deserved it holding Kris Haines to 16-yards rushing.”
Haines was a standout for the Yellow Jackets, later playing football for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and winning a national championship in 1977 and then playing eight years of professional football following his college days in the National Football League and United States Football League.
Sidney got revenge on Piqua the following year with a 16-0 victory to take possession of the helmet.
Despite the nature of rivalries as a whole, the battle over the Battered Helmet was never one of bitterness or hatred.
“During this 50 years, Piqua has had more than their share of success,” Ross said. “Nothing has ever gotten out of bounds. I think around here, you just have more people that appreciate relationships. I’m glad we’ve got that.”
With Piqua’s 2006 state championship in football, recently the Yellow Jackets have used the game as a sort of measuring stick to compare Sidney’s relative strength.
An interesting story stemming from the rivalry took place in the 1989 game. Piqua had beaten the Yellow Jackets in every matchup in the decade of the 1980’s prior to the ‘89 meeting.
Sidney was able to narrowly escape with a 24-17 victory when senior Todd Taylor nabbed an interception at the end of the game.
Taylor went on to have a notable career in professional sports, working for the Texas Rangers, Milwaukee Brewers, Portland Trail Blazers, Columbus Blue Jackets and currently is the President of Business Operations for the Indiana Pacers.
Outside of the football centered rivalry, the two schools have recently started keeping track of their games by sport, delegating points to the individual games and keeping a running tally.
Each school has a board to keep count of the wins and losses in their respective high school buildings. Though the rivalry has changed over the last half-century, the Battered Helmet remains as an important look into the history of high school football in Southwest Ohio.
The Yellow Jackets were set to square off with Piqua at Piqua High School on Friday for the 50th battle over the Battered Helmet.
Reach assistant editor / sports writer Ryan Harless at 937-538-4651 or follow @RyanHarless_ on X (formerly Twitter).
