America's Forgotten Service Academy Rivalry

For a nation that so passionately laces its sports with a heady dose of "patriotism" at every opportunity, we do a good job of overlooking those games where patriotism occurs naturally. Everyone is familiar with the famous season-capping clash between Army and Navy, of course; few other intercollegiate contests are marked by the pomp, circumstance, pressure, and noise. It's the ultimate conflation of the martial and the athletic because it is organic. There's no reductive and grossly vicarious football-as-war metaphors because these people know what from; their team histories and alumni role are written in smoke and blood.

And then there is the Secretaries Cup, the annual tilt between our two forgotten service academies, the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, and the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York. This is Army-Navy writ small, the biggest little football game in the country, perhaps the best show in Division III, the determinant of Neptune's favored children. But it is practically unknown outside those for whom the water is the world.

"I worked at West Point for eight years in their athletic department," Coast Guard Director of Athletics Tim Fitzpatrick said. "In fact, I was at West Point the last time Army beat Navy at football, in 2001 … and, candidly, the Secretaries Cup is the Division III Army-Navy Game. The level of emotion, and the fan intensity, is exactly the same."

After sporadic matchups between the Bears (named for the Coast Guard polar rescue ship USRC Bear) and the Mariners since 1949, the game became an annual event in 1981. The trophy, originally deemed the Secretary's Cup when both services were under the auspices of the Department of Transportation, had its name pluralized in 2003, with the Coast Guard's move to the Department of Homeland Security. It is part of a season-long, all-sports rivalry between Coast Guard and Kings Point, as the USMMA is metonymically known, the winner of which receives the Superintendents Trophy.

This year, defending Cup champions Kings Point will travel to New London on September 10th, the last time the game will be in the season-opening spot. Both coaches and athletic directors have bemoaned the early scheduling, preferring the match-up's more climactic position of old. But the rivalry remains in high gear.

"All week, all the students are thinking about is 'beat Coast Guard, beat Coast Guard,'" said Kings Point senior linebacker Josh Woodburn. "It's our big rivalry, and that's one of things we really cherish here." Pep rallies are held, commandants issue rivalry orders (e.g., Coast Guard's orders that all greetings begin with "Go Bears!" to be responded to with "Beat KP!"), and cadets and midshipmen run what Fitzpatrick called "spirit missions." These forays to prank the other academy have included the stealing of the Bears' mascot head and Kings Point's admiral's flag, and at least one attempted boarding.

Game day provides an atmosphere that is unmatched in Division III. The crowd may be smaller than Army-Navy—5,000 people versus ten times that amount—but it is no less aesthetically impressive; practically the entire student bodies of both academies are in attendance, the Regiment of Midshipmen resplendent in brilliant summer whites, the Coast Guard's Corps of Cadets in Tropical blues, military aircraft splitting the sky and miniature armadas sometimes providing the visiting team support from the sea. The Commandant of the Coast Guard and various high-ranking figures, including sometimes the Secretaries themselves, can be found in the stands.

"It's loud," Bears captain and senior quarterback Derek Victory said. "Every second of the game is loud. Every play basically feels like the last play of the game. That's how intense it is."

Both schools are service academies just like their larger, more famous siblings, tasked with graduating commissioned officers for their respective branches of the armed services. Coast Guard is the more recognizable of the two, although people's knowledge of what the Coast Guard actually does is severely lacking.

"Most people know the Coast Guard for search and rescue; SAR is kind of their major function," David Helvarg, an environmental activist and journalist who wrote Rescue Warriors: The U.S. Coast Guard, America's Forgotten Heroes, said via phone from California. "But pretty much anything that has to do with navigable waters—be they fresh, brackish, or salt water—is their bailiwick."

In addition to SAR, Coast Guard is responsible for maritime law enforcement, including drug interdiction, environmental enforcement—e.g., checking fishing hauls—and pollution control, port operations and security, tending to aides to navigation, including buoys and lighthouses—when they aren't automated, anyway—and enforces U.S. sovereignty in the poles.

"It's probably the only one of the armed services that's under resourced and under appreciated," Helvarg said. "Probably because they save more lives then they take, and we kind of underappreciate the service they provide."

Coasties may not get recognition proportionate to their importance, but at least people know that they exist; the same could not be necessarily said for the Merchant Marines.

"They hear the word 'Marine' and they think it's the Marine Corps," Kings Point head coach, and alumnus, Mike Toop said. Toop has coached at Division I schools Albany, Penn, and UConn, and was the head coach at Davidson before taking the helm at Kings Point in 2005. "The Merchant Marine is responsible for the transportation of goods and personnel on the water all over the world, in any way, shape, or capacity."

Nothing better highlights the importance of the Merchant Marines than the convoys strung across the Atlantic and Pacific during World War II; Merchant Mariners were responsible for keeping resources flowing into the theaters. They are the lifeblood of the global economy in peace, and the transfusion of necessity in war.

The Coast Guard and Merchant Marines work closely together. Outside of the military purview of the Navy, the two services are responsible for practically all the nation's goings-on at sea. Their students experience a maritime life few others ever live, with on-board training every summer for the Coasties and for an entire year at Kings Point. Perhaps it is this familiarity that sparks such competitive fire on the gridiron each fall; as in a sibling rivalry, the knowledge that those across the field from you are motivated by the same desires, live the same rigorous days, and are destined for a familiar future is trumped by the burning need to assert internecine dominance: same conquering same.

"That's the game we circle every year as the one we want to win. The one we have to win," said Kings Point captain and defensive back Patrick Keyes.

"You respect [them] because … no academy is easy, they're all taking the time out of their lives to do something bigger than themselves," Coast Guard captain and senior defensive lineman Nick Lodovici said. "Yeah, you respect that. But on the field, it's a war zone. We don't like those guys very much."

Skirmishes are not unheard off; two out of Lodovici's three Secretaries Cup games have featured fights, including one that reached the field, halting the game. Unlike the more famous academy matchup, Coast Guard and Kings Point offers a clash of styles, as well, with the Mariners playing the traditional service academy wishbone option and the Bears opting for a no-huddle spread.

While the clash has been the opener in recent seasons due to the Bears and Mariners respective conference schedules, a realignment next year will put the game back in its proper place as the finale. (Coast Guard will also renew the "Little Army-Navy Game" when it plays traditional rival Norwich, a military academy in Vermont, for the first time since 2005.)

Neither Coast Guard nor Kings Point is a football powerhouse; Fitzpatrick admits that the road to the playoffs does not normally run through the Secretaries Cup. Just as with Army, Navy, and Air Force, however, there are two separate metrics for success in New London and New York: winning games, and winning the game.

"When you win, it doesn't get any better than that, let's get that straight," Toops said. "And I've been fortunate through my career, working at the Division I level and those types of things, and being involved in NCAA playoff and those types [of games]. I'm still taking a win over Coast Guard [over] any other win I've ever had."

For Toops, academy football overshadows Division I's brighter stage.

"For me, the guys I get to coach are as good as it gets in the country," he said. They are the reason he returned to Kings Point 11 years ago.

"These people are a cut above," Coast Guard coach Bill George said. "They sacrifice, they work had, they want to serve the country."

And rule the waves, Secretaries Cup held above their heads.

You can watch a web stream of this year's Secretaries Cup here

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