Top 10 Thanksgiving Day Games

Marblehead vs. Swampscott

SInce 1909, Marblehead and Swampscott have played 112* Thanksgiving Day football games - making this rivalry one of the oldest in Massachusetts. While Marblehead holds a slight overall lead in the series, 56-50-6, Swampscott leads in overall points scored.

     Two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam and other conflicts, the 1918 flu pandemic, the 1929 Stock Market Crash, 9/11, and a host of other natural and man-made calamities have come and gone, defining a century, but the annual Thanksgiving Day game has been a constant, as perennial as both the holiday it celebrates and the end of gridiron glory days that is marks.

     On the fourth Thursday in November, the two tribes - Swampscott and Marblehead - don their colors and gather in the stands and along the sidelines - parents and familes, alumni and students, past and future players, and fans young and old - to cheer on the local boys and take in the game.

     If one looks back through the decades of the rivalry, one sees dynasties that have risen and fallen. Over the past 11 decades lopsided victories, bitter upsets, and fiercely contested battles have been played out and decided on the frost-hardened gridiron on Thanksgiving morning.

 

Here are 10 memorables ones.

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* The 2020 Marblehead-Swampscott game was played in the Spring of 2021 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.