Long before the WCAC and DCIAA became the leagues we know today, Catholic and public-school football occupied two different worlds in Washington. For a brief period, those worlds collided in front of crowds approaching 50,000.
Look at this weekend’s high school football schedule around D.C. and some of the names immediately jump out.
Archbishop Carroll plays Gonzaga.
Roosevelt plays McKinley Tech.
Anacostia plays Ballou.
Eastern is in action. So are Dunbar, St. John’s, DeMatha, Good Counsel and Bishop McNamara.
Some of those names have been part of Washington high school football for generations.
And while the schools are familiar, the football world they once inhabited looked considerably different.
In the 1960s and 1970s, high school football in Washington was largely divided into two camps.
There were the city’s public schools — Eastern, Roosevelt, Bell, Cardozo, Coolidge, McKinley Tech, Anacostia, Dunbar and others.
And there were the Catholic schools — St. John’s, Archbishop Carroll, DeMatha, Gonzaga and eventually programs such as Bishop McNamara.
They had their own leagues, their own rivalries and their own champions.
But for a time, Washington had something else.
The best of those two worlds actually played each other.
When the Whole City Watched
The City Schoolboy Championship matched the Interhigh public-school champion against the Catholic League champion.
It became a genuine Washington sporting event.
Nothing illustrates that better than 1961.
Eastern was in the middle of one of the greatest runs in D.C. public-school football history. The Ramblers had become the dominant Interhigh program, winning four consecutive championships from 1958 through 1961.
Waiting for them at the end of the 1961 season was St. John’s.
They played at the new D.C. Stadium, the building that would eventually become known as RFK Stadium.
Attendance:
49,690.
Eastern won.
But almost 65 years later, the crowd might be even more remarkable than the result.
Nearly 50,000 people had come to watch two Washington high schools play football. Contemporary coverage praised the quality of the game and described an atmosphere that would be nearly impossible to recreate in high school sports today.
And they weren’t finished.
Eastern and St. John’s returned the following year.
This time the crowd exceeded 50,000.
St. John’s won, 20-7.
But the 1962 City Championship would be remembered for something much darker.
A fight on the field late in the game spread into widespread fighting in and around the stadium. In the aftermath, the Catholic schools withdrew from the championship series.
One of Washington’s great high school sports traditions had effectively disappeared.
The Public Schools Had Their Own Golden Age
The end of the annual City Championship didn’t diminish the intensity of public-school football.
If anything, the list of champions from the era shows how deep football was throughout the city.
Eastern’s dynasty gave way to Roosevelt.
Then came Bell, which won three straight public-school championships in the middle of the 1960s.
Western followed.
Then Cardozo.
Coolidge emerged at the end of the decade.
These weren’t simply football teams. The schools were deeply connected to neighborhoods and generations of Washington families.
And eventually the public-school championship developed an identity of its own.
The Turkey Bowl became the destination.
Thanksgiving football became a Washington tradition, and instead of winning the Interhigh and advancing to face the Catholic champion, winning the public-school championship itself became the finish line.
That tradition survives today.
A Different Power Structure Across Town
Catholic football was developing along a different path.
Archbishop Carroll became one of the defining programs of the era under longtime coach Maus Collins.
St. John’s remained a major power.
DeMatha was developing into the athletic powerhouse that would eventually become one of the most recognizable high school sports programs in the region.
Bishop McNamara joined the championship picture.
Interestingly, the Catholic football hierarchy didn’t look exactly like it does today.
Gonzaga, now one of the area’s marquee football programs, went through extended struggles during portions of the 1960s and ’70s.
Carroll and St. John’s were among the names that defined much of the period.
And as Washington changed, Catholic football changed with it.
The City Becomes the DMV
This may be the biggest difference between then and now.
Public-school football remained closely connected to the District and its neighborhoods.
Catholic football increasingly became regional.
The population of Washington was changing. Families moved into Maryland and Virginia. Transportation improved. Catholic schools could draw students from a much larger geographic area.
The Washington high school football scene gradually became what we would now call the DMV.
You can see the result in today’s WCAC.
DeMatha is in Hyattsville.
Good Counsel is in Olney.
Bishop McNamara is in Forestville.
Bishop O’Connell is in Arlington.
St. Mary’s Ryken is in Leonardtown.
But Carroll, Gonzaga and St. John’s remain in Washington itself.
What had once been primarily a city football league became a metropolitan one.
The 1970s: Everybody Had a Chance
Meanwhile, public-school football entered an extraordinarily competitive stretch.
The beginning of the 1970s produced a remarkable run of champions.
McKinley Tech.
Eastern.
Coolidge.
Anacostia.
Roosevelt.
H.D. Woodson.
Six different programs won the public-school championship in six consecutive seasons.
Then Roosevelt and Eastern emerged again later in the decade.
Woodson’s arrival was particularly significant. The Warriors would eventually become one of the names most closely associated with D.C. public-school football.
By the end of the decade, the basic outline of the modern Washington football landscape was taking shape.
The public schools had their championship tradition.
The Catholic schools had theirs.
And the old question — what would happen if the champions played each other? — was mostly left for fans to argue about.
More Than 60 Years Later, Look at This Weekend
That’s what makes this weekend’s schedule so interesting.
On Thursday, Roosevelt visits McKinley Tech.
Those are two schools that were winning D.C. championships more than half a century ago. Roosevelt enters this week’s game 2-0.
On Friday night, Archbishop Carroll visits Gonzaga.
Carroll was one of the great Catholic powers of the 1960s and ’70s. Gonzaga represents how much that Catholic football landscape has evolved. Gonzaga enters the matchup unbeaten after wins over Calvert Hall, Coolidge and Eastern.
Elsewhere, Anacostia plays Ballou, Eastern visits Georgetown Prep, and Bell plays Maret. On Saturday, Dunbar hosts Hoboken.
Then look at the rest of the Catholic schedule: St. John’s, DeMatha, Good Counsel, McNamara, O’Connell, Ireton, Paul VI and St. Mary’s Ryken are all playing.
The geography has expanded.
The leagues have changed.
New schools have arrived and others have disappeared or changed names.
But many of the names that mattered to Washington football in 1965 still matter in 2026.
Where High School Never Ends
Maybe that’s the most remarkable part of the story.
Eastern and St. John’s once played before nearly 50,000 people.
Roosevelt, Tech, Bell and Coolidge fought for public-school championships.
Carroll and St. John’s battled for Catholic League supremacy.
Those days aren’t coming back in exactly the same form.
But the football never really went away.
This weekend, kids will once again put on uniforms with Eastern, Roosevelt, McKinley Tech, Carroll, Gonzaga and St. John’s across their chests.
Most of them probably won’t be thinking about what happened 50 or 60 years ago.
They’ll just be trying to win a football game.
But they’re playing the next chapter of a story that has been unfolding in Washington for generations.
Where high school never ends.