High school football Friday night will harken back to autumn evenings past, when Belleville’s three high school teams squared off annually for city bragging rights at historical Township Stadium.

Two of those local schools will renew an old rivalry back at the place where the likes Rusty Lisch and Hickey Thompson made themselves local legends. It’s been 29 years since the Lancers and Crusaders last faced each other on the gridiron.

The city championship series came to an end when Edwardsville joined East and Belleville West in the Southwestern Conference in 1996. Althoff’s three-time state champion coach Glenn Schott said the addition forced a scheduling change that would pit his Crusaders against the Lancers and Maroons on consecutive weeks and leave his players battered and bruised for competition against programs their own size. So in 1997, Althoff dropped East from the schedule.

The intra-city matchup between Belleville West and Althoff continued annually until 2013. West won the final game between the two schools 53-20 in 2013. Any reboot of the traditional rivalry game won’t happen for at least four more seasons – if at all – because West’s schedule is set through 2027, according to Athletic Director Joe Muniz.

(I SAW THE WEST PRINCIPAL AT STL BREAD CO AND I ASKED ABOUT THE CHANCES OF THEM PLAYING AGAIN - HE SAID NOT FOR A LONG TIME!)

Township Stadium has undergone a major overhaul which was initiated when Lindenwood University moved into the former West campus. In 2012, the university invested $2.3 million in revamping the old facility, an Art Deco-style concrete stadium built by President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.

The heavily “turtle-backed” playing field, which encouraged water drainage but made seeing from one sideline to the other difficult, also was leveled.