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The Blue Devils had not qualified for the state playoffs in their 16 years of existence, and the Lancers had gone 0-6 in playoff games since the school began playing football 25 years earlier.

Neither school was considered a powerhouse in Tucson prep football, nothing to compare to Amphi, Tucson and recent state champions Flowing Wells and Palo Verde.

It was about that time that Sunnyside and Salpointe hit the jackpot with coaching hires — two men who couldn’t have had more different backgrounds — igniting a must-see rivalry that would endure for 35 years.

In ’72, Sunnyside hired Paul Petty, who had coached the small-school Miami Vandals to three state championships. In ’77, Salpointe hired former ASU and UA head coach Ed Doherty, who had coached big-school power St. Mary’s to back-to-back state championships in the 1960s.

Boom. Game on.

In the five years of the Petty vs. Doherty rivalry, Sunnyside went 45-10, was ranked No. 1 in the state in two seasons and produced headlining future college football standouts like Fred Sims, David Adams, John Horton, Harry Holt, George Duarte and Jerry Beasley.

Over that same period, 1977-81, Doherty’s Lancers reached the state championship game of 1981 and went 37-17-2. The rivalry was so intense that in 1981 and 1982, they met not only in September, but also in the first round of the state playoffs.

When Salpointe knocked the 9-1 Blue Devils out of the 1981 state playoffs, a game attended by 11,000 fans, Petty took a shot at his rivals, accusing them of recruiting.

“A lot of the best ballplayers in the city find their way to Salpointe,” he said.

Petty resigned in 1982 to coach at his alma mater, New Mexico State. Doherty resigned a year later to become Salpointe’s athletic director, a position he held for the next 10 years. Both men were inducted into the Arizona Coaches Hall of Fame. Although their rivalry lasted just five seasons, they left a strong football legacy that both schools extended until about 2010 under future Hall of Fame coaches Dennis Bene and Richard Sanchez, as well as Sunnyside’s Terry Seward and Salponite’s Pat Welchert.

The rivals did not play in 1990 and 1991 due to a change in the state’s classification system. That was good timing for Sunnyside; it avoided playing Welchert’s 8-2 and 10-3-1 state championship game team. They also were not scheduled to play from 1997-2003, but there is strong proof that from 2004-10, the Sanchez vs. Bene showdown was Tucson’s Game of the Year almost every season.

Sanchez, who won state championships for Sunnyside in 2001 and 2003, went 4-3 against Bene, a former Salpointe quarterback under Doherty. The seven games matched Sunnyside teams with a collective 65-21 record compared to Salpointe’s 62-19.

In the 2005 regular-season finale, the ����Ӱ��AV wrote that the Salpointe-Sunnyside game was “once again the unofficial city championship.” Salpointe won 27-16, giving the Blue Devils their first loss in 22 games to a Southern ����Ӱ��AV opponent. An overflow crowd of 8,000 attended.

A year later, an 11-3 Sunnyside team beat a 10-2 Salpointe club, 22-20. Said Bene: “They were unbelievably tough. Sunnyside is not a team that is intimidated.”

The last classic Sunnyside-Salpointe game was played in 2009. It was the final game of the regular season, played before a sellout crowd. Sunnyside was 9-0, Salpointe 8-1. The Lancers won 10-7 on a last-minute blocked field goal.

As intense as the rivalry was, Bene and Sanchez admired one another and became friends. They often drove to Phoenix together to attend AIA meetings.

“Our programs and our schools are different,” said Bene, who coached through the 2018 season, winning the 2013 state championship. “Both Richard and I see eye to eye on many subjects of high school football. He’s been wildly successful at Sunnyside because he does it the right way.”

Unfortunately, the rivalry waned after Sanchez resigned at Sunnyside after the 2010 season. The two schools have only met five times since — Salpointe was 5-0, outscoring the Blue Devils 166-48 — and because Salpointe has been elevated to Class 6A, have not played one another since 2017.

But, oh, what memories were created.

In 2006, the Star’s former sports staffer Ryan Finley previewed the year-end game between state title contenders by writing, “If you’re not at tonight’s Salpointe-Sunnyside football game, I expect a good excuse.”