Iron Horse trophy about more than just football
Dale Wilkinson recently started his second year as the principal at Ben Lomond High School. Wilkinson is a 1976 graduate of Ben Lomond and painted the "Scots" train on the Iron Horse trophy when he was a student. In 2014, Ben Lomond won back the trophy for the first time since 2007.
On Sept. 26, 2014, Ben Lomond High School won the Iron Horse trophy after beating the Ogden High football team for the first time since 2007.
In 1976, Dale Winkinson painted the red,white and blue train atop the Iron Horse Trophy. On Sept. 26, 2014, Ben Lomond High School, where Wilkinson now serves as the principal, won the trophy after beating the Ogden High football team for the first time since 2007.
OGDEN – It’s been over six years since the Iron Horse trophy has been inside Ben Lomond High School. Now the trophy sits proudly in Principal Dale Wilkinson’s office and will soon be placed in a special trophy case.
But the story goes a bit deeper than that and it keeps getting better by the day.
The decades-old rivalry on the football field between Ogden High and Ben Lomond is a popular one. Many of the alumni of both schools have fond memories to share of the storied rivalry. Ben Lomond won this year’s game.
Wilkinson’s story, though, is unique.
You see, there’s not just one Iron Horse trophy in Wilkinson’s office, but two. This is Wilkinson’s second year as principal at Ben Lomond, but his roots run much deeper than that. He is a 1976 graduate of the school and literally had a hand in the making of one of the trophies, which is two trains meeting head to head on a train track – one for Ben Lomond and one for Ogden.
The original Iron Horse trophy, created in 1953 had run out of space to put the award years on. Wilkinson, as a student body officer for the class of 1976, was commissioned to help create a new trophy. He and his fellow officers worked to create a new one and Wilkinson had the honor of painting Ben Lomond’s train over the summer before the start of his senior year. Someone from Ogden painted Ogden’s train. The new trophy was created and Ben Lomond was able to proudly win the Iron Horse that year. The trophy has gone back and forth between the schools and Wilkinson was excited to get the trophy back at Ben Lomond this year and had told many of his story of painting the train.
When he got the trophy earlier this week, he examined it, and realized it was not the trophy he had hand-painted.
“I started to worry because I had told everyone I had painted it and this was not the one,” he said as he pointed to the huge trophy sitting in his office. “I called up Phil Russell and asked him what was going on.”
Russell worked as a teacher and long-time coach at Ogden High as well as the school’s athletic director for over 40 years. Now retired, Russell still keeps very close contact with the athletic department at OHS and works as a substitute teacher in the Ogden School District.
Russell told Wilkinson that they ran out of space to put award winners on the trophy Wilkinson helped create, so they started using the Iron Horse I trophy again. Russell quickly grabbed Wilkinson’s trophy from Ogden High as well, and now Wilkinson has both trophies sitting in his office.
“I think we will display both of them,” Wilkinson said with smile. “We will put an explanation with it,” he added.
Students at Ben Lomond also got a bit of history lesson of the Iron Horse trophy last week as well. Wilkinson and many others commented on how excited the students have been over the win.
“You see, these students have never seen the Iron Horse,” Wilkinson said.
He talked about how students will come by his office to take a peak and are surprised by its appearance.
“They expect to see a big huge steel horse,” Wilkinson said. “Many of them don’t understand Ogden’s railroad history.”
So he plans to explain it to them in an assembly where they will celebrate the victory of the trophy.
“It’s really something more when they understand that it is two trains meeting together,” Wilkinson said.
And while Wilkinson is thrilled for the victory for his students, for him it’s more about the competition and sportsmanship between Ogden’s two schools that is most important.
“The two teams played their hearts out and both can walk off the field knowing they did that,” Wilkinson said. While Wilkinson is a true Ben Lomond Scot at heart he has also has love for Ogden High School – he taught there and was an assistant principal for many years.
For Ogden High teacher Lucille Brizzee, she is very proud of Wilkinson’s accomplishments and for the success of Ben Lomond, even if her school did lose the Iron Horse this year.
“I am thrilled for him and the students at Ben Lomond for their academic success. A ballgame is a ballgame, and any team can win on any night. If the Scots earned the win this year (I wasn’t at the game), then they deserve the Iron Horse,” Brizzee said.
But she and Russell both added that they still think of Wilkinson as an Ogden High guy.
Russell loves the rivalry and said that this year Ben Lomond earned the win.
“They really were the superior team this year,” Russell said. He has seen 44 Iron Horse games and coached 27 of them as a football coach at Ogden High. “I’m thrilled to see them win and those kids deserve to see that trophy because most of them have never seen it,” Russell said.
Wilkinson is happy about it too and happy to be a Scot now. He enjoys that things have come full circle and he’s back where he started.
“I loved my time at Ogden and I love my time here with these students,” he said of Ben Lomond. “I live in this neighborhood and it just kind of fits, I’m home,” he said.
