TOLEDO, Ohio — The final bell rang Friday night for the historic football rivalry between Maumee and Perrysburg high schools, at least for the foreseeable future.
On March 22, 2021, the Maumee school board voted to move the athletic teams to the Northern Buckeye Conference and leave the Northern Lakes League the high school had competed in since its formation in 1956.
The move happened because Maumee struggled to remain competitive as other schools and cities in the league continued to add population. The Panthers have had losing conference records for all but one of the seven seasons prior to the current 2022-23 season. The Yellow Jackets have maintained a positive conference record beginning with the 2006-07 season.
The two schools played their first football game against each other in 1917, where Maumee shut out Perrysburg 46-0. But the annual "Battle for the Ding Dong Bell," where the two schools compete to hold the prized Ding Dong Bell for a year, had its inauguration over 40 years later in 1960, according to a 1980 Maumee High School sports program.
The bell's history dates back to the early 1800s. According to the program, the bell was to be transferred across the Maumee River from Fort Meigs to Fort Miamis in 1816 to establish the latter as a "strong point." But, a gust of wind overturned the canoe carrying the bell, which came to a rest in the river's depths.
The bell sat at the bottom of the river until 1959 when Maumee's Don Buckhout allegedly called for the recovery of the bell, which was dredged up after weeks of effort.
The sunken artifact then became the trophy of the cross-river rivalry.
Maumee won the first possession of the bell, with a 30-6 win after a three-year losing streak to Perrysburg.
In 1961, Maumee took the bell again in a much closer game, eking out a 16-14 win. The teams had a back-and-forth record for the rest of the century, with neither team maintaining more than a three-year win streak until 1987-1991 when Perrysburg held a five-year win streak of generally close games. Maumee followed this up with a four-year win streak from 1992-96, with '92 and '93 being blowout victories.
The schools competed evenly again until the 2012-2013 season, when Perrysburg began regularly beating Maumee in a trend that continued through Friday, aside from a 14-27 loss to Maumee in the 2017-18 season.
The current record between the teams favors Perrysburg at 58-40, including the Yellow Jackets' 51-21 win on Friday. There have also been five ties in the rivalry's history, but none after the Battle for the Ding Dong Bell began.
Maumee will join Eastwood, Fostoria, Genoa, Lake, Otsego, Rossford and Woodmore when it begins competing in the NBC next season.
Perrysburg will continue to compete in the updated NLL with the additions of Whitmer, Fremont Ross, Findlay and Clay.