It’s Friday night at the football game. The Grizzlies are standing in the student section in suits and dresses for the poker night theme. The game is nearing the end and the scoreboard reads 42-7. The Bingham student section bursts into cheers. For some reason, this loss hurts more than the others. Copper Hills High School has had an ongoing feud with Bingham High School for years even though they are not one another’s rival.

Bingham has beat Copper Hills in every football game in the past 18 years. Kenny Banza, a running back and defensive back on the varsity football team, said, “They’re our enemies, but West Jordan is our rival. I feel like they’re good, but not as good as they portray themselves to be. Teams are intimidated by their record, and that makes teams play as if they know they’re gonna’ lose.” 

Yurisalem Acosta, a sophomore at Bingham, believes that the entire student body knows that Copper Hills is the enemy. She and many of the other Bingham students have a negative attitude towards Copper Hills’ football team.

When it comes to football games, the Grizzlies have come up short against Bingham, but Copper Hills’ student section cannot be rivaled. For example, the Copper Hills student section always shows up in the designated theme and is loud enough for the other side of the stadium to hear; they have a kiss cam and hundreds of photos to prove their pride when it comes to sports. 

When asked if Bingham has to use signs during football games for their student section, Acosta explained that they have to use them for their “football songs.” Instead of chants, they sing songs… it doesn’t seem to hype up the students or the players. 

Bingham definitely likes seeing the Grizzlies lose on the football field, but the rivalry between Copper Hills and Bingham reaches well beyond the annual game. It even extends into non-athletic programs like Drama. T.J. Patton, the captain of the Copper Hills varsity football team in 2015, said that the rival for Copper Hills was West Jordan at the time. “The Bingham rivalry is the same with every school just because they’re good at sports. I didn’t like them,” he said, “but a lot of that came from the prior year’s one-act competition between theater programs.” Bingham ended up winning the competition. He also mentioned that Bingham’s scene was “the most underwhelming performance.” 

The bitterness towards Bingham was not just because they had a successful football team. “It felt like another example of Bingham getting special treatment,” he claimed. After Bingham had beaten Copper Hills in football for so long, their winning of the theater competition felt unfair and rigged to Patton. 

Mallory Eichbauer, a 2016 graduate from Bingham said, “We mainly cared about Herriman at the time.” She also mentioned, “If anything, I just thought they weren’t very good,” referring to Copper Hills.

Copper Hills needs to win against Bingham to humble them. Bingham needs to have a better student section to even try to compete with Copper Hills’. If that happens, perhaps the feuding will end. Until that day, Copper Hills High School and Bingham High School will have rivalry.