— — Saturday afternoon’s football battle between Kenmore West and Kenmore East High Schools, cross-town rivals since 1959, coincides with homecoming weekend, the presentation of Kenmore West’s newest sports hall of fame inductees and a special remembrance of a coach and a nationally-recognized team.

Prior to the game at Crosby Field, a large monument near the scoreboard will be unveiled which commemorates the 1969 Blue Devils and their legendary, larger-than-life coach, Jules Yakapovich. The tribute in granite, 5 feet tall with an 8 foot base, includes a plaque listing every member of the undefeated team, named the state’s best by the New York State Scholastic Writers Association and Number One in America by the “Super Bowl Committee,” a national journalists’ organization and the principal national ranking service of high school football at the time. The honor was noted in Sports Illustrated and other national publications.

Adjacent to the plaque is another honoring Yakapovich, Kenmore West coach and teacher from 1950 to 1976, whose reputation as a disciplinarian and well-prepared taskmaster made him a few enemies, but also endeared him to legions of players who recall him as an inspiration and positive influence on their lives.

The remembrance of Yakapovich is the end of a five-year quest by a number of Kenmore West alumni who sought to attach his name to some part of the school’s athletic complex. Ideas to rename Crosby Field in his honor, or the football stadium it includes, were diverted, largely by local veterans’ groups. Lt. Harry E. Crosby, a Kenmore resident, was killed in battle in the closing days of World War I and the stadium was named in his honor.

“So we have two plaques, one for Jules and one for the team,” said Mike Notery, captain of the 1959 Kenmore West team and a leader of the effort, with fellow alumni John Washington, Jackson Bolling and Jim ‘Mouse’ McNally.

The quest to honor the coach was sustained by the ‘Mousepack Reunion,’ an annual homecoming of several hundred former Kenmore West players. The reunion ostensibly honors McNally, whose career in football included coaching the University of Buffalo, Marshall University and National Football League teams in Cincinnati, Carolina, New York (Giants) and Buffalo.

“It’s a great recognition of the ’69 team,” said Kenmore-Tonawanda school superintendent Mark Mondonaro. “No. 1 in the nation; how many people can say that about a high school team? It’s a good compromise, to honor the coach and that team and that moment in time.”

The monument was privately financed, designed and constructed by Washington, owner of Ivy Lea Construction in Tonawanda. On the right is a plaque listing the accomplishments of Yakapovich, a Tonawanda-born Kenmore West student who was drafted by the Detroit Lions after graduating from Colgate University but chose instead to serve with the Marines in World War II. He then returned to his old school to teach history, coach the football team (his 1953 Blue Devils were also undefeated) and show several generations of players a road to greatness.

On the left is a listing of everyone connected with the ’69 team — “right down to the equipment managers”, Notery observes — and the installation is situated so that current and future players will pass it from the locker room to the football field. They will not be practicing the Yakapovich ‘radar defense’ with more lateral movement on the line of scrimmage than forward or backward —a scheme so radical he wrote a book on it — but they’ll likely understand what went on, at Crosby Field, in 1969.

The game begins at 2 p.m. on Saturday. Expect plenty of older men in attendance, with memories on their minds.