After nearly 40 years, the Yellow Sucker Game is no joke

The annual Yellow Sucker Game between Carter County rivals East Carter and Van Buren was played for the 38th time Friday night.

A night earlier, the girls basketball teams from the two schools played in the inaugural Carter County Showdown. Van Buren took home a three-tiered trophy topped with a golden basketball with a 73-61 home win.

The Yellow Sucker Championship Award plaque features a mounted fish and has been presented to the team that wins the annual boys game since the 1983-84 season. Heading into Friday’s matchup, Van Buren holds a 20-17 advantage in the series over that time.

The schools played each other long before the fish became a prized possession. A coach quipped to DAR reporter Stan Berry that it was the Yellow Sucker Game and Berry used it in his story, the story goes.

Suckers can be found in the Current River.

Northern Hogsucker is “one of the most abundant and widely distributed stream fishes in the Ozarks,” the Missouri Department of Conservation reports.

The Yellow Sucker is also called a Golden Sucker but it’s official name is Golden Redhorse, or Moxostoma erythrurum. It’s about 9 to 15 inches in length with large scales and a short dorsal fin.

It also makes for a perfect traveling trophy because:

• It has a local flavor or history;

• A funny or hard-to-forget name;

• The year is added to the winner’s side of the plaque;

• Over time, it’s a competitive game that both teams look forward to.

Sports are full of traveling trophies, but the majority of them are found in college football.

In 2014, the Associated Press asked Top 25 voters to rank the best traveling trophies in college football. Oddly, Minnesota played for the top three — Paul Bunyan’s Axe (Wisconsin), a pig called Floyd of Rosedale (Iowa) and the Little Brown Jug (Michigan).

Oregon and Oregon State play for the Platypus Trophy. Oklahoma and Texas meet in the Red River Shootout with the winner getting the Golden Hat. Cincinnati and Louisville play for a Keg of Nails, because the winner is tough as nails.

There are also trophies featuring an egg, spurs, spitton, spade, boots, stalk, milk can, cannon, saddle, oar, iron skillet, oil can, wagon wheel, oak bucket, jeweled shillelagh, turtle and a troll made of moss and pinecones. There are lots of bells and cups.

Missouri and Arkansas now play for the Battle Line Trophy in football. Before moving to the SEC, the Tigers played for the Telephone Trophy against Iowa State, the Victory Bell (Nebraska), the Peace Pipe (Oklahoma), as well as the Indian War Drum and Lamar Hunt Trophy (Kansas).

Poplar Bluff and Cape Central once played for the Old Rubber Boot in football. It was a rubber boot painted silver with the team mascots located just above the boot’s heel at the approximate location of the schools in relation to Missouri’s Bootheel.

The teams played at Thanksgiving from 1953-59 until the Mules won three straight years and retired it. It can be seen now at the Poplar Bluff Museum.

For 40 years, the Mules played Twin Rivers each year in basketball for what was called the Battle of Butler County (with apologies to Neelyville).

There was no trophy, something I attempted to fix in a long-ago column making the case that it should be the Battle at Black River and played at the Coliseum, as it did twice, as a fundraiser for scholarships to benefit both schools.

Alas, scheduling issues ended the rivalry after the 2017-18 season.

Over the last decade of meetings, Poplar Bluff won by an average of 21.5 points with none closer than 10. In 40 years there were only 14 games decided by single digits and the Royals only won nine times.

It was still a big draw for fans for a Friday night non-conference game in January.

Part of that speaks to the rivalry, but also convenience — fans tend to travel to games close to home.

Still, Twin Rivers and Neelyville, Doniphan and Naylor, Clearwater and Greenville all play in the same county but don’t have the same type of thing going that the Carter County schools have with the Yellow Sucker game. (Editor's note: Clearwater and Greenville started playing the Battle for the Paddle in the Battle Between the Lakes in 2019.)

Hopefully, it and the new girls trophy keep being traded between the two schools for years to come and not end up in a museum.