Las Vegas High still intense about Bone Game with Rancho despite streak

It sat on the back of a golf cart Monday, overlooking football practice at Las Vegas High School. Its bronze hue caught the sun, a glistening reminder of what the Wildcats have at stake this weekend.

It’s Sir Herkimer’s Bone, the trophy given to the winner of the annual Bone Game between Las Vegas and Rancho, the oldest tradition in Nevada high school football. The 61st edition will be at 7 p.m. Friday at Rancho.

“You start off by showing that Bone at the very beginning of the game and all that energy, all that excitement, all that intensity of the game amplifies,” Las Vegas coach Erick Capetillo said. “We’re going to fight for 48 minutes and look at the scoreboard at the end and hopefully we bring home the Bone for another year.”

Las Vegas won the first incarnation of the game in 1957, and the Bone trophy came the following year. The Bone is a literal cow bone from the butcher shop of Sir Herkimer, the father of a 1958 Rancho player who owned the shop located between the two schools. Players painted it gold to hide one of the cracks and later dipped it in bronze for posterity.

In the first game with the Bone on the line, the teams played to a 13-13 tie and the schools decided to share the bone and keep it one semester apiece. But after some Rancho players stole it during Las Vegas’ turn with it, the teams decided the winning school would keep it the entire year.

In 1959, Las Vegas became the first school to take it home.

After that, the rivalry leaned Rancho’s way for the first few decades. The Rams won 25 of the first 40 Bone Games, including 13 of 15 from 1981 to 1995.

Then things started moving east. The Wildcats won the 1996 game 21-0 and have not lost on the field in the 21 games since, though Rancho was declared the winner in 1998 after Las Vegas used an ineligible player.

Still, a baby born on the day of the 1996 Bone Game never has seen the Wildcats lose a game and is now old enough to sit at a blackjack table and order a cocktail.

“Alumni definitely don’t want to lose the Bone,” said Capetillo, an alumnus who graduated in 2006. “You talk to some alumni and you tell them 22 years strong here at Las Vegas High School, they’ll say that’s where it should be. It should have never left here.”

It’s not just that Las Vegas has been winning; the Wildcats have owned this rivalry. In the 21-game winning streak, Las Vegas has allowed more than 14 points just once, a 63-42 win in 2008. Since 1996, the Wildcats have outscored the Rams 951-187.

So from the outside, it may not be a competitive rivalry, but to the participants, it’s still the game of the year, and that’s all they hear even before they set foot on campus.

“I’ve been hearing it since I was in eighth grade, middle school,” said Las Vegas senior Elijah Hicks, who will be playing in his fourth Bone Game. “They preach about it a lot and say it’s really important we keep the streak and keep it ongoing.”

First-year Rancho coach Gary Maki said even if it doesn’t happen this year, he’s confident the Wildcats’ streak might be coming to an end. He pointed to the freshman team’s 6-1 record as proof that help is on the way, and since he took over, he has made it a point that talent from the Rams’ feeder schools end up at Rancho. They might not have been relevant on the football field in years, missing the playoffs every season since 2010, but the intensity of the Bone Game keeps the Rams going.

After all, that’s why Maki came to Rancho.

“When I took this job and decided to give it a shot after they talked to me, I wasn’t thinking state championships, I was thinking I want to try to get the Bone back,” Maki said. “I know it means so much to people at Rancho.”

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Contact Justin Emerson at jemerson@reviewjournal.com or (702) 387-2944. Follow @J15Emerson on Twitter.