The battle of the Axe
In December of 1969, Hillcrest wrestling coach Tex Casto and Brighton coach Don Neff agreed to establish some kind of traditional trophy to travel with the winner of the Hillcrest-Brighton dual meet and drum up excitement in the community. Tex somewhere came up with an old, rusty axe and had some now unknown person plant it in a piece of cottonwood stump. Instead of engraving a trophy, the winning team paints a few inches of the handle of the axe along with the year they won. There are now multiple handles traveling in a display case along with the current axe.
Brighton upset Hillcrest 29-15 in the inaugural battle, and held on to the trophy for the first 15 years of competition. Hillcrest first won possession of the axe in 1985, under Coach Neff, who had since left coaching a winning program at Brighton to coach the Huskies. In its 53 year history Brighton has triumphantly hoisted the axe in all but five contests. The Huskies have taken the axe in1985, 1991, 1998, and more recently in 2021 & 2023.
News links to recent Battle of the Axe contests:
