During the 1950s, as Raphael was building the St. Joe football program, the conference structure was prevalent throughout the state. Teams belong to conferences such as the little Dixie and the Cherokee. While the biggest schools were members of the all-mighty big eight conference, but just as St. Joe was not constrained by the lines of a school district, it also chose independence over conference membership. And Raphael used this to his advantage.

Bill Raphael 

Now, Saint Joe is a lot like Notre Dame, not confined to a conference, being an independent, you know, the freedom to schedule when you want it, when you could arrange it, where you were going to play. And dad did that.

Roger Parkes 

Back in those days, they had conferences that were kind of regional. So you played in one conference and you played the schools that were right around you physically, pretty close by you.

Andrew Mattiace 

During my tenure at St. Joe. We were not part of a conference. We were independent. And we did play little Dixie teams, but we beat little Dixie teams all the time, Florence Hazlehurst, etc.

Leonard Thomas 

Well, we played Clibb, we played Forest Hill, We played Chamberlain hot,

Roger Parkes 

But then St. Joseph would go in and out of these conferences. And when I was there, we were actually independent. You know, we weren’t in a conference. But we played teams from a lot of different conferences. So we would play teams from North we played in the Delta, a lot played in North Mississippi, we play on the coast. We played teams in middle of Mississippi. So we had an experience of playing in a wider area than most people if they were playing in a conference.

Bill Raphael 

And, you know, with that ability, that led that led, people know and learning, respecting St. Joe throughout the state.

Narrator 

St. Joe quickly developed rivalries with schools all over the state, and in particular, the other small Catholic schools that dotted the landscape.

Sister Paulinus Oakes, RSM 

I would say Baurem, we just hated Baurem. And, oh, Vicksburg, Oh, the Catholic school. Oh, glory.

Leonard Thomas 

We couldn’t play Greenville St. Joe because there are too many fights.

Sister Paulinus Oakes, RSM 

I can remember one time at a basketball game. Patient Bernini sent word for me to quiet down.

Andrew Mattiace 

Oh, the St Aloysius games, we knew about and when I was in the eighth grade, I would go over and watch him in the seventh and eighth grade. And it was such an amazing rivalry. It couldn’t created that. It probably took 40 years to create that Rivalry. What I stepped into was deep in history.

Sam Lupe 

Fondest memories I have about playing St. Joseph Greenville and St. Aloysius is some of the best fights we ever had was with the skills. Invariably, 9 out of 10 times, the game we would have a fight in the middle of it,

Roger Parkes 

You can start a football game, and two guys could get into a fight and it could turn into a brawl. And nobody would do anything, nobody would get kicked out. It would just stop the brawl. And then we go by back to playing and then about five minutes later, there’ll be another brawl. So there was several bites during this football game. In Greenville. Well, in the melee that occurred, we actually had to pull up either tarsi off of their priest. He was pushing and they fighting their priest and our priests for like fighting each other. We had to pull the priests apart from each other because they were so mad.

Narrator  

Of course not every game involved Mortal Kombat between priest, but their presence as well as the nuns was always felt by the players and added an extra element of motivation.

Roger Parkes 

The priests would all come to the game. I mean, there would be nuns and priests are in the game, at the game and they would come down and they would be right behind you at the you know, on the fence, if you missed an assignment or if you dropped the ball or fumbled, something like that, because Raphael would be right there to meet you when you came off the field. And then when you came back off the field further, you would hear it from the priest. Which I mean come on, man, you know, I’m doing the best I can out here. You know