GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – This past weekend, Davenport and Liberty battled for the first “Blue and Gray Cup.” Davenport took game one 6-3 on Friday night and then clinched the cup with a 6-5 thriller in a shootout on Saturday. The best of three series will conclude in Grand Rapids on November 29^th.
 
Davenport and Liberty have faced each other 28 times coming into this season dating back to 2005. The only team that Davenport has played more in their history is Oakland who they have played 34 times.
 
“We've been playing Liberty since I started at Davenport. I will never forget the first time we played Liberty on  the first day of the 2005 Nationals in Rochester, when Oakland hosted, and they beat us in our very first game. It was 8:30 AM game and we were almost out of Nationals before we even knew what happened,” said Coach Phil Sweeney.
 
The following year, Davenport and Liberty played a four game home and home series near the end of the season with the Panthers going 1-2-1 in those games. Playing each other for the fifth time that season in just over a month, Liberty again defeated the Panthers in the National Tournament this time in overtime in the ACHA DII National Semifinals.
 
“Liberty was a rival right of the bat. They beat us at Nationals two consecutive years and  after that we started playing a four game home and home series. And when you play a team four times a year every single year, it automatically turns into a huge rivalry.”
 
Liberty dominated the early part of the series going 8-2-1 in their first 11 games against the Panthers. But Davenport has made up the ground in the past few years winning six of the last eight meeting coming into this season. And with the two wins last weekend, Davenport has taken a 15-14-1 edge in the overall series, the first time the Panthers have led in the series.
 
To commemorate this rivalry that has grown over the past several years, Davenport Head Coach Phil Sweeney and Liberty Head Coach Kirk Handy wanted to create something that would make sure that the teams would continue to play each other and keep the rivalry going.
 
“We talked to Kirk Handy from Liberty about how great a of a rivalry Davenport and Liberty is and we decided that we needed to start playing for a trophy, a cup, or something similar to what we play for against Oakland. I sent a couple of emails out to professors at Grand Valley State, Liberty, and a couple other places and they put us in contact with Bruce. I met with Bruce Butgereit, who is a Civil War historian, and told him what we wanted to do. So we kind of played off the north/south theme and he created the trophy and the rest went from there,” added Sweeney.
 
The cup was created to not only celebrate the rivalry that has grown between these two schools over the past several years, but to also honor the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the units from Michigan and Virginia that fought on the same battlefield.
 
Both games at Liberty featured a Civil War-era color guard with both Union and Confederate States of America flags presented. Bruce B. Butgereit, Commander of the Michigan Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, was in attendance to introduce the cup.