Malden, Medford Set Records in 128th Thanksgiving Football Game

– Steve Freker, Medford Daily Mercury/Malden Evening News

Just so everyone knows, there was no huge X-Box running the 128th Malden-Medford game yesterday at sunny and balmy Hormel Stadium in Medford yesterday.

And Elton John was nowhere to be found… no giant pinball machine, either. When you do anything 128 times since the late 1800s, a lot of the repetitions are similar and a lot of the same results pop up along the way. It is also hard not to bump into a piece of history when over a century of annual events are strung together consecutively.

There was no bumping into history yesterday at Hormel, this was an all-out two-car smashup, folks.

The great John Madden, whose name and face graces the most popular and well-known video game in recorded history, smiled on Hormel yesterday as Malden and Medford played a game for the ages, perhaps officially ushering the ancient high school series into the Millennial Era for good.

When it was over and the smoke had cleared, Malden High and Medford High each owned a piece of history, as they had completed THE highest-scoring game in the entire history of the series.

Malden won, 59-36, and the 95 points scored between the the two combatants was the most EVER combined, dating back to the previous record, a 47-32 Medford win in the 1997 game (#110).

The 59 points for Malden is also the high-water mark for the Golden Tornado squad, surpassing the 50-6 win in 1960. Malden also had 45 points at halftime, a 45-8 lead that looked, at the time, insurmountable, another series record for points in a half.

Individually; more loud numbers. Malden scored FIVE times on defense, Medford once on D, another series record. Malden senior Danley Exilhomme had perhaps the best game ever for a Malden kid, 217 yards rushing, 4 touchdowns and 374 all purpose yards. His brother, Djorggensen DJ Exilhomme had three TDs. For Medford, Cory Moore scored three TDs with 130 yards rushing.

All photos by Josh London