For Southie, for Southie, we sing our proud refrain....

For here men are men and the girls are true....

Boston Tech, Boston Tech, brave, courageous and bold;

Long live her fame, and long live her glory, and long may her story be told....

It was a little after three in the afternoon, and the guys from Tech were starting to arrive now, here at the Arena. Most of them had these blue and white athletic jackets on, with TECHNICAL embroidered right over their hearts. All the hard guys were here, and they were here early because after a month or so of messing around with the cellar-dwellers. Tech was playing for the marbles this afternoon. They were playing Southie.

And the Southie guys... well, you can't really call them guys, they're more like men, f'crissake, most of them are 26, 27 years old... they've been here a while, and you can tell them right away. They're standing around in groups of three or four or so, leaning up against the walls here in the Arena, swigging coffee, talking tough out the sides of their mouths; and you just know, after listening to them for just a couple of minutes, that there is no way for Tech to beat Southie in hockey today.

So, as you stroll around the lobby before the game, munching on some of those greasy Arena french fries, you must understand that, you are present at something historic today. This is the first time Tech and South Boston have ever met in hockey, and one hell of a lot of arguments are going to be settled when one blows the other off the ice.

This is all very different from when I went to school in town, you understand. You had two leagues then. City and District, and although the City League was pretty well-balanced, with either Tech, Latin, or B.C. High copping the title, it was getting pretty boring in the District. I mean, let's make this clear right now. Only Irishmen know how to play hockey, and in the District League, the Mickies all play for either Southie or Charlestown.

So it was getting ridiculous, f'crissake. I remember one time when Charlestown only had eight guys eligible to play hockey in the whole hulking school, and they were still stomping teams like Eastie and Reslindale by 10, 11, 12 goals.

Last year, the administrators got wise. They split up the two leagues and formed three. One had the nucleus of the old City League-Latin, English, Tech, B.C. High. Another had the heavies from the District-Southie, Charlestown, Hyde Park, and East Boston, who, after all, skated pretty well for Italians.

Then there was the low division-Brighton, Roslindale, Trade, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain. I mean, you had to do it like that. Schools like JP and Dot were getting murdered. And you never knew who was best when both Charlestown and B.C. High were going undefeated in their own league and never got to play each other.

Well, all that's changed now, and that's why the hard core guys from Tech and Southie are here today. Tech is unbeaten. Southie is too, but they've tied Charlestown and English. And the winner keeps all the marbles, at least until he plays Charlestown.

But one of the best parts of a Tech Southie game is the jam that will take place afterwards. You just have to have one when the atmosphere gets as heavy as it is this afternoon. Sure all the fans are Irish. Ethnic brawls just for the sake of ethnic brawls died a long time ago, although you can still get pretty serious about the blacks, but they don't play hockey, so that's irrelevant here.

But everyone here today understands that there is one hell of a lot of honor at stake, especially for the dudes that go to Tech, but live in Southie. Because tonight, when the boys are hanging on the corners in Southie, certain people will be taking huge amounts of crap because of what happened to their hockey team at the Arena this afternoon. No one in Southie likes taking crap, you understand, but if your hockey team got blown off the face of the earth, there's no point in arguing. You're inferior.

So it's necesary, of course, to have a jam after the game to insure against taking crap that night. It's quite logical, actually. This dude from Tech feels like he's God, just because his hockey team really put it to you. So you sucker him, let him have a good shot to the mouth when he least expects it, and somehow, it's all even again. That is, of course, unless he and his buddies want to START something to save Tech's honor. Then you'll really have a jam.