The Stivers Tigers were one of the original members of the Big 6 Athletic League (formed in 1930). Other five members of the newly formed league included Steele, Roosevelt, Kiser, Fairview and Chaminade. Stivers opened and operated as East High School in 1906 and changed its name to Stivers when the new high school located at 1313 E. First Street opened in 1908. The opening of East in 1906 provided the Steele Lions with their most celebrated rival for more than thirty years. The Steele-Stivers series began on September 28, 1907 when Steele handed the young Stivers-to-be team a 38-0 beating. The Dayton Daily New reported a crowd of only 400 on that Saturday afternoon. Eventually the series attained the status of a classic and became an annual Thanksgiving Day attraction climaxing the high school season. Steele rolled just as easily in 1908 with a 43-0 victory and won again a year later by a more respectable score of 16-6. Stivers, the “new kid on the block” scored its initial win in 1910 and was enroute to three decades of overall excellence in football, basketball, and other sports. What made the Steele-Stivers series memorable for the community was the excitement stirred up by the student bodies of both schools. The Steele lion, the bronze statue of the King of the Jungle, which stood by the steps of architecturally classic old Steele building at Main and Monument Streets, was often painted orange overnight in the week before the game by the Stivers students and by the same token, the Stivers building would find itself festooned with red and black streamers. Beyond that, for well over 30 years up to World War II, most native Daytonians grew up attending one or the other of the schools and the Steele-Stivers rivalry was a topic of conversation involving doctors, lawyers, teachers and businessmen well into the 1960s before their sons and daughters started attending suburban schools. Before the final Steele-Stivers game in 1939, the two schools had met 33 times with Stivers capturing 19, Steele 11 and three ending in a tie. The rivalry began to get one-sided in its later years when enrollment at Steele began to decline due to Roosevelt, Fairview and Kiser draining the school’s enrollment. Prior to joining the Big 6, Stivers had already established itself as a national power by claiming an unmatched number of championship titles. The football team won back-to-back National Championship Titles in 1924 & 1925 and not to be out matched, the Boys Basketball Team won eight State Basketball Titles between 1916-1930. Harry Wilhelm was coaching both football and basketball when the Tigers won their fifth State Basketball Title in the spring of 1924 and a few months later, his football team went 10-0-1 and claimed the school’s first National Championship in that sport. The first four Stivers Basketball State Championships came out of the invitational affair called the Buckeye Interscholastic Tournament played in Edwards Gym on the Ohio Wesleyan campus in Delaware, Ohio. At the time, Ohio Wesleyan was a power in state athletic circles. The 1916 team went 12-2 in the regular season and rolled through the six-game event, spaced out over two weekends. At that time, teams had to play two games on Saturday to decide the title. Stivers defeated Marietta, 30-16, in the morning and later downed East Liverpool, 45-31 to win its first title. Willard Marquardt coached the 1916 team as well as the 1919 team which started a run of three straight championships in the Delaware Tournament. The 1919 team never lost a game, winning fourteen regular season games and another six in the state tournament to win the school’s second state championship in four years. Earl Brandenburg took over in 1920, after Coach Marquardt began his administrative career and coached the team to a 15-2 regular season record and again a six-game sweep at Delaware with a 29-19 win over Akron Central in the title game. The team accepted an invitation to a National Tournament in Chicago, where they lost to Wingate, Indiana in the second round. Guy Early took over coaching responsibilities in 1921 and won the school’s third straight State Title. The 1921 Team went through what was described as “a grueling schedule” of 23 games without a loss. The 17-game regular season was highlighted by a 34-24 win over the 1920 National Champion (Wingate, Indiana) the team that had beaten them the year before. The Stivers overall record in those three unofficial state championship seasons was 58-3. The Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) took over sponsorship of the tournament in 1923 and divided the schools into two divisions, larger schools Class A and smaller one as Class B. Prior to that time there had been no divisions and the Delaware Tournament was open to all if their record justified an invitation. Floyd Stahl became the new Boys Basketball coach in 1926 and his first team was a good one, going 18-2. Stivers defeated Columbus East 30-16 in the State Championship Game that year. But the real glory was just ahead. The Stivers basketball teams of 1928, 1929, and 1930 had one of the greatest runs of success of any high school not only in Ohio, but also in the nation. The “Orange Crusher” as they were known in those days were led by the most dominant player at the time, “Big Bill’ Hosket. Hosket guided the Tigers to three straight state championships, the 6th, 7th and 8th state championship in 15 years. During those three years they won 79 and lost 7. Five of those 7 losses were early in the 1927-28 regular season. One loss was in the National Tournament in Chicago in 1928. They went on to win 29 and lose 1 in 1928-29, and then did not lose a game in the 1929-30 season. They were 59 and 1 over the last two seasons, winning the last 41 games in a row. The eight state of Ohio basketball championships are unprecedented to this day, and a record that may never be broken. Six members of the 1929 team went on to play on conference championship teams in college. Hosket, Colburn and Brown were on Ohio State’s 1933 team which shared the Big Ten Championship with Northwestern. Sam Andrews and Bob Albright led Otterbein to an Ohio Conference crown while McAfee was on a Championship Team at Wittenberg. It was not until 1975, under the direction of Earl Williams, before another Stivers team advanced to the State Championship Game. Despite finishing the regular season with a 10-8 record and playing in an extremely competitive Dayton City League, Coach Williams did an excellent job of refocusing the team’s attention on the state tournament. The team was led by Sander’s prolific scoring and Sutton’s point guard leadership and allowed Stivers to advance easily to Columbus. After defeating Louisville St. Thomas Aquinas in the semi-final game 86-71, Stivers moved on to the Championship Game to face Warsaw River View. Despite outstanding performances by Sanders (31 points) and Sutton (20) the Tigers lost in overtime 77-72. After Stivers closed in 1975, the building remained open and was used for freshman attending Patterson Co-Op High School. As a result, Patterson’s school name was changed to Stivers-Patterson and remained that way until 1982. During this period, athletics for women became extremely popular and acceptable. No other high school women’s program in the area was more successful than Stivers-Patterson at the time. The Women’s Track Team won the Class AAA State Championship in 1976 and were Class AAA State Runner-Ups in Basketball in 1979. In 1983, the school was turned into a middle school and operated that way until 1999. In 1999, the school retained its high school status and was renamed Stivers School For the Arts. During the high school transition, the School For the Arts Magnet officials voiced fierce opposition towards the school board’s decision to allow the school offer interscholastic sports for its students. However, after tremendous support demonstrated by the parents and community the decision was made to offer sports. The first couple years of sports competition were extremely tough for the student-athletes as they encountered several humiliating loses throughout the season. It wasn’t until 2002, when the Dayton and Cincinnati School Districts joined to create the new Southwest Ohio Public League (SOPL) that the Stivers Athletic Program began to experience some success. The structure of the league was perfect for Stivers as it created a small school division for schools remarkably similar to Stivers academic, athletic and social make-up. Overall, the Tigers captured (2) National Championships, (8) State Championships, along with (6) Football and (9) Basketball City League Titles. It is also particularly important to note that the school produced several successful & distinguished alumni, faculty, staff, athletes, and coaches. Undoubtedly, the most accomplished feat of the Stivers Athletic Program is the three consecutive Boys Basketball State Championships won in 1928, 1929 and 1930.