This week, Marathon and Coral Shores will meet in Marathon for the 56th Battle of the Keys, the longest-running in-county sports rivalry in Monroe County. Coral Shores has won the past six contests and holds a 30-25 edge over Marathon in the series, but both teams have had nice runs and, regardless of teams’ records, a Marathon-Coral Shores game almost always delivers for eager fans on both sides.
Coral Shores fixture Rich Russell has seen it all when it comes to the Battle, serving the Hurricanes as player, coach and athletic director. Russell’s favorite meeting of the teams was the 1989 21-6 Coral Shores victory that served as the team’s final game of the season.
“It allowed us to finish 9-1 and avenged our only loss in 1988,” he recalled. That loss was a 19-7 win for the Fins.
Marathon athletic director Lance Martin was the team’s head coach for the year he pinpointed as the most memorable meeting of the rivals. In 2004, the Dolphins lost their starting quarterback to an injury in a loss to Key West a week prior.
“Then during the Coral Shores game the following week, we lost two more QBs by the second quarter,” he recalled. “We played the rest of the game with our running backs taking shotgun snaps and running off tackle every play. We kicked four field goals to win.” Ryan Paros’ leg won that game for Marathon. He was named to the first state team at the end of the season and kicked at FAU.
Both current head coaches have watched the games through various lenses, including as parents of the players. Hurricane head coach Ed Holly’s oldest sons Eddie and Johnny have graduated and are playing collegiate football now, and his youngest, Billy, is a sophomore who will suit up against the Fins this week. Sean McDonald’s oldest, Jackson, played collegiately as well, and coached the Dolphins’ middle school team in 2024. His youngest, Maverick, is on the Fins’ middle school squad and will serve as ball boy as he awaits the spring football season when Marathon’s eighth graders can join the varsity ranks.
McDonald’s fondest Battle of the Keys was in 2017.
“Hurricane Irma hit us midseason. It wiped out our field and a lot of our kids’ homes,” he said. “We didn’t know if we would play again that season, and some of our guys and their families lost everything. Some people thought we should scrap the season, but we wanted to give the kids some sense of normalcy, so we called everyone and crossed our fingers that they would come back from wherever they all evacuated to.
“They all returned. Even the guys without houses came back. We had maybe a week of practice and went up there because our field was gone. We had to practice at Switlik and the community park. When we won, it meant a lot more than a football game.”
The score of that Battle was 43-28. McDonald’s oldest son, then a junior, amassed 307 all-purpose yards with two rushing TDs and another pair in the air. Esteban “Stevie” Sainz caught one of those passes and Thad Goodwin reeled in the other. Landon Bish had a sack and seven solo tackles, including four for a loss. Dequian Youngblood had a pick six and Peder Bidonne recovered a fumble and took it to the house.
Holly remembered playing both teams when he was a high school athlete at Archbishop Curly in Miami. Holly says he knew of the rivalry and first experienced it as a fan, and his most memorable meeting of the two schools was during his first year coaching with the Hurricanes.
“It was 2011, I believe, and Lance (Martin) was still coach,” Holly said. “We played on the old field and it was a muddy mess. The officials kept accusing the center of moving the ball, but it was really just floating in a puddle,” he added.
Coral Shores won that game with some trickery. “We ran a double pass to Andre Whitehead on the sideline to win the game,” Holly reminisced, adding, “Andrew Garcia was our running back. He was all of 160 pounds and ran the ball over 20 times that game. He put the team on his back and asked for the ball and carried us that game.”
Holly and McDonald both remarked about the importance of the rivalry to the communities. The game brings fans from both schools out in numbers and is a talking point for weeks leading up to the contest. And while both acknowledge the weight of the game on their teams’ seasons, they also recognize that at the final whistle, many players, fans and both coaches are friendly for 51 weeks out of the year.
Kickoff for Battle of the Keys LVI is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 3 at 7 p.m. in Marathon.
