Rare & Restored Footage From Maine Shows Epic 1970 Cony vs Gardiner Basketball Game

When it comes to major sports rivalries, we're familiar with the big ones like Patriots and Bills, Celtics and Lakers & Red Sox and Yankees. But maybe one of the biggest local rivalries here in the Pine Tree State is none other than Cony and Gardiner high schools.

Well, thanks to the hard work of local media group, Munzing Media, we now have access to very vintage video of a rivalry boys basketball game between the two schools.

If the game had been just days earlier, this footage would have actually been from the 1960s. However, after Facebook researchers did 'their thing', we now know this game was played in they very beginning of January in 1970.

The footage, according to people familiar with the game, was taken inside the Gardiner Area High School gym in 1970 and clearly shows an absolutely packed house with overflow areas for people that physically could not fit into the gym.

Munzing Media wrote in part about the vintage clip,

Here's an old basketball game from the 1970s that I had restored. Help identify the game and the players. A packed house at GAHS so it might be a Cony/Gardiner game from the early 1970s. Someone gave me this film many years ago.

Munzing Media even included an excerpt about the then 'upcoming' game from the January 1st, 1970 edition of the Kennebec Journal!