The Eastern Illinois and Western Illinois men's basketball teams will compete for the Railsplitter Trophy this weekend inside Lantz Arena.
While traveling trophies are commonplace in football, the concept is a little more foreign on the hardwood.
As the story goes, Don Vogel, an employee in the EIU student affairs department, wanted to create a rivalry game around 1976 and Western Illinois was a logical choice. At the time he didn't want to do the trophy in football but instead focused on basketball as the Panthers were a mainstay among the top NCAA Division II teams in the nation with Western Illinois having had success at that level as well. The two schools had faced off on the basketball court since 1928 with success for both institutions.
The trophy of choice was the "Old Railsplitter," a heavy ax mounted on a large plaque weighing more than 30 pounds meant to tie the two Land of Lincoln schools to the former President and his nickname of the 'Railsplitter.' The trophy was created by the EIU Alumni Association and presented for the first time on Dec. 10, 1977 when the Panthers won 108-74 in Lantz Arena.
The agreement was that even though both schools played a home-and-home series each season, only one of the games would count as the 'Old Railsplitter' game. The trophy was presented for the next two seasons but slowly became an afterthought as EIU won the 1978 NCAA Division II National Football Championship, was the NCAA Division II runner-up in football in 1980 and transitioned to NCAA Division I in 1981.
As the annual trophy game took a backseat, the ax was relegated to a wall in the EIU Student Union for many years with only three rivalry game scores listed on the plaque. The trophy eventually found its way to a storage closet.
In 2015 the "Old Railsplitter Ax" was rediscovered and presented to then EIU head coach Jay Spoonhour by Steve Rich, Assistant Vice President for Advancement and Director of the EIU Alumni Association. During the 2015-16 season, the trophy was once again up for grabs between the two schools with Western Illinois winning both matchups.
Eastern Illinois reclaimed the trophy with a 73-64 win at home on November 19, 2016.
The trophy currently resides in Macomb, after the Leathernecks won 71-54 last December.
According to EIU records, the teams have played 166 times with the Panthers holding an 84-82 advantage.