The annual Turkey Day football game between Webster Groves and Kirkwood will be played for the 95th time at noon today at Kirkwood High School.

But because Webster Groves will play in the Class 5 state championship game Saturday night, the Turkey Day game will be a matchup of the school's junior varsity squads for the fourth time in the last eight years.

"Back in '02 when we kind of first hatched this idea, we were like, well, it's not going to be happening that often," Webster Groves coach Cliff Ice said. "Then they happened to split the classifications. So that has an impact on it because it's twice as easy to get to the state championship as it would have been if Class 5 and Class 6 were together. It has turned out to have occurred quite a bit, unfortunately, depending which way you look at it."

Ice, who is in his 11th year as Webster's coach, understands there is a segment of the community that would rather see the Statesmen varsity play Kirkwood on Thanksgiving than compete for the state championship.

The day after his team rallied to beat Chaminade in the quarterfinals on an 80-yard touchdown pass as time expired, now known as the Miracle at Moss, the coach talked to a fan at the field who said he wished Ice's team would play in the Turkey Day game.

"I still view it as a great problem to have, but it is a little divisive in our community," Ice said. "They are still supportive, but for half of the community that Turkey Day is what has been there forever. The state championships, for Webster, has only been open since 1979. So for 30 years they've been playing for state championships and the other 102 it was all Turkey Day."

Webster Groves leads the Turkey Day series, which was first played in 1907, with 50 wins compared to Kirkwood's 39 victories. The teams have tied five times and the game was canceled on eight occasions, with the last in 1988.

The Statesmen (12-0), who will play Fort Osage (13-0) in the Class 5 championship game at 6:30 p.m. at the Edward Jones Dome, have advanced to the title game three times in the past eight years. The Statesmen won the Class 5 championship in 2002 and finished second the following season.

Kirkwood finished second in the Class 5 title game in 2006.