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AUGUSTA — He’s been part of the Cony football coaching staff for 20 years, but for B.L. Lippert, Friday night will be a first.

The 13-1 overall record between the Rams and Gardiner is the best in the history of the rivalry. While it’s a historic moment, the Cony coach acknowledges that the Rams’ success this year has led to an ironic twist.

“It’s the first time in my career we’ve played a game where, win or lose, it has no bearing on the standings at all, and it’s odd that it’s Gardiner,” Lippert said. “I told my coaching staff, ‘If this were the NFL, this would be a week where we rest our starters.’”

Cony (7-0), even with the No. 1 seed in Class B North secured, has no plans to do that on Senior Night against its biggest rival. Still, even if both teams will accept nothing short of a win Friday at Fuller Field, a meeting of squads with their sights set on what lies ahead in separate playoff fields has a very different feel.

Since birth, Pat Munzing has lived and breathed Gardiner football. His father, Rob Munzing, was the Tigers’ coach from 1986-2000. Now the Gardiner coach himself, Munzing played for his dad during that stretch, on teams that won back-to-back Eastern Class A titles in 1997 and 1998.

Munzing knows what this rivalry means. Outside of one Patriots shirt and one Red Sox shirt, he refuses to wear red. He proudly recalls Gardiner’s win in 1998 over Cony – then quarterbacked by Lippert – in which his uniform was covered in mud by game’s end. Yet with his team at 6-1, there’s more than the Rams on his mind.

“No matter the outcome, we’re going to finish in the 1-4 (seed) range (in Class C),” Munzing said. “So, yes, it’s a rivalry game that you want to win, but at what expense? We know that we’ve got a bye week, then get someone at home and go from there. You’ve got to weigh out the pros and cons.”

Gardiner returning to Class C after three years in B North has changed things. The previous three years, the Tigers and Rams played very similar schedules, both taking on Lawrence, Mt. Blue, Skowhegan and the like. Gardiner has played seven Class C opponents this year, so it has no common opponents with Cony.

That’s made it difficult for Cony and Gardiner to get a true feel for each other, Lippert said. It also means the Tigers and Rams know they won’t meet in the postseason, which Cony senior linebacker and offensive lineman Kaiden Veilleux says his team wants to prioritize.

“We play Gardiner every year, and it’s always a good game – they come out really excited to play – but we’re looking on to bigger things,” Veilleux said. “It’s also different because we know we’re No. 1 in the standings no matter what. Still, we want to beat them, too.”

The rivalry clearly still matters. This is Cony-Gardiner, and many of the players have siblings, parents, grandparents and even great grandparents who played in this rivalry. It’s a game no one wants to lose.

Especially Gardiner. The Tigers have been on the losing end lately, dropping six straight games to the Rams and 11 of the past 12. Munzing said his team wants nothing more than to be the one to finally beat Cony. Justin Doody concurs.

“I haven’t beaten Cony my entire life in a football game,” said Doody, a sophomore running back and linebacker. “Ever since I was a little kid playing peewee football, they’ve beaten us every time, and I feel like this would be the perfect week for us to do it.”

Cooper Clark, a Cony senior receiver and defensive back, said the game’s return to the Great American Rivalry Series has also added hype this year. After the game was omitted from the series last year, it returns with the awarding of a trophy and a game MVP courtesy of the U.S. Marines.

Following that, Cony and Gardiner will shift their focus to a postseason in which both teams have hopes of bringing Gold Balls back to their schools. Yet even if that’s an important backdrop to Friday night, there’s no shying away from what the success of both teams this fall means to the game’s history.

“It’s easy to be thinking about the future because what happens in November is ultimately more important than what happens Friday night, but I’m not sure I can convince our kids that,” Lippert said. “They care a lot about the rivalry, and that’s probably in the forefront of their minds.”