Where to Stay for the Battle of the Ravine
If you've never been to the Battle of the Ravine, it's hard to explain why a Division II football game in a town of 10,000 feels like the biggest weekend of the year. But it does.
Ouachita Baptist and Henderson State have been playing each other since 1895. The first game was on Thanksgiving Day, and Ouachita won 8–0. They've been going at it ever since, which makes it one of the oldest rivalries in NCAA Division II.
Here's the part that gets people: the two campuses sit directly across the street from each other. When it's an away game, the visiting team walks. Not a bus, not a plane. They put on their pads and walk across the road to the other team's stadium. It's promoted as the only rivalry in the country where that happens, and once you've seen it you understand why people drive in from three states to watch.
The all-time series sits at 47–45–6 in Ouachita's favor, which tells you everything about how close this thing has stayed for 130 years.
This year's game
Saturday, November 14, 2026 at 1:00 PM, at Henderson State.
Arkadelphia has a limited number of rooms. On Battle of the Ravine weekend, they go. Alumni come back, families come in, and people who've been coming for thirty years already have their reservation. If you wait until October to figure out where you're sleeping, you'll be driving in from Hot Springs or Malvern.
Our cabins sit about 8 miles from Arkadelphia, near Lake DeGray in Bismarck. That's roughly fifteen minutes from campus — close enough to get to a 1:00 kickoff without rushing, far enough that you're staying somewhere quiet instead of a motel parking lot full of tailgaters.
We have six cabins on one lot, which matters if you're coming with a group. Families who come for this weekend tend to come in numbers — parents, grandparents, a couple of siblings and their kids. You can book two or three cabins side by side and keep everyone together without anyone sleeping on a couch.
Each cabin is pet friendly, has a full kitchen, and has room to park a truck or a boat trailer if you're making a longer weekend of it.
Make it a weekend
Most people come in Friday and leave Sunday, and there's more than enough to fill the rest of it.
Lake DeGray is right here — the Arlie Moore boat ramp is less than a mile from the cabins, and November is a good month for fishing without the summer crowds. DeGray Lake Resort State Park has an 18-hole golf course and six hiking trails. If the weather turns, Hot Springs is about thirty minutes up the road.
Or you can sit on the back porch with a fire going and not do much of anything. That's a legitimate use of a fall weekend too.
If you want to make more of the weekend than football, here's a rundown of things to do at Lake Degray.
Book now
Battle of the Ravine weekend fills up earlier every year. If you know you're coming, book it now and stop thinking about it.
Book HERE
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