By Dan Cleary

12/6/2007 - Reform Comes Slowly to New Jersey High School Sports

Imagine you are walking through one of the beautiful wooded areas in Sussex County and you come across a fire. You immediately grab your cell phone, call 911, and let the authorities know what is going on. Now imagine, the person on the other end of the emergency call says, as the flames rapidly grow, “Thank you for calling, we will form a committee and look into it. We won’t put a timetable on it, but we are doing the best we can.”

Sounds insane, doesn’t it? Well, it might not be as severe as a wildfire, but that was the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association’s response this week to its member schools, which sent a clear message to the state that something needs to be done about the competitive balance in athletics between non-public and public schools in the state.

The member schools narrowly defeated a proposal by the Northern New Jersey Interscholastic League (NNJIL) that would have separated public and non-public schools in all sports. The plan was defeated Monday by 186-178 margin. A second proposal, introduced by the Sussex County Interscholastic League (SCIL), which would have separated the two factions in just football, was voted down, 209-155. The football-only plan has been championed by Wallkill Valley Athletic Director Mike Van Zile for the last decade, and fell by a 4-1 margin when it was first brought to the member schools in 2000.

Pope John, the only non-public in the SCIL, was the only school that voted against both plans Monday out of the 10 schools in the league.

So where does this leave us? The NJSIAA’s Executive Committee convened on Wednesday and approved three recommendations put forth by a special committee comprised of non-public and public schools charged with finding a solution to the state-wide problem.

1. Form a committee that would look into the realignment of the 21 athletic conferences in the state by creating larger conferences based on school size, location and strength of program. This solution does not mean that all public and non-public schools will be separated, but the committee will see what the best fit for each school is. NJSIAA Executive Director Steve Timko acknowledged the urgency of the situation, but did not set a timetable for the committee.

2. The committee increased the transfer waiting period from 30 days a season to a full calendar year if a varsity student-athlete transfers without a bona fide change of address. This change could be put into effect in September 2008.

3. The NJSIAA will hire a full-time compliance officer (a fancy way of saying an investigator) to investigate any accusations of recruiting or transfer violations. If things go right, this position could be filled in time for the 2008-09 school year.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I’m all for the recommendations and it is about time that the NJSIAA took some action. However, I found the disparity in the votes by the schools on the realignment proposals a bit puzzling, to say the least. I’m sure the NJSIAA was happy with the results because approval would have guaranteed a long and bitter appeal by the non-publics. The association has taken enough heat and bad publicity the last few years over this issue and its spending habits, which were exposed in an outstanding investigative piece by The Record of Hackensack a couple of years ago.

My stance was vote “No” on the NNJIL plan which separates all sports and “Yes” to the SCIL plan. My feeling is that the way football playoff system is set up now with power points, too many schools, large and small, are at a disadvantage due to the conference they play in. Plus football is different from all other sports when it comes to depth.

Sure, a Group 1 school can have a 6-foot-5, 260-pound lineman, but most likely his backup would not even come close to that size due to the small talent pool. Whereas, larger public and non-public schools have the depth to overcome injuries due to their higher student population. That was one of the main points Van Zile has hammered home in his quest to level the football playing field.

I know the timing for the SCIL couldn’t be worse with a small Group 2, Kittatinny, running the table in football this season and winning the SCIL crown. But it has to be noted, that it is the school’s first. Jim Green runs a great program, but he can’t put the numbers out on the field each season like a Pope John, Vernon or Sparta.

Realigning football makes sense to me, but blowing up all the conferences in the state seems a little drastic. The SCIL is pretty competitive in all of its sports. Yes, Pope John is dominant in a few sports, but so are some of the public schools. Kittatinny and High Point wrestling, Sparta girls hoops, boys soccer, and its tennis programs, Newton field hockey, Jefferson softball, and for years, Vernon swimming, all have ruled their respective sports.

Take a look at Pope John’s cross country and track programs. Brian Corcoran has molded the teams into state powers by hard work. If you take a quick look at his runners, they don’t have wings on their feet or wear capes. They just work hard, and hard work isn’t exclusive to just non-public schools.

Now if you want to break up the SCIL into large school and small school divisions, I’m all for it. And there is a movement in the league to do that. I just don’t see the sense in breaking up all the conferences in the state. I feel it should be done on a conference-by conference basis and the state should do everything in its power to help conferences like the NNJIL, which is facing a mutiny from its public school members, and the SCIL, solve their problems.

A look at the NNJIL vote showed that most of the South Jersey schools voted “No.” Talk to any coach from the Shore Conference and they will tell you they cleaned up their own house and the monster conference is one of the best in the state.

And when it comes to the non-publics, all you hear about are the Don Boscos, Bergen Catholics and Seton Hall Preps in the world. Yes, they are superpowers in all sports. But what about the small non-publics? They would be scrambling to compete in just an all-non-public conference and would be forced to travel greater distances, which would be an economic strain.

I know, boo-hoo, poor non-publics. But let’s face facts. The non-publics aren’t going anywhere and they would most likely win an appeal if they were separated in all sports. I think it would be a little more palatable for the non-publics if just football was realigned. Even Bosco’s outstanding head football coach Greg Toal agrees and said something has to be done in football. This is coming from a coach who made his bones in the profession by building winners at a small public school (River Dell) and a large one (Hackensack).

So if the state does decide to realign all the conferences, I hope it does it wisely. One of the provisions should be that the realignment should be reviewed every 10 years to see if there has been a shift in the balance. Look, schools change size all the time. For example, Hoboken was a Group 3 power for years, but the Redwings are now a Group 1 school. And who is to say that Wallkill Valley won’t become a Group 3 in the future with all the building that is being done in Hardyston? It is a constantly changing landscape in this part of the state and in South Jersey, where it seems a new high school opens up every year.

The bottom line is that change is needed, and if the plans to enforce the transfer and recruiting rules are diligently followed, it should alleviate a lot of the problems that ail the state when it comes to this issue. But to the proponents of radical change in all sports, all I can say is: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

RANDOM THOUGHTS: Vernon Township lost a great man this past week when former mayor Jim Kilby passed away. But my connection to Mr. Kilby was not a political one, but a sports one. Four of his five sons--Jimmy, Chuck, David and Rob--played hoops at Vernon with Rob being the only Vernon boy to score 1,000 points despite a severe hearing handicap. David was the goalie on Vernon’s only boys soccer sectional championship team, which tragically lost one of it key players last week when Paul Lech passed away at the young age of 37.

Mr. Kilby was a staple at all of his son’s hoops games along with his fifth son, Steven, who is physically-challenged and was unable to play sports. Mr. Kilby played a huge role in Vernon’s emergence as a soccer town as he helped run Vernon Kicks, a youth program in the 1970s that helped produce the players that formed the Vernon boys soccer dynasty in the mid to late 1980s. Rest in peace Mr. Kilby and Paul. The soccer community will always remember you.

Congratulations to Eric Powe and the members of the Sussex County Community College women’s basketball team for posting its first-ever win by defeating Cumberland County last week. For a program in its first year of existence to post a win in just its first week of play is an amazing accomplishment. Hopefully, some girls hoops players around the SCIL take notice and consider SCCC next season. If Powe is able to keep some of the outstanding SCIL talent home, the Skylanders could quickly become a Region 19 and Garden State Athletic Conference power.

That’s it for now, see you on the sidelines.