10/23/2007 - Kicking Around Re-alignment
The landscape in the Sussex County Interscholastic League has sure changed since the league was formed over 30 years ago. The SCIL has always been considered one of the “New Kids on the Block” when it came to conferences around the state.
But the SCIL is not so young anymore and is definitely suffering from some growing pains that will have to be addressed sooner or later. Mike Van Zile, Wallkill Valley’s outstanding Athletic Director, has been banging the drum for years about realigning the football state tournament system due to the disparity of size of the 10 member schools in the SCIL.
Van Zile and Kittatinny AD Chris Carroll have been spreading the word about the plan, which would eliminate all conferences for football only and divide similar-sized schools by location into districts. The district winners would then face off in a sectional tournament. The plan also allows for the possibility of rivalry games against non-district schools to stay intact and, down the road, a possible overall state champ for each group. Currently, only the Non-Public schools play to a true state champ in football.
Under the proposal, Non-Public schools would only play each other in the regular season as would Group 4 schools, Group 3 schools, etc. The plan will go up before the member schools of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association for a vote in December and a simple majority will eliminate the sometimes controversial power-point system that was implemented in 1976.
But maybe lost in all the football talk in the SCIL is the possibility of restructuring the league in boys and girls soccer and establishing a SCIL tournament, a la the SCIL basketball tournament.
Two proponents of such a plan, are longtime Vernon boys coach John Ryan, who has over 360 career wins and 10 SCIL titles to his credit, and Pope John girls soccer coach Ryan Barbulescu, whose Lions have won four of the last five SCIL crowns. The two coaches are not looking to bust up the conference, but possibly switching it to a two-division format, allowing for more independent games, which would be good preparation for the state tournament.
As is, teams in the SCIL are locked into an 18-game league schedule. The NJSIAA has three scheduling options for soccer teams:
1. 16 games, plus two tournaments, and the state tournament
2. 18 games, plus one tournament, and the state tournament
3. 20 games, plus the state tournament
All of the girls teams in the SCIL currently play under the 20-game option, which only allows for two independent games. Throw in some bad weather and you are just playing 18 due to your league commitment. Jefferson, which is the only Morris County school in the loop, has the option of playing in the Morris County Tournament because there is no SCIL tourney. The girls did not enter this year, but the boys did, and lost to Morris Hills, 7-0. The Jefferson boys used schedule option No. 2 because of the MCT.
Barbulescu caught a lot of flak and provided bulletin board fodder for the rest of the SCIL at the start of the season when he said PJ needed more competition within the SCIL if the Lions were to take the next step in advancing in the always-powerful Non-Public, North A sectional tournament.
But in talking with the coach, he explained to me that he said he also wanted a SCIL tournament, which never came across when he made his statement about the competition level, he said.
So here is the way I would set up the divisions for boys soccer in the SCIL. The first group we’ll call the Jerry Morelli Division, which would be the “A Division”, like in European professional soccer. The teams in the Morelli Division would be comprised of Sparta (Group 3), Vernon (Group 4), High Point (Group 3), Newton (Group 2) and Pope John (Non-Public A).
The teams were selected based on size and success in league play the last five years. Sparta has won or shared the last five SCIL crowns and has a combined 76-10-4 record in league matches coming into this season. Coach Andrew Lowery’s Spartans have outscored their SCIL opponents, 331-58, during that span. Vernon (64-16-8), Newton (53-25-8), Pope John (39-42-8) and High Point (41-45-4) are next in line.
The second division we will call the Bill Rawson Division, in honor of Mugs Media’s colorful wrestling analyst and my former newspaper colleague. The Rawson Division, all of which are Group 2 schools, would be made up of Wallkill Valley (41-44-4), Kittatinny (34-49-6), Lenape Valley (32-47-7), Hopatcong (25-62-3) and Jefferson (9-74-4).
The girls would also be broken down into two divisions. The first division, or as I would like to call it, the Paul Mencher Division, would be comprised of Pope John (79-7-4), High Point (65-18-7) ,Vernon (62-25-3), Sparta (46-34-8) and Jefferson (39-45-6).
The girls second division, or the Gene Conquy Division, in honor of the Sussex County Hall-of-Famer, would be made up of Newton (36-44-7), Lenape Valley (37-48-3), Wallkill Valley (33-46-10), Kittatinny (14-69-7) and Hopatcong (5-81-1).
Each team would play its divisional foes twice and play the other division once, for an unbalanced 13-game schedule. Two division champs would be named, and unlike the hoops tourney, I would have all 10 teams entered in the SCIL Tournament, which could be played on Sundays in October, like the Bergen and Morris tourneys.
Now with just a 13-game league commitment, teams can schedule five non-conference opponents in order to gear up for states or for schools on the state tourney bubble, they can schedule schools of similar ability and size. The league would utilize the state’s second schedule option of 18 games, plus a tourney, and then states.
Ryan scheduled prep school power Hun and national power St. Benedict’s this season. The Hun game was cancelled due to a SCIL makeup commitment and the Vikings fell 4-0 to St. Benedict’s under the lights at Maple Grange Community Park in Vernon. The Vikes hung tough for the first 20 minutes before the Grey Bees put on a clinic and showed why soccer is called “The Beautiful Game.”
It was a treat for Sussex County soccer fans to have the premier boys soccer program in the nation visit the area. But Ryan told me there were grumblings about the Vikes playing St. Benedict’s in the high school soccer community. The Bees are not members of the NJSIAA and can pull players from all over the world, and they do. This has caused some dissention among some coaches.
My feeling is, if playing St. Benedict’s can help your program, why not? Politics should not come into play when it is a benefit for the kids. Although they lost, the Vikings will cherish the memory of going against the best of the best. And I will tell you now, the Vikings won’t see a better team in the state tournament, so it was a great tuneup.
And more power to Ryan for scheduling the game the week of the state tournament cutoff. He could have gone the easy way and played it when it wouldn’t have counted toward state qualification. In fact, SBP coach Rick Jacobs has so much respect for Ryan that the Bees dropped out of the Essex County Tournament to keep their commitment to the Vikings.
All in all, my plan might not be perfect, and it could definitely be tweaked, but it is a start. No one gains when Sparta’s boys beat Jefferson, 8-0, and the same can be said of when PJ’s girls blank Hopatcong, 8-0. Under my plan, teams should have a better chance of winning a division title, which could spark more interest in a program that has struggled under the current format. And you could also throw in the caveat that the last-place finisher of the top division would swap places with the second- division winner the next season, so everyone has a chance to prove themselves.
Sometimes change is good, but it is also challenging. And as the SCIL keeps growing, so will those challenges. So it is better to act now before it can’t be fixed.
That’s it for now, see you on the sidelines.
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