Two high schools, one football team. That was the decision made by WW-P school officials last month following on the heels of a rule change by the state allowing players from high schools North and South to play on a unified team.
On Dec. 4, the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association approved a rule change that had been proposed by the WW-P School District to allow Group III and larger schools (North is Group III and South is Group IV) within the same district to form a co-op team if there wasn’t enough players to safely field a team at each school.
Under the previous rule, districts were prevented from merging in several sports, including football. That policy cost the undermanned North team, which had just three seniors, an opportunity to play as a varsity this past fall, despite numerous appeals to state officials, including the commissioner of education. The Knights played a JV schedule instead, for safety reasons.
Superintendent David Aderhold on Dec. 21 announced the merger in mid-December after studying the subject for several weeks after the NJSIAA changed the policy.
Under the new rules, school districts must re-examine the necessity of their co-ops every two years. Co-op teams are also restricted from divisional championship and state tournament participation, and they have a 50-player cap on rising seniors and juniors.
So far, no additional details have been announced regarding how the district will proceed with the co-op.
“This is not going to be an easy task,” said South football head coach Skip Edwards. “Even though it’s WW-P, you have two different school communities. It’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of cooperation to bring everybody together. I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of bumps in the road, but nothing that can’t be overcome.”
Said North football coach Jeff Reilly: “Like a lot of things in life, you can’t hang on what happened in the past and what-if-this or what-if-that. You move forward and continue to evolve and continue to grow.”
In making the decision to co-op, the district conducted a poll of coaches, players and parents from North and South, and examined injury data before determining that merging the two high school programs in its school district was the best way to ensure safe participation in football in 2018 and 2019.
According to Aderhold, last season there were more than 87 documented injuries, including six concussions, four broken bones, a patella dislocation, two lacerations requiring stitches, and two anterior cruciate ligament tears. Most of the numbers are up from previous years.
“As we work to organize the football program, with three true levels of competition, freshmen, JV and varsity, we believe that we can provide greater opportunity for the development of our student-athletes and improve player safety,” said Aderhold in a letter to the community. “Promoting the development for student-athletes to compete when they are developmentally ready for varsity competition will make teams better and safer.”
Players and coaches have been coming to terms with the announcement even as they work out separately while preparing for next season together. WW-P will hire a staff to run the program, and also is looking at all aspects that are affected, such as cheerleading and marching band.
“Honestly, at first I was a little disappointed (to merge) but not as much, because I’m getting a chance to play varsity,” said Jahmiq Johnson, one of two North juniors. “Merging with a lot of kids that I know from South, I think it’ll be good. It’ll be fun. Once we know each other, we can build good chemistry and have a good team for the football year.”
‘I wanted to keep the North-South rivalry, but I realize the bigger picture that football is kind of dwindling in our community…’
Johnson is focusing on the basketball season at the moment, but is looking forward to next fall and playing with the Pirate players that he knows. South is also trying to embrace the change.
“I’m looking forward to the players we’re getting,” said Ali Rupani, one of three juniors along with twins Andrew and Brian Zhong already named captains for the Pirates. “North football had a lot of athletic players filling out their roster the last few years, and I think that getting them will push WW-P over the top and help us get the winning culture back at South and North.”
Many of the North and South players grew up going to the same elementary school, and some have played football together for the Wildcats Pop Warner team as recently as eighth grade before moving to their rival programs.
“I think the toughest thing would be trying to figure out how to play with each other,” said Brian Zhong. “It’s going to be hard to transition from being rivals to being teammates, and there will be a lot of competition between players for playing time, but we just have to find a way to not let our differences get in the way of the overall success of the team.”
Said Andrew Zhong: “It took a while for it to sink in. I wanted to keep the North-South rivalry, but I realize the bigger picture that football is kind of dwindling in our community and it was the best decision to combine.”
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Meanwhile, as the school district was making its plans for the 2018 football season, the fallout from the situation at High School North had reached the halls of the New Jersey Statehouse. Lawmakers were considering legislation in response to what many legislators believe was a failure by the NJSIAA to address the needs of the students in WW-P.
Identical bills passed the state Senate, 24-10, and the Assembly, 52-14, on Jan. 8 that would permit any public high schools within the same district to merge any sports team—not just football—for reasons of low participation numbers, safety concerns or financial difficulties without any say from the NJSIAA.
Daniel R. Benson and Annette Quijano sponsored the bill in the Assembly, while Shirley Turner and Linda Greenstein sponsored it in the Senate.
As the News was going to press on Jan. 15, it was announced that Gov. Chris Christie was not going to sign the bill.
The bill had been placed on the governor’s “action not taken” list, meaning that the legislature will have to go through the process of approving the bill again and then present it to incoming Gov. Phil Murphy.
The NJSIAA is opposed to the law, which it says would create the opportunity for the co-ops to become super teams.
Officials from the NJSIAA lobbied the governor and athletic directors from its member schools to contact their legislative representatives to veto the bill after it was introduced. The governor’s pocket veto renders the unable to vote to override the bill’s rejection by Christie.
“The way the legislation is written, they’ve chosen to give 20 districts an advantage over the 400-some members,” said former WW-P North principal Michael Zappichi, who is now NJSIAA project manager. “Multiple high school districts would be able to combine teams not only for participation reasons, but also for budget reasons. That’s the one piece that has the most chance for abuse. The substance of the bill itself, aside from the budgetary piece, is not a difficult thing.”
“We believe the legislation is rife with unintended consequences,” the letter also said. “Multi-school districts will be encouraged to combine programs to save money. This will reduce the number of playing opportunities for student-athletes, and lead to the creation of super teams.”
The letter also said that the legislation was “unprecedented in New Jersey high school athletics, essentially dictating to our member schools what we will do, without any dialogue or exchange of thoughts and the potential negative impact on our students and our programs.”
The NJSIAA wants the ability to hear co-op situations on a case-by-case basis, but a law would take that away from process away from them. But they also acknowledge that they’d like to be able to handle cases quicker.
“In the bylaws, there’s a very prescribed procedure how legislation gets introduced,” Zapicchi said. “One of the things that has come out of the West Windsor situation is we’re going to look at the timeline and see if we can make it shorter so we can be more responsive to the needs of the member schools. That is something good that’s going to come of it.
“They followed the guidelines,” he added. “The problem was because they didn’t have that approval of their league, their request for a waiver to be heard could not be heard by the executive committee. That was the problem. That’s why it took longer than it generally would have.”
In supporting the bill, Sen. Turner argues that, “it seemed as if the NJSIAA was looking for ways to deny high school students the opportunity that I believe is a very essential opportunity to be able to participate in sports.”
Turner is a former physical education teacher who grew up playing four sports. “They were unreasonable,” she said. “This organization should not be putting up barriers to getting involved in competitive sports.”
Turner says if there is any abuse of the law, she will be the first to rectify it to ensure that the law leads to greater participation opportunities, not to competitive imbalance.
“Nobody would be able to develop a ‘super team,’” Turner said. “The only way there would be these co-operatives would be if one school in a district did not have enough players. This organization looks for the worst in people.”
Proponents for the co-op bill argued that something has to be done to prevent another program like WW-P North, one of three in the state to close its varsity football program, from losing an opportunity to play. The NJSIAA’s main concern is the needless formation of “super teams,” with teams combining for competitive advantages at the cost of one program.
“The goal has always been the preservation of sports and ensuring opportunity and access,” Aderhold said. “Any district that enters into a co-operative agreement for reasons other than safety and opportunity does so for the wrong reasons.”
WW-P North and South believe that they will be a better team combined, but they also don’t see it tipping the competitive scales their way.
“I don’t think this gives us an unfair advantage because the two teams have been playing with low numbers the last few years,” Rupani said. “Combining just makes us competitive, not a powerhouse.”
Prior to the bill’s passage by the legislature, Aderhold penned a strong response in support of co-oping that he sent to members of the New Jersey state legislature.
‘Both our schools have been declining in numbers for a couple of years, so I think it was inevitable for us to combine.’
Officials in WW-P have said they fear that low participation numbers in some of the other sports in the district, will also become a problem. The new state law would address that issue.
Aderhold responded to the NJSIAA’s concerns in a strongly worded article titled, “The hypocrisy of the NJSIAA.”
“What the NJSIAA seemingly fails to understand is that for a school district to create a ‘super team’ they would have to purposefully remove a viable program and diminish opportunities for their student athletes so that they could win a championship,” Aderhold said.
“The concept of the ‘super team’ is flawed. Does anyone really believe that Hamilton School District would close a baseball team so that Steinert and Hamilton West can merge? Or that Cherry Hill East and Cherry Hill West would merge their basketball programs? Or that Freehold Regional High School District would merge their six programs into one so that they can dominate their league or conference? It’s a ludicrous idea that would be the demise of a Board of Education and a Superintendent. The only reason to merge a team would be for enrollment and safety.”
Aderhold added that people should be very concerned by the NJSIAA’s “cowardly” position. “Instead of welcoming athletic participation, the NJSIAA continues to deny student participation and chooses to ignore the growing tide of challenges, which include but are not limited to, safety concerns, sports specialization, lack of interest, expense, shifting demographics and the stability of feeder programs.”
Said Reilly: “There are schools struggling with baseball numbers or soccer numbers, and the big, big thing overall is you’re talking about 20 school districts in the state. We’re not talking about everybody. So those 20 school districts, they’re on the radar. If anyone tries to do something unethical, they’re being watched pretty closely. We work in the public eye. You ethically have to make the right decision.”
Aderhold can point to healthy programs from his own school district as an example. The WW-P North and South track and field programs have both won state titles; and combined they would be a super team, but that’s nowhere in consideration.
“There would be no reason to combine High School South or High School North athletic programs such as spring track, tennis, basketball or fencing,” Aderhold said. “Teams that have not faced difficulty with participation would have no reason to be considered for a co-operative agreement. Bringing forward this legislation was never about championships or creating ‘super teams.’ It was always about safety and opportunity.”
“I think in the long run it would definitely help,” Brian Zhong said. “Both our schools have been declining in numbers for a couple of years, so I think it was inevitable for us to combine.”
The High School North and High School South football teams play each other in the above file photo.,
