Sussex County Sports Blog

By Dan Cleary

9/8/2009 - NJAC Era Begins

For years, Art Disque dreamed of a Sussex County sports league when he was the AD and a coach at Newton High School back in the 1950s and 1960s.

Disque’s dream came true 34 years ago with the formation of the Sussex County Interscholastic League. The loop had an amazing run, and in my opinion, put Sussex County athletics on the map in the Garden State.

But like the tired old cliché, “All good things must come to an end,” and as everyone knows, the SCIL is no more as we enter a new era of high school athletics in the state due to the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association’s realignment plan.

And after years of debating, bickering and backroom dealing, it is finally here, the dawning of the Northwest Jersey Athletic Conference.

Although I have been typing those words for almost nine months now, it just doesn’t seem right. I’m trying to keep an open mind about the realignment and when I talk to coaches and ADs from the smaller schools they make great points and when I speak with the people from the bigger schools from the old SCIL, most of them despise it, especially those who don’t happen to coach football.

But good or bad it is here. Just for the history aspect of it all, this is most important year in New Jersey high school athletics, so for that reason alone I’m intrigued, not excited, to see what the future holds.

I think for the Morris County schools in the NJAC (see I think of the Division III college conference when I write those letters. I feel like I should be writing about Kean University or Rowan) it is a welcome change and sets up some great rivalries like Mendham and West Morris and Chatham and Madison.

But for the last three-plus decades, the SCIL was an island unto itself and I think everyone up here liked that idea. And they liked it even more come state tournament time when someone from the league would “upset” a team from Bergen, Morris, Hudson or Passaic counties.

The SCIL gave this still rural county an identity. Sussex County is far from the cow country it was in 1975, but it won’t be confused with Hoboken anytime soon, either. Prior to the SCIL, the Sussex County schools were interlopers in the old Iron Area Conference and the Skyline Conference.

And now it seem like we have gone back to those days for the larger schools—Vernon, High Point, Sparta and Pope John. They will be playing all Morris schools in the American/National Division and I don’t care what anyone tells me, there won’t be any “new” rivalries for the Sussex schools made in that combined division as it stands today.

The Pope John-Sparta rivalry was around long before the SCIL, and other than that, I don’t see people getting fired up for the annual Vernon-Morristown clash or the High Point-Montville showdown.

And why? It is simple—travel. Football will always draw fans, but for the other sports which are held on school days/evenings I don’t see kids hoping in their cars and heading to Mo-town for a game.

Also, high school students are new drivers and I know a lot of parents are not crazy about the idea of their newly-minted licensees driving nearly an hour away, especially in the winter time when the weather is so unpredictable.

I know I sound like an old crank who fears change and wants everything to stay the same and there is a lot of truth to that. But it just seems like this was all just thrown upon us because a very vocal group of schools wanted to kick the non-public schools out of their conferences in all sports.

As I have said in the past, the ADs in the NJAC did a terrific job getting organized once the plan was a reality. Unlike their counterparts in other parts of North Jersey, they went to work and came up with the best plan they possibly could in the short time they had to do it.

Maybe I’m wrong about the whole thing. It wouldn’t be the first time and certainly not the last time I’ve made the wrong call. When Mike Van Zile of Wallkill Valley first came up with the plan to realign football, I was dead-set against it. But after listening to Mike, I came around and realized that FOOTBALL, not every sport, needed to be addressed.

Maybe the NJAC will be a perfectly good conference that will serve the needs of all the student-athletes and the SCIL will be just a fond memory for old fogies like me.

I don’t know. But what I do know is that it starts this week whether I like it or not. I hope the league is a success and the ADs work out all the bugs in the system because the realignment plan will have a very short honeymoon if things don’t go too smoothly.

I know of several coaches who are already talking about breaking up the NJAC and restoring the SCIL in some shape or form in the next few years and the NJAC season hasn’t even had a full week of play.

But it is what it is for now, so excuse me as I try to get fired up for that Sparta-West Morris girls soccer game.

That’s it for now, see you on the sidelines in Morris and Sussex counties.

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Sussex County Sports Blog

By Dan Cleary

9/8/2009 - NJAC Era Begins