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A topic of discussion featured on the BLSS:
Chris Olsen, veteran head football coach at Wayne Hills High, doesn't like his team playing in a new conference.
His quarterback, senior Mike Quinn, thinks it's a good thing.
But no matter what anyone thinks, the conference realignment, which affected everything north of Middlesex County, is here to stay for all scholastic sports. And perhaps no team in any sport will be quite as affected as the Wayne Hills football team.
Wayne Hills has won five consecutive sectional titles and 52 straight games -- the third-longest winning streak in state football history. Should the Patriots go 12-0 for the fifth straight year, they would break the all-time state record of 63 consecutive victories set by Paulsboro from 1992-98. Randolph is second on the state list with a streak of 54 triumphs, which ended in 1991.
But this season, thanks to the realignment that moved Wayne Hills from the North Bergen Interscholastic Athletic League to the North Jersey Tri-County League's Division 3, the Passaic County power will have to go up against nine unfamiliar opponents -- including a couple of state powers in their own right."The new schedule is good for everyone," Quinn said. "It will show everyone how good our team really is. I look forward to the challenge."
That challenge will include facing West Essex on the road in North Caldwell in the season opener Friday night and perennial state powerhouse St. Joseph of Montvale in Week 4. West Essex reached the NJSIAA North Jersey, Section 1, Group 2 championship game last season and St. Joseph won the Non-Public, Group 3 title."The new schedule won't really affect us," Quinn said. "It's just a different level of play. I think our team is good enough to play with any team in the state, but we will really be tested from the first game against West Essex. We just play whoever they put in front of us. Do the same things, which means do whatever it takes to get the win."
Wayne Hills will get to face rival Wayne Valley in a rare cross-town contest on Sept. 25, but Olsen is irritated by the fact that Wayne Hills will lose traditional rivalry games against Ramapo, Old Tappan and Pascack Valley under the new conference alignment.
"The last 15 years we've had one of the greatest rivalries in the state with Ramapo, and to not be playing them anymore makes no sense," said Olsen, whose team has not lost since a 24-20 defeat to Ramapo on Oct. 29, 2004. "Those rivalries are what high school sports are all about. It was one of the worst days in the history of sports in New Jersey when the state sent out those guidelines saying they were going to realign."
Wayne Hills isn't the only school whose schedule has undergone a complete overhaul.
The realignment has thrown teams together from different parts of the state as the new football leagues fight through growing pains in their inaugural season.
Consider:
Last season there were 72 football games pitting a team from Essex County against a team from neighboring Morris. With the advent of the Super Essex Conference and the Northwest Jersey Conference, there will be only five Essex/Morris crossover games this season.
The Greater Middlesex Conference remains intact, but smaller schools lost games with Union County members of the Mountain Valley Conference. The GMC forged an alliance with the Shore Conference, and that set up a non-conference matchup at 11 a.m. Sunday at Rutgers Stadium, where Piscataway will face Howell. Piscataway also will play Toms River North this season and Howell is scheduled to face Woodbridge and Sayreville.
The Thanksgiving Day game between East Orange Campus and Barringer will be revived after a 15-year absence. It was one of the oldest continuously run public school holiday rivalries (97 straight through 1993) in the country. The game is set for 10 a.m. on Thanksgiving at East Orange. Barringer won the last meeting, 42-0, but East Orange leads the series, 49-39-9.
The formation of the Super Essex Conference means West Essex and Newark Central can finally start playing Essex County teams again. West Essex, long a member of the Iron Hills Conference-Hills Division, has played only four Essex schools since 1988. Central has played only one Essex opponent -- Verona, in 2002 -- since the Newark City League disbanded after the 1988 season.
Pope John, a parochial school in rural Sussex County, will face urban Essex County power Irvington tomorrow in Sparta. Both schools are filling an open date in their schedule caused by the realignment.
Whether or not the realignment derails Wayne Hills on its way to making state history remains to be seen. But with Quinn at quarterback, junior standout Brian Dowling in the backfield and star linemen Chris Fonti, Ryan Salerno and Nick Tumminello, Olsen said the schedule shouldn't make a difference.
"St. Joseph will be tough, but as far as the schedule goes, it's always tough," he said. "Our first goal is always to get to the championship game and our second goal is to win it. Winning every game is third. I'm not naive, I know we're not going to win every game in the history of Wayne Hills football. That's just not going to happen."
Quinn agreed that the streak is secondary to winning another state title. But losing a game, no matter what team Wayne Hills plays, is not an option, he said.
"It would be catastrophic," he said. "I'd be very upset just thinking about the people who played here before us, the kids who played on undefeated teams who worked so hard to make a name for the program. I would be upset and the team would be upset. I think it would destroy me.
"Then I think we would get back up and rip apart our next opponent."
By: Ed Murray
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