OPINION: NEW JERSEY IDEA IS ONE WHOSE TIME HAS COME
By Al Mattei
Founder, TopOfTheCircle.com
Heading into the final week of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association field hockey tournament, the scenario existed for a state championship result in which there were two pairs of schools which have, for reasons only known to the coaches and athletic directors, studiously avoided playing each other.
But that all could change in 2005, depending on the results of meetings within the NJSIAA that could yield the nation's only state field hockey Tournament of Champions.
Now, the elegance of any tournament worth its salt -- whether it is the FIFA World Cup, the NFL Playoffs, or the Little League World Series -- is that there is an undisputed, sole survivor at the end.
There have been toyings with this formula for years. Many NCAA sports offer three team championships per sport (one each for Divisions I, II, and III). Several larger states break apart the sports by geography, by school population size, the presence of post-graduate athletes, or whether or not the school is a public school.
New Jersey, for one, has been a hair-splitter's dream. In 1982, the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association crowned six -- six! -- state champions. One in each of the four public-school classes, and two for large and/or small parochial-school teams.
The NJSIAA has since pared the number of state champions from six to four that can be won amongst some 223 public, private, and parochial schools that play the sport.
But that ratio is going to get a whole lot smaller.
Under the Tournament of Champions proposal, a week will be added on to the tournament schedule, and that week, presumably, will come out of the preseason, since New Jersey starts its regular season a full week later than just about every other state in the Union.
Behind the proposal is, naturally, the best young coach in the United States, Danyle Heilig of Voorhees Eastern (N.J.). She has not lost a game since taking over the coaching helm at the school, and knows that the champions in the smaller schools would love to have a 60-minute test of wills even in the lingering bliss after winning one of the other three NJSIAA championship trophies.
"My players asked me if they could play Eastern," Martinsville Pingry School (N.J.) coach Judy Lee tells The Newark Star-Ledger about her two-time Group I champions. "A T-of-C would leave no doubt as to which team really is the best."
And a ticket to play Eastern in a single-elimination knockout would help settle discussions over the field hockey water cooler -- none more heated than discussions between fans from Eastern and from Moorestown (N.J.), whose programs, located less than 15 miles apart, have not met despite questions from parents, fans, and journalists.
"I think it would be great," said Moorestown head coach Joan Lewis, who coached Heilig within the Quaker hockey system. "I know my kids would like a chance to play Eastern."
And the same goes for Allentown (N.J.) and Plumsted New Egypt (N.J.), whose teams have not played since the Upper Freehold School District split in two.
Carol Parsons, who heads the field hockey committee, tells The Star-Ledger that there is one more step before the Tournament of Champions comes up for a vote.
"The idea was proposed by the field hockey committee and did go before the program review committee," Parsons tells The Ledger. "But the program review committee felt uncomfortable passing a proposal that was made without first receiving votes from member schools of the NJSIAA. The committee would first like to see a survey done of schools with field hockey programs and how receptive they are to the idea."
The meeting, scheduled for two weeks after the 2004 state tournament, is expected to generate such a survey.
"This would allow fans, scouts and players the opportunity to witness the best of the best in New Jersey," Heilig tells The Ledger.
"The more hockey the kids play, the better," said Nancy Williams, the winningest coach in the nation with 628 career victories. "The state offers a T of C for other sports, so why not field hockey? Coaches that play down to one champion agree that it brings out the best in the athletes."
Paring all of the 223 New Jersey public schools in the state down to one champion would require the steepest paring down to one champion in the country; Pennsylvania has two championships for about 275 schools, New York has three titles for about 232 schools, and Massachusetts has two titles for 198 schools.
It might not make for as interesting a state tournament as Delaware's, where public, magnet, charter, preparatory, Catholic, Christian, and Society of Friends schools have an equal chance of winning the state championship, regardless of size.
But then again, a Tournament of Champions in New Jersey might serve as a model to get other states to play off their titleholders against each other. And it might get California to play off their four sectional champions in a true state tournament.
Now that would be about time.