With Bishop Ahr ineligible for Blue Division football title, Spotswood can clinch third straight crown with one more win
Despite remaining undefeated in the Greater Middlesex Conference Blue Division with a 34-0 victory over Metuchen on Friday night, the Bishop Ahr High School football team is ineligible to win the division title under league rules.
Carl Buffalino, past president of the conference, said under a newly approved rule, which the league’s membership adopted in a vote earlier this year, any team seeking relief, such as Bishop Ahr, that drops down a division is ineligible to win a title in that division during the two-year cycle in which it is competing as a new division member.
Bishop Ahr successfully appealed to drop from the White Division, where the league initially placed the Trojans for the 2016 and 2017 campaigns, to the Blue Division for the current two-year cycle, which commenced before the start of this academic year.
READ: Funderburk, Brazicki, Adeniyi star in Bishop Ahr football win over Metuchen
The league approved Bishop Ahr’s maneuver – along with J.P. Stevens’ and North Brunswick’s request to drop from the Red Division to the White Division – as part of its 2016-17 realignment.
J.P. Stevens and North Brunswick are similarly ineligible to win a White Division title this year and next, but the Raiders and Hawks have already been eliminated from this year’s division race.
The Trojans, who improved to 4-2 overall and 4-0 in the division, moved into a first-place tie with two-time defending Blue Division champion Spotswood, which is 5-1 overall and 4-0 in the division.
Metuchen is the last Blue Division member with a chance to win the division title. If the Bulldogs win their three remaining games -- against Spotswood, Dunellen and Highland Park -- and Spotswood loses to Bishop Ahr and Metuchen, the Bulldogs would win the division title by virtue of their head-to-head win over Spotswood and because both clubs would finish with identical 4-2 division records.
Spotswood head coach Andy Cammarano said on Friday night that he was unfamiliar with the league rule prohibiting Bishop Ahr from winning a division title. The veteran mentor, who is in his 10th season, said the Chargers, who will host the Trojans on Oct. 22 and the Bulldogs on Nov. 5, still want to win the championship on the field.
"Our guys want to (win a title) on the field," said Cammarano, whose team can clinch the division title with a win over Bishop Ahr or Metuchen. "I respect the bylaws of the conference, and they have rules for a reason. The idea of (schools like Bishop Ahr wanting) relief, I get it. I know if I told my kids they were champions, they wouldn’t exactly jump through the roof because they want to defeat everybody in the (division). It (winning three consecutive titles) is a credit to the program, the kids and the coaches, but we really won’t be happy unless we do it on the field, and we want to do it (win the title) outright. If it’s us and Ahr next weekend, it will be a big game for our team and our program.”
Asked to react to the league rule which prevents the Trojans from being able to contend for the division crown, Bishop Ahr Athletics Director Mike Wolfthal, alluding to the Oct. 22 battle of division unbeatens, said: “The field of play will answer all questions. When we play Spotswood, the better team will win and the team that wins will be that team that has dominated the division.”
Bishop Ahr compiled a 21-26 record in the White Division from 2010-15. The Trojans last competed in the Blue Division in 2009, a year during which the conference was broken into four divisions (Red, White, Blue and Gold).
Wolfthal said “people that want to scrutinize us” for dropping to the Blue Division only have to “look at our numbers.”
Bishop Ahr has 12 freshmen in its football program and just 40 freshmen boys in the entire school, according to Wolfthal, who noted the first criterion for aligning the league’s divisions is enrollment.
“Our numbers dictate that we would be in the Blue Division,” he said. “We may be a Non-Public 3 classification, but are a Group II equivalent (public) school. The Blue Division is made up of Group I and Group II schools, and we belong there.”
Spotswood is the conference’s lone Group II school. Metuchen was a Group II program last year, but it was reclassified as a Group I school this season.