Locals mayors to hold unsanctioned tournament in protest of NJSIAA
A new tournament is born.
Three Mercer County mayors banded together to make the “Mayors Cup” basketball tournament a reality.
The four-team tournament will take place over two days, scheduled to start April 15. Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried told The Trentonian in a phone interview Thursday.
The announcement came after Fried, Hamilton’s Jeff Martin and Trenton’s Reed Gusciora discussed logistics of the tourney on a 4 p.m. Zoom call.
The mayors wanted to hold the tournament sooner but realized it wasn’t feasible given the time crunch.
Trenton Central, Robbinsville, Nottingham and Allentown are expected to participate in the unsanctioned spring sporting event that is being funded by private donations, Fried said.
Allentown was already dispatched by top-seeded Nottingham High School, 61-60, earlier in the week. The win gave Chris Raba his 300th win as head coach for Nottingham, but it looks like they’ll get a doover in the Mayors Cup.
Nottingham and Robbinsville are expected to host the games or officials may look for an outside venue to allow more fans to attend, Fried said.
Fried doesn’t expect the event to cost more than a “couple thousand bucks” to host.
That includes costs for referees to officiate the games, trophies and uniforms after the NJSIAA informed the schools they cannot wear their uniforms or have coaches in attendance at the tourney.
The tournament came together as a protest to the NJSIAA’s refusal to postpone Thursday’s Robbinsville-Trenton Central semifinals matchup of the Colonial Valley Conference Championship Tournament.
Robbinsville (10-2), led by Ryan Smith’s 15 points, trounced Lawrence, 61-43, on Monday.
But it was dealt a crippling blow when it learned the team must quarantine after being exposed to two Lawrence players who are COVID-19 positive.
Trenton has since had at least two players test positive for the virus, Fried said, meaning those players are quarantined for two weeks.
That influenced Trenton High’s decision to drop out of the Colonial tourney and forfeit Thursday’s game, setting up a watered-down final between Robbinsville and Nottingham on Saturday at noon.
Robbinsville, with many of its players still in quarantine and unavailable for the game, hasn’t decided whether to play in Saturday’s final, Fried said.
A source who spoke on condition of anonymity said it’s unlikely that Robbinsville will take the court and allow underclassmen to take on top-seeded Nottingham.
“The real championship is being staged in April,” Fried said.
He lit up the NJSIAA on Thursday morning, halfjokingly threatening to have the state sports governing body evicted from its township headquarters.
“Get the fire marshal over with an eviction notice,” Fried told The Trentonian.
Fried tried petitioning Gov. Phil Murphy to intervene but was told the NJSIAA has sole discretion over the decision.
He called the NJSIAA “tone deaf” and “out of touch” for not granting the request that would given many seniors a last hoorah after state and county basketball tournament were cancelled because of the pandemic.
Fried received support from his counterparts Gusciora and Martin. Martin contacted Sen. Linda Greenstein’s office to drum up support.
“I think in talking to Dr. [Scott] Rocco our guys have put a lot of time and effort in. They want to prove they’re the best team, and to do that, you want to beat teams at full strength. That brings out the best competition,” Martin told The Trentonian.
“We support an exception, an extension being made to give [Robbinsville] time to clear quarantine and let everybody play their best players,” Martin said. “When Nottingham wins the tournament, they don’t want an asterisk next to their title where somebody says you only won because of X.”
Gusciora encouraged the NJSIAA to allow the players a proper sendoff.
“Since high school sports has been able to bring some semblance of normalcy, what’s the big deal of allowing the tournament to continue?” he said. “Why the hard-and-fast deadline? It has no rationale other than they picked as an end date.”
The mayors were so confident in their teams that they agreed to bet on the game. Fried was willing to put up some De Lorenzo’s Tomato Pies, with Martin and Gusciora tossing in JoJo’s and a “casing of pork roll,” respectively.
“I don’t know anything made in Hamilton or Robbinsville,” Gusciora said, in a nod to Trenton’s proud industrial roots.
Martin was jokingly asked whether he’d withdraw the township from its suit against Trenton Water Works if TCH comes out on top.
“I’m putting up some JoJo’s pies but not going that far,” he said. “We just hope the NJSIAA, if the NFL can move games to make sure games happen that are safely played, certainly NJSIAA can do the same thing.”
But the NJSIAA refused to bend, leaving the Robbinsville leader steamed after he speaking by phone to NJSIAA Chief Operating Officer Colleen Maguire.
She communicated to Fried that the governing body wouldn’t change its rule because it’d then have to accommodate other towns.
The NJSIAA affirmed that position in a statement later in the day.
“About 400 schools have played basketball this year. All of those schools have played by the same rules — they can play up to 15 games within the six week season, but they have to sit if the health department finds they’ve been exposed.
“Regrettably, many of those schools have had to postpone, interrupt or shorten their seasons because of Covid. But we’ve applied those rules evenly and consistently to all schools throughout the state for the entire season, just as we did in the fall and as we will do for our next two seasons.”
The high school basketball season, which had a delayed start to the season, began on Jan. 26 and teams were given six weeks to play up to 15 games.
The NJSIAA opted not to hold state tournaments in the winter and left the final week of the season up to the individual leagues.
Instead of a Mercer County Tournament, which would have involved powerhouse Trenton Catholic Academy and a handful of prep schools, the CVC decided to play a league tournament that split the competing schools up into three pods based on record. Nottingham, Robbinsville, Trenton and Allentown were the four Pod A teams competing for the championship.
The NJSIAA was stingy with its deadlines during the fall season, too. The governing body denied requests from schools in the CVC to begin playing state soccer games a week early to avoid potential positive COVID cases.
Four schools — Lawrence, Nottingham, Notre Dame and Hamilton West — all had to withdraw their girls teams after positive tests.