New Jersey Report
Thursday, June 29, 2006 By Ed Grant
Site Issues: Holmdel's Future as Championship Site is in the Balance ... and More
The New Jersey high school track and field program faces some major changes on the state championship level in the upcoming 2006-07 campaign, though the decision in one season has not yet been finalized.
The outdoor changes are minor and already well known. Present plans call for the group championships to be divided again between Egg Harbor and South Plainfield, with the Gr. I and II meets on the one hand and the two Parochial divisions on the other switching sites each year. This would be the former at South Plainfield in 2007, the latter at Egg Harbor.
The indoor group and all-group championships, which have been held at Princeton's Jadwin Gym for the past 30 years and more, will move to a still-to-be-completed venue in Toms River, adjacent to the Ritacco Center which now houses the state basketball finals.This facility would have a six-lane track, provision for all the field events, but a seating capacity considerably smaller than at Jadwin.
Countering the latter would be a greater availability of dates which would allow the group meets to be spread out over more days than at Princeton. This could mean that, instead of the former marathon sessions at Jadwin, each group meet would have its own day with weekday sessions starting about 4 p.m. and ending at a reasonable 9 o'clock or so, and weekend meets ending in the early afternoon.
Toms River is at least as accessible as Princeton, with its location about midway along the Garden State Parkway. And winter dates would not be troubled by the weekend Shore traffic of the summertime. Once completed, the facility would be the first, but hopefully not the last, of its kind on New Jersey public education property. It will, of course, also become a new home for local meets such as the Shore Conference and county championships.
Meanwhile, it should be noted that the Jersey City Armory venue has been upgraded with new lighting and sound equipment installed for the 2006-07 winter season. Work still needs to be done on bathroom facilities and it is unlikely, in any event, that it will ever see a return of the state meets which were held there in the 1960s and early 70s before the move to Jadwin. Crowd control of the kind the state meet demands will remain a problem, not to mention parking of school buses in the middle of the state's second-largest city. But it will be, as it was this past winter, more than suitable for local county and conference competition.
The real problem now is the cross-country season. Monmouth County Park authorities send a letter to the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association with a number of requirements, some of them financial in nature, but one that posed a threat to the continued use of the only really suitable course in the state, namely that only officials would be able to park there.
An emergency meeting of the state cross-country committee was held a week or so ago and it was agreed that, while the financial demands could me met, shuttling spectators back and forth from the Holmdel High School parking lot a mile or so away would not be practical. Meet director Don Danser and site director Jim Casey (a near sub-4:00 miler in his college days at Rutgers) will meet with the Holmdel officials later this summer to discuss a solution.
Pending this, however, the committee had to decide on an alternate site for the group and all-group meets, as well as for the Central Jersey sectionals, which have also been held at Holmdel the last decade and more. For the latter, they chose Thompson Park, longtime site of the Middlesex County meet. For the state meets, the verdict went to Garret Mountain in West Paterson, where the North Jersey 1 sectionals have been held for the past 40 years or so.
The choice of Garret over Warinanco Park, Elizabeth---site of the state meet for some 30 years before sectionals were introduced---is questionable at least. Parking at Warinanco is at least as ample as at Garret, probably more so, and, unlike the Passaic County site, Warinanco is located in a neighborhood site which provides extra street parking used even now when large invitationals are held there.
The Garret course is also unusual in that it starts and ends at its highest point. The first mile or so is on the level, the runners then go downhill, only to have to climb back in the final mile. There it a 180-degree turn in the last quarter of a mile and then a mad dash of less than a furlong to the finish line. Warinanco is essentially a flat course with some rolling hills; it measures 3.2 miles with the extra 176 yards resulting in times that closely match Holmdel if the individual athlete can handle hills. The finish there is one lap around the rubberized track.
Both parks host a couple of invitational meets during the first month of the season. The ones at Warinanco have tended to be larger than those at Garret with some individual fields at the opening Magee Memorial well over the 200 mark. Spectator control has never been a major problem, though the tearing down of the stadium there a few years ago has forced spectators to gather chiefly in the infield. The course also has one major advantage over both Holmdel and Garret---the race is easily visible for almost the entire distance. Runners do have to cross the entrance road to the track area at one point, but police are always present to handle that situation and there has never been an accident in the 70-plus years the park has been used for major cross-country events.
Two final points against the Garret choice are provided by 1) what happened a few years ago when Darlington Park in Mahwah became available for the sport. Bergen County promptly moved its county champion meets (there are two stages: group and all-group) and also run two invitationals there and 2) the fact that fog is sometimes a problem there; the Passaic County Coaches meet had to be cancelled one year for that reason.