May 5, 2004
Halfway to NJSIAA football deadline
By TOM WILLIAMS
Sports Columnist
Travel has shortened many a career in sports.
Professional athletes and coaches frequently tire of boarding planes and living in hotel rooms. Guys like
ABC broadcaster John Madden, who gets to ride from game to game in a private tour bus, are few and far
between.
You’ll also find high school coaches who get tired of riding “the yellow buses” year after year. At Ocean
City High School you might hear a coach lament, “This is going to be a long day, we’ve got to travel to
Middle Township after school.”
“I just laugh,” said Diane Hickey, second-year head coach of the OCHS girls lacrosse team. “I look forward
to away games at places like Middle Township. That’s a piece of cake for us.”
And no wonder.
Last week started for Hickey and her lacrosse team with a yellow bus trip up the Atlantic City Expressway
to Collingswood on Tuesday. The next day they were back on Route 206, headed to Medford. On Friday it
was down the Parkway to Lower Cape May. And, on Saturday, it was up Route 73 to Winslow Township.
Lacrosse is not a Cape-Atlantic League sport right now. Only Ocean City, Millville, Middle and Lower Cape
May have teams, not enough for it to become a CAL championship sport.
“I hope that changes soon,” said OCHS athletics director Paul LeFever. “There are lots of sports being
discussed all the time and girls lacrosse is one of them. We need three or four more teams in the league
before it can become an official league sport.”
There are other sports in similar situations. Only St. Augustine Prep and St. Joseph have ice hockey
teams. Hammonton is the only school in the league with a bowling team. But those schools are on the
northwest part of the CAL map, much closer to the schools they are forced to play. For Ocean City,
Middle and Lower, the lacrosse teams are pretty far away.
“The kids bring books and CD players,” Hickey said, “just like on any bus trips. They’ll do homework and
help each other with problem areas. A lot of times they’ll sleep. I can see the bus trips exhaust them. On
some of these trips we leave Ocean City at 1:45 and don’t get back until after 8. Fortunately, we all love
the sport. But the travel makes it pretty tough.”
Lacrosse may not be next in line to become a CAL sport. One athletic director thought girls swimming
might be next. The majority of schools have coed swim teams, though the number of schools with both
boys and girls swimming is growing. In addition, new NJSIAA rules make it tough for girls who are good
swimmers to compete in state girls events when their school has no girls team.
Another sport that could enter the CAL scene soon is volleyball. St. Augustine Prep has boys volleyball
and St. Joe has girls volleyball. But it is a fairly easy sport to start, reasonably inexpensive and a sport
with which most high school students are familiar. Girls volleyball is a fall sport in New Jersey and boys
volleyball is a spring sport. This spring there are 26 girls lacrosse teams in South Jersey and 15 boys
volleyball teams.
So, an end to their travel schedule seems at least a few years away for the OCHS girls lacrosse team.
They entered this week with a 4-6 record, needing to get over .500 through games of next Tuesday. With
four games before the deadline, they’ll need to win at least three of them.
The first was against Cherry Hill West at home earlier this week. Then it’s down the Parkway to Middle
Township on Wednesday, up the White Horse Pike to Paul VI on Friday and up Route 70 to Camden
Catholic on Monday.
Just another week for Diane Hickey and her Road Raiders.
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