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November 30, 2005

Boyd Sands, Jim Loper brought great leadership to NJSIAA

By TOM WILLIAMS
Sports Columnist


The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association has a tough job. Like the NCAA and the administrators of the Olympic Games and America’s professional sports leagues, the NJSIAA generally only makes news during a controversy.

Some poor high school senior is disqualified because he played on a varsity team at the private school he used to attend when he was in eighth grade. The media gets all over the NJSIAA for punishing the young man when there is nothing else it can do. The fault resides with the kid’s new school, which should have checked out his records thoroughly.

Or the kid whose father has conflicts with the coach at one school so he very publicly transfers him to another, forcing the NJSIAA to rule the athlete ineligible because the rules say you cannot transfer purely for athletic advantage.

The NJSIAA is attacked for the location of its championship games. Those from the South thought Elizabeth was too far to travel for state basketball finals. Those from the North think too much is held in more lightly populated South Jersey, like the wrestling in Atlantic City and now basketball and wrestling in Toms River.

The people who make up the staff at the NJSIAA offices in Robbinsville are dedicated to fairness. They try to create equal situations, even when equality is almost impossible. Though the staff gets blamed for rules that create controversy, virtually all of the rules and regulations have been created by the member schools and their representatives on the executive committee and the various sports committees, not by the staff.

As coaches and athletics directors know all too well, it is tough being the one who makes the final decision in a controversial situation. Don’t think for a minute that every time an NJSIAA committee or panel has to declare a young athlete ineligible for something over which he or she had little control, it hurts them quite a bit. An ideal season for them is one free of appeals and controversies, one that focuses completely on the games and the accomplishments of New Jersey’s scholastic athletes.

But somebody has to make the hard decisions.

Last fall, a politician from Gloucester County became upset by the cost of taking his family to an NJSIAA playoff game. He created legislation that tried to dictate what the organization could charge. Later, in the summer, the Bergen Record published a series of articles questioning the financial structure of the association.

Among the questions were the salaries of the group’s top administrators, almost all former school superintendents or athletics directors. A couple months later, coincidentally, the Gannett newspapers ran a story about the salaries of New Jersey’s school superintendents. It was interesting to note that the top salary at the NJSIAA was lower than the average superintendent’s salary in six of the 15 counties surveyed and almost all of the other NJSIAA salaries were less than the state average for superintendents.

If you are going to get the right people, you need to offer them at least what they make at their previous jobs.

There were some questions about travel expenses and, quite frankly, there might have been too much spent on meals and family travel, even though many of the meals were gatherings with New Jersey school officials attending conventions. These were policies that the NJSIAA (and many other organizations and businesses) had been doing for quite a while.

The Bergen Record piece emphasized the thousands of dollars the NJSIAA clears from football playoff games at Giants Stadium. But it didn’t show all of the red ink from the tournaments in golf, tennis, cross country and others where little comes in and expenses for officials, facilities and awards still flow out.

In reaction, the NJSIAA has made a reduction in its salary structure and limited some other payments. They have reduced entry fees that the schools pay to enter tournaments by 10 percent and reduced ticket prices. It now costs $5.00 for an adult to attend a football playoff game. It had been $7.00. You can’t do very much today for $7.00. It won’t get you into most theatres and certainly not to other sports events. When you think about it, high school games have always been a gigantic bargain.

All of these changes will likely reduce the NJSIAA’s surplus from $1.6 million to a little under $900,000. And, if you don’t think a significant fallback account is important to guard against bad times, just ask the people at the Miss America Pageant.

Over the next five or six weeks, Boyd Sands and Jim Loper – the NJSIAA’s top two officials – will retire. This had been planned for a while, it is not a response to any controversy. These guys know how to handle controversies, they don't run away from them.

Both Sands and Loper had made noteworthy contributions to high school sports in New Jersey before they joined the NJSIAA. And, under their leadership, the organization has continued in the direction set in the early 1990s by Bob Kanaby, now the executive director of the National Federation of State High School Associations.

They are men dedicated to the athletes in New Jersey and to giving them the best opportunities to display their talents and absorb all of the lessons that are learned from sports participation.

Every decision they make is designed to create a playing field as fair as possible for all. When they make a tough decision, the people that are hurt by it tend to attack. But those who agree with it rarely speak up, giving the NJSIAA an inaccurate public image.

When Boyd Sands and Jim Loper walk away in the next few weeks, sports in New Jersey will suffer a loss. They have careers filled with the controversies they have faced and dealt with, decisions that have kept high school sports in the Garden State moving forward.

They should walk away with pride for what they have accomplished.



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