March 10, 2010
CAL streak is on the line
By TOM WILLIAMS
Sports Columnist
The Cape-Atlantic League has a 39-year streak on the line Wednesday night when St.
Augustine Prep takes on Camden Catholic for the South Jersey Non-Public A championship
at Jackson Liberty High School.
You have to go back to 1970 to find a season when no CAL boys or girls basketball team
won a South Jersey championship. With the loss by Middle Township's girls in the Group
2 final on Monday and Holy Spirit's girls also bowing out in the South Jersey semi finals
on Monday, The Prep is the last chance.
And Paul Rodio might be just the guy to handle the challenge.
Rodio's teams have won 11 South Jersey crowns, the most of any CAL coach. Wildwood
Catholic's Frank MacAlarnen had 10, Middle's Tom Feraco and former Pleasantville coach
Ken Leary have eight and Wildwood's Bernie McCracken seven.
The most by a girls coach is six by Wildwood's Dave Troiano, who has added two more since
leaving for the Tri-County Conference. Absegami's Greg Goodwin has five with Atlantic City's
Joe Fussner and Pleasantville's Steve Ottenberg each getting four.
St. Augustine is also the only CAL basketball program to win six straight South Jersey titles,
racking up that number from 1997-2002. Rodio now has 51 wins in NJSIAA action, third in the
CAL behind Feraco (65) and Leary (58). But his record in South Jersey finals, an impressive 11-3,
is the league's best (though former Sacred Heart coach Jim Mogan was 5-0 in championship games).
If Rodio gets his 12th (or if he got it, depending on when you read this) it will stretch
the CAL streak to 40 straight years, impressive by any standard.
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Vineland has hired Josh Hedgeman, a former linebacker at Schalick High School and Rutgers
University and head coach at Schalick, as its new football coach, replacing Ed Belfi. And
Atlantic City is reportedly very close to announcing its decision of a head coach to replace
Bob Weiss.
Now there is another opening.
Scott Parker will not return to coach at Oakcrest, instead becoming an assistant principal
at the new Cedar Creek High School in Egg Harbor City. Cedar Creek has also hired Tim Watson
as its head football coach. Cedar Creek will not join the CAL in football until the 2012
season, though it may join the league earlier in other sports. Watson was a star player at
Mainland who played at Rowan and was a sixth round draft pick of the NFL's Seattle Seahawks.
Injuries limited his NFL career.
With Parker stepping down, at least three CAL football programs will have new head coaches
in the 2010 season, along with a completely new alignment. The league has divided its teams
into three divisions (as yet, un-named) instead of the two conferences it has used for 25 years.
There is also an opening as boys basketball coach at Absegami High School with the retirement
of Greg Goodwin.
The Cedar Creek situation seems to be changing slightly. The school has reportedly decided to
play a CAL varsity schedule in girls basketball, and possibly a few other sports, starting its
first year. The new school will open in September and has apparently narrowed its search for
a girls hoop coach down to three candidates.
If Cedar Creek joins the CAL schedule in girls basketball and Wildwood Catholic manages to
survive, look for the Lower Cape May girls to move back up to the American Conference. That
would put 10 teams in the American Conference and 11 in the National.
If Wildwood Catholic does close, lets hope they move Lower Cape May up anyway, giving the CAL
10 teams in each conference, instead of the unbalanced nine in the American and 11 in the National
that now exists. Even better, why can t the league return to a basketball schedule like its soccer
schedule - each team plays teams in its own division twice and the other division once.
That would eliminate the use of the "Rose Bowl Rule" and determine the champions of each
conference, and the conference representative in the CAL Championship game, by what happens
on the court each season with no concern for what happened in the past.
Read more of
Tom Williams' columns