Hurley and Nolan were among five local coaches honored at the banquet.
The players who have been selected to the 2000 Hudson Reporter Boys’ High School Soccer All-Area team have displayed their incredible talents throughout the season, in some cases, leading their respective teams to new heights.
Player of the Year honors go to Hudson Catholic senior forward John Gonclaves, who led the Hawks with 18 goals. Gonclaves was one of four Hawks named to the team. Hudson Catholic was Hudson County’s premier team in 2000, winning a school record 19 games in posting a 19-1-2 record.
The Coach of the Year is also from Hudson Catholic, namely veteran John Cruitt, who took a team that finished 11-9 last year and turned it into the HCIAA champions…
In some respects, Roy Miller resigning as the head football coach at New Jersey City University comes as a little bit of a shock, because everyone knows how much he truly loves coaching the game of football.
However, that was before a trying 3-7 season unfolded, which came on the heels of another 3-7 season. It was also before Miller received news that the cancer that he had thought to totally defeat a few years ago had returned during the middle of the year. He was being treated for the cancer, but he couldn’t aggressively combat the disease while remaining faithful to his team.
So with the state of the football program a distant second when dealing with one’s health, Miller did the right thing in stepping down and taking care of the things that should truly matter, namely the rest of his life.
Here’s hoping that Miller will receive the proper treatment and he’ll able to defeat the hideous disease one more time.
We’ll never know if Miller was somewhat coerced into stepping down, because school officials issued an ultimatum before the year began that he had to post a .500 or better record to keep his job. Obviously, that didn’t happen.
And it would have been downright despicable to fire a coach who is battling cancer.
Plus, rumors persist that NJCU officials have been pushing to promote Miller’s assistant Arnold Jeter as the new head coach. Jeter was given a full-time assistant coach’s position a few years ago and has been rumored to be Miller’s eventual replacement on many different occasions.
Congrats to St. Anthony boys’ basketball coach Bob Hurley and Secaucus volleyball coach Maria Nolan for recently receiving the Frank McGuire Award for their dedication to coaching. Both Hurley and Nolan were feted among five New York metropolitan scholastic coaches and both St. Anthony and Secaucus High Schools received a check for $10,000 from the Frank McGuire Foundation, named after the legendary college basketball coach…
Best of luck to Joe Blasucci, who has announced his retirement from coaching high school football. Blasucci, who has spent the last seven years as the head coach at Ferris High School and has spent the last 30-plus years as a coach in Hudson County, has decided to step down.
It’s a loss for the kids of Ferris and for those who closely follow Hudson County sports, because Blasucci has always been one of the true nice guys in sports…
As expected, the proposal to totally realign New Jersey’s high school football conferences has been defeated overwhelmingly by the state’s members, by an almost 5-1 margin (252-62) earlier this week.
Local coaches have long hoped to have a plan that would lead to a change in the state playoff system, allowing teams to play down to a true champion, eliminating the current status where there are 20 teams classified as state champions.
The proposal, devised by Wallkill Valley athletic director Mike Van Zile, was a decent plan, but didn’t call for any provision for organization, nor did it offer any help for sub-varsity games.
Those were two reasons why the proposal failed, as well as the idea that existing leagues would have been eliminated. The HCIAA voted as a block against the proposal for those three main reasons.
Whether a new and more recognized proposal will be introduced in the future remains to be seen. This one was more than two years in the making and was changed numerous times to make it more accessible for all the schools.
It could very well be the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” It may take a while before another proposal to change the status of high school football in New Jersey is brought about…