The fate of the state championship that the North Bergen High School football team won last December was in the hands of 24 coaches, athletic directors and school administrators in Robbinsville on Wednesday morning, but the architect of that team, Vince Ascolese, was 100 miles away, busy receiving chemotherapy treatments as he continues his fight against bone cancer.
The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association’s executive committee was set to vote on an appeal, filed by Montclair High School, over whether to overturn the original ruling by the NJSIAA’s controversies committee in April that enabled North Bergen to keep the NJSIAA North Jersey Section 1, Group IV championship the Bruins won in thrilling fashion at MetLife Stadium last December, 14-13, on the final play of the game.
The controversies committee, a seven-member panel, decided in April that there was not enough evidence to prove that Ascolese had illegally recruited two members of the state championship team, but they placed North Bergen on a two-year probationary period because of the situation.
However, Montclair, the school that lost to North Bergen in the title game, filed the appeal, citing that the punishment against North Bergen for apparently recruiting the two players was not severe enough.
Wednesday morning, the 24-member executive committee voted unanimously to strip North Bergen of its state championship, overturning the original decision made by the controversies committee.
For more than five weeks, the NJSIAA’s controversies committee heard testimony from practically everyone involved. They listened to the words of Ascolese, the players, their parents, school officials, you name it. A report with more than 140 pages of information was compiled. That committee then deliberated and came up with the finding that Ascolese was not at fault for what transpired. The committee believed that there was some wrongdoing involved with Ascolese providing housing for the two players at a reduced rate in a home owned by Ascolese’s family, but the state title remained intact.
Wednesday, the executive committee, wanting to “send a message” that recruiting in high school sports is wrong, gathered for 25 minutes and came away with the unanimous decision to force North Bergen to vacate the title. There’s no question that these administrators and committee members had to have had a preconceived notion of how they were going to vote before they entered that meeting room Wednesday. They also had to discuss the idea amongst themselves before they voted. There wasn’t one dissenter? Not one? They all felt the same way? Seems a little strange.
“We should send a message that schools and unfortunately student/athletes will be held accountable,” said Burlington High School athletic director William DePonte. “Not anything against North Bergen, Coach Ascolese or Montclair. We have to protect the 400-plus schools that follow these rules.”
“This association at this time needs to send a message that these things are not going to be allowed,” said Bill Vacca, the former athletic director at the now-defunct Don Bosco Tech in Paterson and a long-time member of the NJSIAA’s executive committee. “Recruiting needs to be stopped and that’s what this is all about.”
“I’m not going to dance around it,” Rutherford athletic director David Frazier said. “They broke some rules. The controversies committee chose one end and it came to us on appeal and we chose the other end.”
There are a few problems with this decision.
One, if this is the proper protocol, then why bother having a controversies committee to handle situations in the first place? Why not allow the executive committee to handle all investigations and inquiries?
Secondly, one of the players involved, Denzell Leitch, played for the Bruins during the 2010 season without any controversy or incident. Why wasn’t it investigated then? No, it only became a huge story after the Bruins won the state championship.
Thirdly and most importantly, if the NJSIAA is going to make a ruling such as this, stripping these kids from perhaps the most amazing run in the history of New Jersey state football, kids who earned the title and the distinction on the field, not in a meeting room, then they better make sure to watch every single other impropriety about recruiting from now until the end of time – and in every single sport imaginable.
Because this ruling was unprecedented and now sets the tone for every other incident here on in. Everyone knows that there has been rampant recruiting going on in New Jersey athletics. Kids getting their tuitions paid for. Illegal and improper transfers that are subjugated due to fraudulent addresses. Kids showing up at schools where they wouldn’t know where they were located without a compass and a road map.
There was one coach who openly joked that he had “an international recruiting budget.” It was quoted as such.
So the NJSIAA has now opened the door to have every single one of these incidents investigated in every sport.
“Send a message” is what they wanted to do. Well, it appears as if they used North Bergen to set an example to get that message across.
“It’s a travesty of justice,” Ascolese said. “The bottom line is that I never recruited those kids. Nor did anyone from my staff. It’s a travesty of justice what happened. We won the game on the field. We beat a team that was a 35-point favorite. No one can take that away from us.”
It is not known whether North Bergen will appeal this decision to a higher court….
Three Hudson County baseball players have been selected to play in the annual New Jersey Scholastic Baseball Coaches Association’s All-Star Classic at Diamond Nation in Flemington on June 14.
Kenny Roder of Hoboken and Gianni Zayas and Willie Cruz of North Bergen will play for the Northeast All-Stars.
Nick Urbanovich, an assistant at Union City, will serve on the coaching staff, along with Vin Bello, a Jersey City native now at Pope John of Sparta.
Urbanovich’s father, Joe, the former long-time coach at St. Peter’s Prep, will be inducted into the NJSBCA Hall of Fame prior to the 6 p.m. games….
Don’t forget that the ceremony naming the Caven Point Athletic Complex after the late Ed “The Faa” Ford will take place Thursday at 3 p.m. at Caven Point. All are invited to attend…–Jim Hague.
Jim Hague can be reached at OGSMAR@aol.com.