Green Wave officials remain disgruntled with tough schedule against national juggernauts
Delbarton begrudgingly announced Thursday it’s agreed to move forward with its North Jersey Super Football Conference schedule and play powerhouse St. Joseph (Mont.) next weekend, but the elite private school from Morris County isn’t hiding its disdain with the decision.
In an email sent to the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association and the NJSFC obtained Thursday by NJ Advance Media, Delbarton athletic director Dan Whalen wrote that the school will “maintain our position that this schedule threatens the health and safety of our student athletes and places them in the indefensible position of being overmatched in order to accommodate teams which, through the regular practice of recruiting, have outgrown almost all local competition.”
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Whalen also wrote the school will “retain the right to hold responsible all the parties who have placed our student athletes in this position should this ‘experiment’ prove to have deleterious consequences.”
Delbarton has appealed its inclusion in the newly formed NJSFC and awaits a final decision from outgoing State Education Commissioner David Hespe, who announced his resignation Thursday morning, effective at the end of September.
The Green Wave has maintained it cannot compete in the new league playing a difficult schedule against state and national non-public school powers St. Joseph, Don Bosco Prep, Paramus Catholic, DePaul Catholic and others.
Last season, Delbarton played seven of its 11 games against public schools, outscoring its public school counterparts by a combined score of 260-75.
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Delbarton released a statement Thursday saying it will move forward with its new schedule and play St. Joseph “under duress.”
Whalen declined to comment about the email or Delbarton’s decision to move forward with the new schedule when reached by phone Thursday, citing the school’s statement released earlier in the day.
Here is a transcript of the email:
Dear Mr. Timko & Mr. Piro,
Our Headmaster, Br. Paul Diveny, OSB, has asked me to inform you that Delbarton School will abide by the rules stated in the Constitution and By Laws of both the NJSIAA and NJSFC and play the game on Saturday, September 17 against St. Joseph, Montvale that has been forced upon us. Because no ruling has been made by the Commissioner of Education on our petition, we find that we have no choice but to make this decision, albeit reluctantly. The prospect of the penalties and sanctions outlined in the NJSIAA Constitutions and Bylaws would have such a negative impact on our student athletes that we feel this is lesser of two evils. As we await the decision on our petition before the Commissioner, we will play this game and the rest of this season’s schedule without conceding our position and without prejudice to our petition. We still maintain our position that this schedule threatens the health and safety of our student athletes and places them in the indefensible position of being overmatched in order to accommodate teams which, through the regular practice of recruiting, have outgrown almost all local competition. We retain the right to hold responsible all the parties who have placed our student athletes in this position should this “experiment “prove to have deleterious consequences.
Respectfully,
Dan Whalen
Matthew Stanmyre may be reached at mstanmyre@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattStanmyre. Find NJ.com on Facebook.