By Andy Loigu

This is the final year for the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association Tournament of Champions, often referred to as the TOC.

To this, I say “Good riddance!”

For basketball, field hockey, lacrosse and softball programs in Warren County and throughout the Garden State, this is good news. As the state’s governing body of organized high school sports made the decision to terminate the TOC after the spring of 2022, according to NJ.com, basketball coaches favored ending it by a two-to-one ratio.

As a varsity letter winner on a team which won the Group Three title in basketball (Lakewood in 1967) I am happy about that.

Ending the TOC means that the regular season and county/conference championship playoffs have more time to get played. Teams that qualify for the sectional brackets will have more than one day between games. I’ve always felt, during this millennium, that teams are rushed through the state tournament, without a chance to prepare for the next opponent.

There are teams that win games on talent alone at the high school level and then there are the normal teams, which need a thorough scouting report and some practice time to prepare for their next opponent in state tournament play.

Our 1967 Piners team defeated a previously 20-0 team from Essex County thanks to the scouting report an assistant coach provided and the adjustments we were able to execute thanks to that valuable information. If we’d had just one day to prepare, we would have been roadkill.

The NJSIAA pointed out that the same teams have been getting into the TOC year after year, so why make life difficult for the great majority of teams in the state?

Worst of all, private and parochial teams play in the TOC every year, since they come from the non-public sections and groups. These are schools that recruit students from far away (they are not held to the boundaries of small municipalities) and some parochial sports factories give scholarship aid to their elite athletes.

I’m glad the NJSIAA finally saw this my way, after these last three decades.

Good bye and good riddance!

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Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.