By Andy Loigu

Last week, the local sports community lost a great longtime supporter who made magic happen for over four decades. 

To say that Bill Lunger had a passion for local sports is a great understatement. A 1976 Warren Hills graduate, he passed away at age 61, and the news saddened those of us who worked alongside him and benefited from the time and help he generously gave to high school sports in several capacities.

He earned well deserved accolades along the way, and I’m glad he did. It was nice to be there, at a recent academic honors luncheon, when the Hunterdon/Warren/Sussex Association gave him an award honoring his service as a softball umpire, public address announcer, clock operator, and tournament director, among many other things.

Lunger took on the responsibilities of directing the John Goles Wrestling Tournament in 1975, while a student, and continued doing the job for over 40 years. The tournament honors the memory of John Goles, who won 268 dual matches as the Washington/Warren Hills wrestling coach from 1943 to 1979.  Goles coached 39 individual state wrestling champions and 39 second place state medalists. The tournament has been held during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day each year since 1958 at Washington/Warren Hills High School.

He was the public address announcer at Warren Hills home wrestling matches from 1977 to 2015, and, as someone who always needs accurate information to do what I do, I always appreciated him as the best and most informative at the craft in the area. He also directed the District 1 post-season wrestling tournaments for 25 years.

Lunger was the historian, the record keeper, of Warren Hills wrestling. He was the reliable source for anything I needed to know about the Blue Streaks, yesterday and today.

He also was the clock operator at all of the Warren Hills boys and girls home basketball games for over three decades.

Also, he was an accredited softball umpire in New Jersey from 1977 to 2014. He was chosen crew chief for the high school sectional and state championships for 19 consecutive years.

When I worked as the athletic director for Warren County Community College, which had a softball program playing in the Garden State Athletic Conference from 1993 to 1997, Lunger umpired all of our home games. You could count on him to be there and doing his best, just like Cal Ripken was doing during those years in Major League Baseball. If there were puddles on the field at Washington Borough Park from a rainstorm, he’d get out the rake and shovel and make the field playable.

He broadcast a variety of sports on radio, including on WCRV in Washington and WRNJ, and earned the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association’s Award of Honor in Sports Broadcasting in 1982. The Associated Press honored him as New Jersey Broadcaster of the Year in 1996. He taught broadcasting, media, and communications courses at WCCC, County College of Morris, Sussex County Community College, and Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Lunger started broadcasting as a Glassboro State (since renamed Rowan University) intern at KYW news radio in Philadelphia. There was evidence in the quality of that training in everything he did, because he always was truly professional.

Additionally, Lunger wrote a sport column for The Star-Gazette in the 1980s and early 90s.

“Bill had a wealth of sports knowledge, not just locally but nationally,” said Dan Hirshberg, former sports editor of the Gazette. “Locally though, he was the guy, no doubt about it.”

Sadly, there are not enough people like Bill Lunger getting involved in high school sports today, particularly when it comes to people who do the hard and unrewarding work of refereeing the games. The pool of qualified referees for all sports is getting old and gray. Perhaps due to the abuse from overzealous parents and low pay and constant traveling, the millennial generation is not turning out referees the way earlier generations would. Feel free to email me if you have any suggestions for fixing this problem.

Streaks Face Voorhees In Field Hockey Final

Top seed Warren Hills will face off against second seed Voorhees in the Hunterdon/Warren/Sussex field hockey tournament championship game at 3 p.m. on Saturday, October 19, at Hackettstown’s Morrison Stadium, on a well maintained synthetic field.

We’re looking forward to a marvelous and competitive game between a pair of longtime rivals. Like Yankees vs. Red Sox or Dodgers vs. Giants in baseball, the Blue Streaks and Vikings not only are close to each other geographically, but they have battled for conference and post-season titles in field hockey many times over the years. This game will be one more chapter of that story.

Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.