Greg Mattura , Staff Writer
The small-school North Jersey Interscholastic Conference may debut its own boys basketball tournament this season, one season after introducing its girls hoops championship.
The NJIC is comprised of schools from Bergen, Passaic and Hudson counties and the event offered to the 36 boys teams would serve as an alternative to likely competing against larger programs in a county tournament.
St. Mary athletic director Matt Stone emailed NJIC schools last week to gauge interest, and the deadline to apply is Jan. 27, after applications are due for the Bergen Jamboree and Bergen Invitation Tournament.
“I never look at it as an “Us versus Them” mentality with those tournaments,” Stone said. “I don’t look at it as the NJIC versus a county tournament. I just look at it as it’s another option and opportunity for teams to play in a competitive tournament, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
The NJIC debuted league tournaments for boys and girls soccer in the fall, as well as a wildly successful college-style Football Championship Playoff that was completed prior to the start of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association playoffs.
NJIC executive director Stan Fryczynski said athletic directors “unanimously” said yes to the idea of offering a boys basketball tournament, and so “it’s in the offering.”
“We said last year at our athletic directors’ meeting that we thought the girls tournament offered quite a bit of success for the schools that obviously weren’t in position to vie or challenge at the county level,” Fryczynski said.
In Passaic County, schools such as Eastern Christian, Hawthorne, Hawthorne Christian, Manchester, Paterson Charter and Pompton Lakes can now choose between county and NJIC tournaments. In Hudson County, it’s the same for Harrison, Secaucus and Weehawken.
Several Bergen schools may face a tougher decision, because the Bergen Invitation Tournament was created as an alternative for teams not qualifying for the prestigious Jamboree. So would a team prefer to play at least two games in the BIT, at least one of which is likely against a foe from the larger-school Big North Conference, or sign up for the NJIC tournament?
“The NJIC is not trying to step on anyone’s toes,” said Stone, saying of the Bergen County tournaments “If anything, the NJIC has put it as, ‘It’s your first step, and we do everything after.’”
