Shuffling the deck

WJFL Diamond Division gets even tougher with 4 county teams, last two Group I state finalists, Pennsville out on its own, may appeal

WEST JERSEY FOOTBALL LEAGUE
2024-25 Salem County alignments
(2023 record in parenthesis)
Division 6: Glassboro (9-4), Penns Grove (6-6), Salem (2-8), Schalick (11-1), Woodbury (7-4), Woodstown (9-3).
Division 15: Buena (0-8), Clayton (5-5), Gateway (2-8), Gloucester Catholic (2-7), Lindenwold (1-9), Pennsville (6-4), Pitman (6-4).

By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News

Just when you thought it might not have been possible to make the West Jersey Football League’s Diamond Division any tougher, the league went ahead and did it.

Barring the approval of any appeals, Salem County’s five high school football teams will be scattered across two divisions for the next two years, with four of them assigned to what already was the most demanding Group I division in the state.

South Jersey Group I champion Woodstown, Central Jersey runner-up Schalick, Penns Grove and Salem will be aligned with 2022 state champion Woodbury and 2023 state runnerup Glassboro in what currently is called Division 6, basically the Diamond Division. All six teams were playoff teams this past season and had a combined record of 44-26.

“We’ve always been a loaded division; welcome to the party, Schalick and Glassboro,” Penns Grove coach John Emel said. “They kept the tradition of keeping all the best Group I schools together. I’ll make a prediction right now: The team that goes to the state finals comes out of that division.”

Schalick and Glassboro are new to the division, while Paulsboro was moved out in this round of WJFL reshuffling after going 1-7 this past season.

Schalick was promoted for its success the last two seasons. The Cougars, 0-7 in coach Mike Wilson’s first season in 2020, won the Horizon Division each of the last two years while posting overall records of 7-3 and 11-1. They lost to Glassboro in the Central Jersey championship game.

“With the amount of kids we have coming back, we’re ready for the jump,” Wilson said. “It’s playoffs in the regular season; it’s going to be fun. It absolutely is a top-heavy division, it’s going to be all good teams, but with the program we have coming back, I think we’ll be fine.”

The only negative for Wilson, a staunch traditionalist, is the possibility of his team playing three Saturday games within the division depending on how the schedule falls. Woodbury, Penns Grove and Salem traditionally play their home games on Saturdays.

“I’m more upset about that than anything else,” he said. “I grew up always playing Friday night. I’ve only played a handful of Saturday games. That’s the only thing I don’t like about the whole thing. Everything else is fine. We’ll play whoever you give us.”

Salem coach Danny Mendoza was less concerned about the stoutness of the division as the size of it. Five teams is comfortable, but six or more, he said, takes the flexibility of scheduling out of coaches’ hands.

“It’s not about it being tougher, it’s about it being to a point where you can’t balance your schedule,” he said. “They’ve pretty much made your schedule for you.

“We’re not scared of anybody, we’re not scared of competition. You look at our schedule last year, we ran from no one. we ran from zero people. This isn’t along the lines of ducking any smoke or competition. It’s along the lines of giving our guys a chance to go play other teams and test our waters. This is insane.”

Pennsville, meanwhile, is the county team on the outside. The Eagles went from 1-8 to 6-4 this past season and were the first team out of the South Jersey Group I playoff alignment, but they assigned one of the league’s seven-team divisions – Division 15 – with Lindenwold, Gloucester Catholic, Clayton, Pitman, Buena and Gateway. 

“I thought we’d be with more of the teams we were last year (in the Royal Division) still,” Eagles coach Mike Healy said. “It’s a completely new division. We hoped we’d be in a higher division, but that’s not how it turned out.”

Pitman and Gateway are the only teams they played last year in Royal Division. The teams in the new division were a combined 22-45 last season, with only the upward-trending Eagles (6-4) and Pitman (6-4) posting winning records. The Eagles may have a better chance to win a division, but harder to build a lot of power points.

“It’d definitely be exciting to have a chance to win the division, for sure,” Healy said.

Schools have a chance to appeal the alignment before Dec. 15. Pennsville is “definitely” considering it largely based on geography and competitive balance.