Charging forward

Salem Tech bringing field hockey, baseball, softball on line in upcoming academic year, runs lineup of sports to 14 

By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News

From the moment Salem County Vo-Tech instituted an athletics program the vision was to provide the most inclusive list of offerings. It’s been a slow process, but the growth has been steady, calculated and in line with the interests of the students. 

The Chargers are growing again, bringing on line three more sports for the upcoming school year – field hockey this fall and baseball and softball in the spring.

“We’re just really excited to get started and kind of see (how it goes),” athletics director Jim Helder said. “Knowing that the interest is there makes us excited. I always say if the kids are excited for it I’m all for it, because it tells me we’re offering meaningful programs for them.

“Whenever we decide to add a new sport it’s not something we just act on quickly. We have to make sure that interest is going to be there and we want to make sure it doesn’t pull away from our current offerings. So we did a lot of interest meetings, polling, things like that and we decided to move forward.”

The additional sports bring to 14 the number the school offers – boys and girls cross country, soccer, basketball, bowling and volleyball; boys/coed golf; and, now, field hockey, softball and baseball.

The new sports will classify as Group II for NJSIAA playoff purposes because of the way the governing body counts its populations and play in the Tri-County Conference Classic Division, a convenient and appropriate replacement for Wildwood returning to the Cape Atlantic League in 2026-27. They will compete as an independent this coming school year because the conference is in the second of a two-year schedule cycle, but will be eligible for the state playoffs.

The most recent NJSIAA documents for Fall 2025-26 sports, updated September 2024, place Vo-Tech’s enrollment at 614 (two above the field hockey Group II threshold). All the other high schools in Salem County compete in Group I.

With Tech’s expansion, five of the six Salem County high schools now will play field hockey and all six will play baseball and softball.

Vo-Tech administrators have had a desire to add baseball for a while and began making Tri-County Conference administrators and member schools aware of their intention to bring the three new sports aboard in 2025-26 in the fall. 

Coaches have been hired and facilities secured.

Maureen Lewis is the field hockey head coach, Pat Fisher will coach softball and John Helsel will coach baseball. All three are either teachers or staff members in the Vo-Tech school system and all have coaching experience on the school or youth levels. Fisher is the Cougars’ former boys basketball coach.

The Chargers will play all their home games in the new sports on dedicated on-campus facilities. The field hockey team’s first regular-season home game is Sept. 10 against Paulsboro. The spring schedules are still a work in progress.

The first-year schedules will be built around teams that did not qualify for the playoffs in their respective groups last season.

Because the programs are so new, Helder said it would “unfair” to place any expectations on their first-year success.

“I know as an AD I have three individuals (as coaches) who are going to run really good programs, that’ll be clean programs, the kids are going to learn a lot,” Helder said. “The coaches are going to give the kids everything they’ve got, which is really all I can ask for at that point.

“If they win, that’s kind of icing on the cake at that point. But our kids are going to learn these sports these sports the way, in my opinion, they should be learned, which is exciting.”

The additions have the potential to impact the rosters of the other county teams since the Salem Tech students who played their sport at their home district schools because Tech didn’t offer it previously now, by NJSIAA rule, have to play for the Chargers. 

“I can’t give the actual number (of those athletes),” Helder said, “but I’ve sat in on the interest meetings and when the field hockey coaches asked how many are currently playing for their home district I would say on average maybe five or six hands went up. There may be some, but it didn’t seem to me like an overwhelming number.”

Jaxson Raymond, a rising sophomore at Vo-Tech who played baseball for Penns Grove this past spring and started summer basketball workouts for the Chargers Monday, is pleased his school will have a baseball team.

“I’m kind of happy, now that I don’t have to go back and forth,” he said. “I can just keep my bag there.”