Other in-state program says emerging Salem CC program good for conference, region and JUCO football, days before opening of camp, AD who provided guidance says Mighty Oaks have ‘done everything they need to get this thing moving’
By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News
When Todd Pottersdorf heard there was another junior college on the other end of the state exploring the possibility of starting a football program he got genuinely excited.
The idea that Salem Community College was going to bring a program online this year was an opportunity not only to find a reasonably close opponent to fill another spot on Sussex CC’s schedule but provide a competitive partner to help fill the 500-mile void that was JUCO football between New York and North Carolina.
It’s not just an idea anymore. The Mighty Oaks are just days away from opening their first preseason football training camp with their inaugural game in an eight-game Year One schedule set for Lou D’Angelo Stadium in Pennsville the end of August.
The response has been overly favorable locally and beyond.
“I think it’s great for the region and the conference; it gives us another opponent to play,” said Pottersdorf, the Skylanders’ head coach when they launched and now the school’s athletics director. “In junior college football you’re either D1 or D3. Since 2019 we were a Division 1 program. That included Lackawanna, Monroe – those schools were relatively on the East Coast – but now that Lackawanna went four-year school, Monroe went four-year school, we decided to go down to Division 3 status, where now Hudson, Nassau, Erie, they have to play us. They can’t dodge us.
“Adding Salem really has helped us. It’s been kind of nice to have somebody else in the mix, to be honest with you. From our perspective it’s been great to have. It’s great for the Garden State Athletic Conference, it’s great for Region 19 and it’s great for NJCAA football.”
Jay Accorsi, the long-time Rowan head coach who would become the Mighty Oaks’ first head coach, called on Pottersdorf several times during Salem’s exploratory phase to pick his brain about all that was in store for starting a program from scratch.
Accorsi often wondered why there wasn’t a local junior college option available to players in a region that was filled with players who had the ability and desire to play but either went out of state to play or fell through the recruiting cracks without a place to land. He knew Pottersdorf from the days his Rowan teams scrimmaged Sussex in camp and acknowledged his insights many times in earlier interviews.
The Skylanders were the first junior college in the state to have football when they launched in 2019 with the big-picture aim of increasing student enrollment. They were ready to hit the field with a 90-man roster in the fall of 2020, but then COVID hit and disrupted the world. They played a five-game schedule when normalcy returned and have been on the field every year since. (Salem’s plan will have taken 10 months from the time they first brought the proposal before the board to Opening Day).
“It wasn’t hard for us to get it up and running; it was a pretty smooth process, as far as finding kids to play,” Pottersdorf said.
The biggest questions Accorsi had were the ability to secure a practice facility and playing venues. During the process, the Mighty Oaks acquired a piece of property adjacent to the Carneys Point Rec Complex for their practice facility and will play games this first season at three of five Salem County high school stadiums. They are still trying to finalize the coaching staff.
Since their initial conversations, Pottersdorf has watched with interest as Salem has navigated the same issues Sussex did when it started and he’s been impressed with what he’s observed from afar.
“We haven’t talked in a while, but I understand things are going pretty good,” he said. “(Accorsi’s) got good numbers and is just going through the internal stuff now.
“I think they’re in a good spot. They’re ready to roll. I think they’ve done everything they need to do to get this thing moving. it’s a lot work behind the scenes and not a lot of people realize how much of that there is, but everything we see it seems like they’re going to be in a really good spot.”
The addition of Salem to the landscape opens a world of possibilities for JUCO football in the region. The Mighty Oaks will play their first season as a Division 3 independent, but Pottersdorf, who recently was voted onto the D-3 football board, is about to introduce a proposal for a conference that would include the two New Jersey schools, Hudson Valley, Nassau and Erie.
In a perfect world, they would play home-and-home within the conference so they wouldn’t have to hunt for games and have eight guaranteed JUCO games that would qualify them for the playoffs. The Mighty Oaks play the other four teams in its inaugural schedule – Sussex twice — plus have games with the service academy prep schools and a technical college.
“My goal this year is to create a Division 3 junior college football conference where we each play each other twice,” Pottersdorf said. “I want to try to get some credibility so we can be in the national polling so we can compete for a national title, somebody from our conference.”
