Beyond the Scoresheet

breaking down the public schools

I’m not going to pretend I don’t read the NJO forum, so I’m glad to see my rankings have stirred up such debate. And of course they’re not perfect. That’s the fun part.
Anyway, the thing I noticed most was confusion over which teams are Public A and which teams are Public B. So here’s the full list, with the NJSIAA enrollment numbers I have taken from the NJSIAA website:

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Preseason Top 10s

I usually eschew preseason polls. I don’t know enough about individual players, who’s back from last season, and the like. I prefer to wait for the first two weeks of results to provide some data. And I used to feel bad about ranking without seeing games, but hey, I see about two games per year now, so I might as well go ahead.

I’m putting these out there for discussion and debate, not because I think they’re infallible or because I’m particularly attached to any comparisons. I’m also splitting public schools into their Public A and Public B classifications, as we will for the state tournament.

Without further ado, the njhockey.org Preseason Top 10s (educated guesses included):

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Explaining the public tournament

Thanks to a frighteningly early deadline (before practices even begin), I’ve been working on my HNIB preview (including a Top 10, of which you might see a sneak peek soon) all week and talking to coaches.

This afternoon, I finally broke through and got hold of NJSIAA Assistant Director Jack DuBois, who confirmed the particulars of the public tournament split. I’ve heard a lot of information from a lot of people on this one, but nobody seemed really sure. So here’s what I’ve got:

According to DuBois, the 95 public schools playing varsity hockey (I’m not sure if that number includes East Side and Monroe – I’ll check when I get home to my personal computer tonight) will be classified before the season as either Public A or Public B (the terminology is not finalized, but that’s how DuBois referred to them.) Hamilton (10-12 enrollment 1,013) will be in Public A and Nottingham (enrollment 1,010) will be in Public B. DuBois iterated that the at-large process will remain the same, which seems to mean three private and three public, regardless of class size.

I’ll try to have more analysis of this later.

On a private school note, great to see New Jersey prep seniors representing in the DHI Cup – Mike Morreale had a quick recap at njice.8m.com.