The South Brunswick football team defeated Manalapan 18-14 for the NJSIAA Central Group V title on Dec. 2, 2017. iPhone video by Greg Tufaro
The storied Highland Park High School football program, whose most notable alumni include former NFL tight end L.J. Smith, will take a one-year hiatus from competing in the Greater Middlesex Conference to play an independent schedule.
The lone league member Highland Park will play next season is Metuchen, meaning the longtime Thanksgiving Day rivalry between the schools, which dates back to 1937, will continue for at least one more year.
“We finished the (2017) season with 17 kids and we think that having some more flexibility in the schedule will allow us to play teams that are more competitive with us,” Highland Park Athletics Director Craig Girvan said. “We are trying to find competitive games and teams with numbers similar to ours.”
Highland Park finished winless for the first time in 80 years and only the second time in school history, compiling an 0-10 record in 2017 while being outscored 389-88 or by an average of 34.4 points per game.
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Meanwhile, the high school’s boys soccer team claimed its first sectional title in school history last month, suggesting the borough’s fall sports interests for male student-athletes are trending from the gridiron to the pitch, where Highland Park had a 19-player roster.
With the Owls playing an independent schedule next season, the GMC, which has been restructured for the 2018 and 2019 seasons from three divisions to four, will now feature just five schools – Bishop Ahr, Dunellen, Metuchen, Middlesex and South River – in the newly created Gold Division.
Unlike the GMC’s 22 other football-playing schools, Highland Park will not participate in the league’s newly formed crossover agreement with the Mid-State Conference, a 37-team league comprised of schools from Hunterdon, Somerset, Union and Warren counties.
“Our goal is survival and to help build the program and get more kids and generate more excitement here at Highland Park,” Girvan said of next year’s independent slate.
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