From championships to beyond sports
It was a thrilling afternoon in Piscataway Sunday, March 15, when the Ocean City High School boys basketball team won its first state championship in more than 60 years.
Being there was a perk of my job as an editor, reporter and photographer at a small community newspaper.
Make no mistake, it’s a job that entails a lot of time and effort, whether I’m the one writing the story or doing a big photo gallery for our newspapers and website. But it’s a perk nonetheless.
People from outside the area find it hard to fathom when I tell them how many state championship teams I have covered given that I focus on only two high schools.
When I am on the sports beat, my top priority is OCHS, but a close second is the Red Raiders’ main rival, the Mainland Regional High School Mustangs. Their frequent competitions against each other in all sports can be just as exciting. The athletes act like championships are on the line even if it’s the first game of the season. Bragging rights matter.
Since 1997 I have covered the talented athletes from these two schools and many of their opponents from across the Cape-Atlantic League and South Jersey.
There have been a lot of state titles and even more South Jersey and league titles.
There are football titles for Ocean City and Mainland going back to the late 1990s and as recently as the 2020s.
I was at Ocean City field hockey’s first state championship in 1997 and covered the nine state championship teams that followed.
I saw the Mainland and Ocean City girls basketball teams win state championships. Now I just watched the Ocean City boys do the same.
There was the Mustang cross country team that won the Meet of Champions and since then a slew of Mustang and Red Raider boys and girls winning cross country and winter and spring track titles.
About a quarter-century ago I made the trek with one of my favorite sports writers of all time, the late Charlie Wood, to cover Ocean City boys soccer as the team won state championships. I drove even further much more recently to document the Ocean City girls soccer team following suit.
I had my camera in hand as the Mustang and Red Raider baseball teams each became state champions, the former in 2014 and the latter in 2021(a 14-inning marathon in blistering heat).
I have covered winners in crew for both schools on the Cooper and the Schuylkill.
One of the first coaches I met when I came to the Sentinel was Brian Booth back in the late 1990s. The Mainland boys swim coach, who just retired, went on to win five state championships over the years. He had swimmers setting national records. Poolside, I got splashed by the many Mustang girls who set state and national marks and was there when the Ocean City’s girls swim team won a state championship.
When I look at the school record boards at the pools at MRHS and for the Red Raiders at the Ocean City Aquatic and Fitness Center, I realize I covered almost all of those athletes listed there. (That is an age thing on my part combined with athletes getting better, displacing their predecessors.)
There are other major events I’m forgetting, but the number of kids who have passed through the doors of Ocean City and Mainland and came out champions is really impressive.
But there’s something something beyond those titles.
With limited exception, most of these students’ athletic exploits are done by the time they get their diplomas. A number go on to play sports in college, but few at the highest level and far fewer beyond that.
So what do the championships matter?
Sure, the kids of today will still be talking about that touchdown, that goal, that home run when they’re older than me. It’s fun to reminisce about the exciting times of our youth.
Those championships were thrilling for the athletes – for their friends and families to witness and for me to cover as a journalist – but what they come away with goes beyond that. It is what they learned from the support of their parents, the work of their coaches and their interaction with their peers. It is beyond sports. And it doesn’t just hold for the athletes who won the titles.
It is what student-athletes have learned about themselves that they can put to use in other pursuits – in the humanities, in science, in business, in volunteer service to others, in service to their nation.
Older generations lament the state of the younger generations, particularly the youth. I’m focused in this column on the athletes. What I’ve seen in the student bodies in our high schools over the past nearly 30 years – the straight-out academic kids, the artists, those in the performing arts, I’m not worried them being in charge. Given the state of things with all of us adults in charge now, I’m actually looking forward to them taking over.
David Nahan is editor and publisher of the Ocean City Sentinel, the Upper Township Sentinel and the Sentinel of Somers Point, Linwood and Northfield and the Cape May Star and Wave. (Photo by Anne Copeland Merrill)