BY BOB BEHRE
For the Star-Ledger
The annual state championship wrestling tournament in Atlantic City might be a box-office hit for the NJSIAA, but schools across New Jersey are feeling the pinch because of the cost of going there.
The NJSIAA, the state’s governing body for scholastic sports, enjoys critical and financial success hosting the tournament, with 336 athletes competing for 14 state titles over three days in front of a daily average of 13,000 spectators inside landmark Boardwalk Hall.
Last year the NJSIAA took in approximately $370,000 in gross gate receipts for the event, against the $66,000 it cost to stage the event, according to estimates provided by Steve Timko, the association’s executive director.
Many local school boards, however, suffer a drain in funds, paying casino prices for hotels and meals for their wrestlers. It can cost more than $300 a day to house and feed a wrestler and his coach in one of the resort hotels during the tournament. And that, the state Department of Education now says, is too much.
Last fall, the Department of Education placed limits on how much a school district can spend on travel to sporting events. For the state wrestling tournament, which will start Friday and run through Sunday, the numbers are $91 per hotel room and $45 a day for meals per person.
That means school boards will need to look elsewhere to make up the difference, or somehow find cheaper rooms and food.
“Under the state regulation, schools had to adopt the travel policy or at least comply with it by last Dec. 31, “said Marty Gleason, an assistant wrestling coach at Bound Brook as well as an attorney and member of the Bound Brook Board of Education. “We have complied.”
Gleason said his school’s travel expenses to Atlantic City are paid each year by an alumnus. Bound Brook will have two wrestlers, Region 5 champions 130-pound Nick Murray and 145-pound Jesse Harrington, compete in the state tournament.
“I think other programs will figure a way to raise the money, “Gleason said.
That’s what Kittatinny athletic director Chris Carroll has been struggling to do.
“This will definitely adversely affect us, “Carroll said. “We don’t have a wrestling booster club. We have an all-sports booster club. This is going to fall on the parents to do the extra labor of raising funds.”
Kittatinny each year manages to contain costs by booking rooms several miles from the casinos. But, it still exceeds the cap.
“I’m going to tell our booster club to start planning early for next year, “Carroll said. “I may have to go back to our administration and ask if I can fund-raise for our teams that have to travel.”
Moving the wrestling tournament out of the resort city is an option that the NJSIAA can’t consider just yet. It is under contract with Boardwalk Hall through 2012, according to Timko.
School districts that finalized their 2005-06 budgets before the passing of the Department of Education regulations get a break from the cap this year. Athletic director Mike Buggey of South Plainfield, where the wrestling team is ranked No. 8 in The Star-Ledger Top 20, said his board will absorb the bill this weekend when coach Kevin McCann and nine of his wrestlers room at Bally’s Park Place and Casino Resort.
But the full effect of the cap will kick in next year.
“We will have to look at different scenarios now, “Buggey said. “In most situations, $91 per room would be adequate, or close to it, but not in Atlantic City. We have to come up with alternate plans.”
Boarding his wrestlers outside of Atlantic City isn’t an option, Buggey said. He’s against rooming a wrestler out of town and thereby placing him at risk of missing an early-morning weigh-in because of traffic and parking difficulties.
Jackson, ranked No. 1, didn’t wait for the Department of Education to establish expenditure caps. The Ocean County school implemented its own three years ago.
“For years, we had no limit on our travel expenditures, “said Jackson coach Scott Goodale, who will accompany six wrestlers to Atlantic City. “But the last three years, the school took away everything — the hotel rooms, food, everything. Our parents’ club has raised the money ever since.”
Phillipsburg coach Rick Thompson said his school allows $6 per meal and finds cheaper hotels out of town.
“We stay outside of town, away from the casinos, “Thompson said.
Wrestling Gear
