Righting a wrong

The powers that be in the Skyland Conference are scheduled to meet Wednesday to decide, among other things, the fate of the duel crossover games between teams in the Raritan and Valley Divisions. And, according to a source, there’s an excellent chance the schools in the two lower divisions will only have play each other once starting next fall.

The Skyland Conference expanded prior to the 2006-07 school year when Immaculata, Ridge, North Plainfield, Mount St. Mary, Bound Brook and Manville moved west from the Mountain Valley Conference, and Bernards, came down from the Colonial Hills Conference to join the Skyland.

The league, which originally consisted of just two divisions – the Delaware for Group III and IV schools, and the Raritan, for Group I and II schools – was split into four divisions: The Delaware East, Delaware West, Raritan and Valley.

Now the Delaware divisions, which were divided geographically into two six-team divisions, consists of mostly Group IV schools, plus Warren Hills and Voorhees, which are Group III, and Immaculata, which is a always a force in Non-Public A.

In those divisions, where crossover games count, each team plays opponents from its own division twice, and opponents from the other division once, giving each squad 16 conference games – nine short of the 25 total regular-season games allowed each season by the NJSIAA.

Fine, great, outstanding. Works awesome. Wonderful idea.

Not so in the Valley and Raritan divisions.

The first issue is that crossover games between the Raritan Division -- which, for softball, consists of Group II squads Bernards, Delaware Valley, Mount St. Mary, Hackettstown and Somerville -- and the Valley Division -- which consists of Group I schools Bound Brook, Manville, South Hunterdon, Belvidere and North Warren – count in the standings, which is an obvious advantage for the upper division, but at least everyone is standing on the same ground.

But the bigger issue is that teams in the Raritan and Valley have to play each other twice, which means 20 conference games a year, which not only limits teams’ ability to schedule more interesting and more competitive non-conference games, but the Valley Division schools now have virtually no shot to qualify for the state tournament.

Case and point:

Last season, Belvidere was the only team in the Valley Division to make states. The County Seaters went 7-5 against Raritan Division opponents, and a perfect 8-0 against the Valley.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Valley Division was a combined 13-38 in crossover games.

But is anyone really surprise?

If there’s a case to be made for keeping the status quo and continue to watch the Raritan Division teams beat up on their Valley Division counterparts, someone please present it to me. I sure don’t see it.