In 2016, Haddonfield will be playing football in a new league for the first time in more than 70 years.
Haddonfield and the other 11 members of the Colonial Conference will join the West Jersey Football League for the 2016 season. The Colonial Conference voted 8–4 to apply for admission to the WJFL on Nov. 10. Last Tuesday, the WJFL unanimously voted to approve the merger with the Colonial Conference.
The West Jersey Football League is a football-only super conference for schools in South Jersey. In 2015, the league included 66 football-playing schools from the Colonial Valley Conference, Burlington County Scholastic League, Olympic Conference and Tri-County Conference. Earlier this year, the Cape-Atlantic League voted to join the WJFL beginning in the 2016 season. With the Colonial Conference also joining the league, the WJFL will expand to 95 schools for the 2016 season.
Haddonfield athletic director Lefteris Banos confirmed all 12 Colonial Conference schools will play in the WJFL for the next two seasons even though Haddonfield, Haddon Heights, Woodbury and Paulsboro all voted against the merger. The vote still passed as it received the required two-thirds majority.
Banos said Haddonfield voted against the merger because it felt the Colonial Conference was still competitive on its own.
“We don’t feel the Colonial Conference football is broken,” Banos said. “We had seven of the 12 teams in the conference make the playoffs this year.”
Haddonfield was also sensitive to the conference’s historical value in the local community. Haddonfield has been a member of the Colonial Conference since its founding in 1945.
“We felt that our traditions were important,” Banos said. “We felt we didn’t have to go outside the conference to have a strong schedule.”
Since the merger, the WJFL addressed some of Haddonfield’s original concerns. A big question was whether Haddonfield’s traditional Thanksgiving Day game with Haddon Heights would disappear in the WJFL. Banos said that rivalry game, along with the other traditional Colonial Conference Thanksgiving Day games, will continue.
“We would never see something like that disappear,” Banos said. “The West Jersey Football League guaranteed that they would schedule those games first.”
There will be other traditions carrying over to the WJFL next year. The Colonial Conference’s two divisions will remain the same for at least two years, meaning Haddonfield will continue to play in the same division as Collingswood, Overbrook, Sterling, Audubon and West Deptford.
What will change about the schedule are the non-divisional crossover games. Haddonfield could play schools it has not faced in the regular season before.
“Some of the old crossover games will not occur,” Banos said. “The West Jersey Football League will decide.”
New crossover games could increase travel for Haddonfield. Unlike the Colonial Conference, where all the teams are clustered in Camden and Gloucester counties, the WJFL includes schools from as far north as Mercer County and as far south as Cape May County. Banos said the WJFL does factor in geography when scheduling crossover games, but increased travel times remain a concern.
“We didn’t want to be matched up with a school that would include significant travel times,” Banos said.
There were also concerns about the size of schools Haddonfield will face in the crossover games. However, according to the WJFL’s constitution, Haddonfield will not play a school larger than Group III.
Banos said there are advantages to joining the WJFL. A big one will be scheduling crossover games between teams that had similar records in past seasons.
“Lindenwold will probably crossover with a school of their strength and their size,” Banos said. “That’s one advantage the West Jersey Football League does offer.”
The move to the West Jersey Football League isn’t necessarily permanent. Banos said the Colonial Conference can revisit the merger following the 2017 season.
