COMMENTARY: Wildwood made the right choice in going to the Tri-County Conference; the error was staying in it for far too long

Posted: March 25th 2025

By BRIAN CUNNIFF

CapeAtlanticLive.com

Many in the local sports community, particularly those associated with Wildwood High School, welcomed the news that the school’s athletic program will leave the Tri-County Conference for a return to the Cape-Atlantic League in the 2026-27 scholastic year.

The reaction to the news has been overwhelmingly positive. But social media being what it is – where facts are often replaced by fiction or opinions are spewed as facts – there are some things that need clearing up.

There were quite a few “they never should have left in the first place” comments made on different social media platforms. 

Sure, you can make the argument that Wildwood, a charter member of the CAL when it was formed in the 1940s, never should have gone to the Tri-County Conference beginning with the 2002-03 season.

Those making that argument, however, probably either didn’t know, don’t remember or never understood the circumstances. 

Just prior to its move out of the CAL, Wildwood’s football program was at a crossroads. Numbers and talent were at such a deficit that the school decided to drop down to play at the junior varsity level. It later returned to varsity competition but as an independent team free to schedule other schools with which it could reasonably compete, a move the CAL initially supported.

But then the CAL needed another team to balance its schedule. Without Wildwood, the CAL had an odd number of teams in football, which added some difficulty when it came to creating schedules because at the time the league had nine schools in one conference and eight in another. The scheduling of mandatory crossover games became quite tricky.

So the CAL held a vote that essentially forced Wildwood to come back into the league. Never mind that Wildwood had trouble getting even 20 players out for its football team at the time. Never mind that those who did play were, for the most part, vastly undersized and even more inexperienced. The league needed Wildwood’s football team back, so it voted in its best interests instead of those at one of its member schools and mandated that the Warriors return to league competition. In addition to others, that would have forced Group I Wildwood to play some Group III schools and a couple non-public powerhouses in a sport where player safety is supposed to be of the utmost concern.

Some of the CAL schools that voted to bring Wildwood back to the league didn’t even have football teams. 

Seeing a path where its football program could survive, Wildwood pivoted to the Tri-County Conference, a league that features quite a few Group I football-playing schools. The TCC took Wildwood in ahead of the 2002-03 scholastic year.

A few years later, however, St. Augustine Prep petitioned the CAL to have its top-flight, elite boys lacrosse program leave the league so it could create a highly competitive schedule against regional powerhouses as an independent program. In one of the most hypocritical moves in CAL history, the member schools voted to allow the Hermits to leave the league in that sport. A cynic would say that since no one in the CAL at the time stood a chance against St. Augustine’s stacked boys lacrosse program, the schools voted so quickly to allow the Hermits to go independent that they practically provided them a limousine ride out the door.

The league basically sent the following message: If you’re too good at something and want to go, we’ll gladly let you leave so we don’t have to deal with you. If you’re not good at something and want to go, we’ll be sure to make you stay so we can beat the hell out of you.

Wildwood’s move to the Tri-County Conference at the time proved to be the right fit. The school was able to stabilize its football program and better secure the health of its players by competing against similarly-sized schools.

Wildwood’s existence in the TCC wasn’t without warts, however. The long travel to and from away games for its soccer, basketball, baseball and softball teams has been well chronicled. But at least the Warrior football program stood a much better chance to compete, and its other sports were partnered with mostly Group I schools for league competition.

Then an interesting development occurred in 2010. All high school sports leagues in South Jersey, except for the CAL initially, joined forces to create the West Jersey Football League. At its inception, the WJFL consisted of 13 different divisions based on school enrollment size, geography and competitive level. Wildwood was placed in a division consisting of other programs from small schools with low numbers in their programs. It’s proven to be a godsend to Wildwood, which now has at least three or four games per season (if not more) in which it has a reasonable chance to win or at least compete into the second half.

The CAL eventually aligned into the WJFL a few years later to create what is now a 16-division, 96-school superconference.

Once Wildwood was able to address its football issues through the WJFL, a path emerged for Wildwood to return to the CAL for its other sports. But be it shortsightedness, stubbornness, etc., Wildwood remained in a league in which it has been a total outlier in terms of geography and tradition.

Finally, after years of pressure from within and even outside its own community, Wildwood recently began exploring a return to the CAL, which, to its credit, had always made it known it would most likely welcome an application by Wildwood to return. That was proven earlier this month when the league unanimously voted to accept Wildwood’s application to the league for the 2026-27 season.

That will end close to 25 years of ridiculous travel to play teams with which Wildwood still has no real connection. The players and fans – and even most of the coaches even if they didn’t publicly admit it – have always preferred to play Lower Cape May, Middle Township, Cape May Tech, Wildwood Catholic and other CAL teams over Pitman, Salem, Gloucester Catholic and Clayton.

I’ve gotten to see firsthand what life for Wildwood in the Tri-County Conference has been like. I wrote a day-in-the-life piece for the now-defunct Wildwood Leader about 15 years ago after traveling with the baseball team across the lovely swathe of Route 49 for a game at Salem, a contest that went nine innings and took more than three hours to play. By the time I got off the bus back at Wildwood High School at about 9:15 p.m., I felt like I’d just endured sitting in a middle seat in Row 29 for a four-hour flight on Spirit Airlines.

Moreover, I’ve had two members of my own family endure the experience with the Tri-County Conference. 

One has coached two sports for years for the better part of 25 years as a head or assistant. She’s been on a bus for more hours and miles than any one person should have to experience. If frequent-rider miles applied to school bus trips, she’d be able to travel around the world and back at no cost.

The other has played three sports for each of the last four scholastic years, just like quite a few other student athletes at the school. He may have seen more of the landscape of Cumberland, Salem and Gloucester counties than truck drivers with 25 years of experience. Through it all, he has posted excellent grades, mixed in a few hours of sleep and somehow maintained his sanity.

With its football team's place in the WJFL secured nearly 15 years ago and considering the never-ending travel concerns of the rest of its teams in the Tri-County Conference, Wildwood High School’s return to the CAL probably should have been brokered a long time ago. It wasn’t. But what matters now is that it’s finally going to happen.