The East Ramapo school district had its budget voted down by members of the community earlier this spring. In the little world of varsity sports, it called into question the future of Spring Valley and Ramapo athletics. Readers here have written in to say the football programs would merge this fall, causing another reshuffling of the Class A schedules for the 2010 season.
The district’s school board met last night to discuss whether the schools would operate with austerity budgets or whether the town would re-vote on a new proposal. You can read the particulars, which were written in a story by our news department that ran on Wednesday morning.
I called Spring Valley AD Bill Pilla on Wednesday night to ask him about the rumors of a merger. “As of now, there’s no intention of doing that,” Pilla said. “We’ve put other things in place. I can’t give you any definitive answer, but from what I understand that will not happen.”
I explained to Pilla that readers had written in to ask about a potential merger and explained exactly why some were curious: Because it would impact other schools as well. From what he understood, East Ramapo would not merge major sports programs like football or basketball. His team has already begun workouts under second-year coach Andrew Delva (right), and held discussions about equipment with Ridell.
Those were the indicators that what he said was true, but Pilla made it clear: “I don’t know where rumors came from that we combined football,” he said. “We haven’t done that in any way, shape or form.”
Pilla said that the district’s athletic program will aim to piece together a sports budget that “will not affect the kids” with full varsity teams — even under an austerity budget. The numbers remain elusive, but that is East Ramapo’s goal.
12 Comments
The rumors came from Chuck Scarpulla. He told AD’s that the two schools were merging football programs in 2010. Also, the fact that the schedules were taken off the boces website the day after Scarpulla made those comments lent credence to the “rumors”.
Wouldn’t a merge of these two teams effect AA leagues, not A? Both are AA schools I believe therefore if they combined they would remain in AA.
Mike…
No. Spring Valley is Class A. If the program merged with Ramapo I would assume the new East Ramapo team would play Class AA in Ramapo’s place. But Spring Valley would be removed from Class A.
They would undoubtedly be in AA. Having a AA school merge with an A school would just create a larger AA program. This would be intriguing to see if this would produce a team that could contend for Section Championship. It seemed as if Ramapo was always missing that extra something to get to the next level in Class AA and the addition of Spring Valley players and some added depth could easily put them in contention every year in AA. Given that the Ramapo program continues its tradition of producing quality teams.
This would be good news. Both are good teams, usually fully rostered, and with them as two teams more kids are playing football, that is actually playing.
Spring Valley is never really a good team. Usually they will be in contention for a bowl game like the DeMatteo Bowl, but that is for non playoff teams. And Spring Valley doesnt usually win the bowl either or even get to it. So i dont think that this merger would bring out a top competitor. They still will just be an average team in AA
class a fan i think your underestimating how good and bright spring valley is their a really good program who give the top teams good games and i think if they were to merge they would be a top 5 team in class a or AA
Back in the stone ages when I was in high school we were faced with austerity budgets almost every year, even having most of one season canceled. Its unfortunate that this still remains the case over three decades later.
Merging the two programs would be a travesty. What happens to the tradition and history of each school’s programs? This was once a great rivalry. The thought of the two schools merging their football programs could almost make me root for Suffern.
I definitely agree that Spring Valley is a good program and a team that any of the top teams needs to sufficently game plan against and not underestimate. Same with Ramapo at the AA level.
It’s to easy to just merge the programs. These are the good things that should be preserved and fought for. You have the 100 plus players (varsity and jv for both schools), the 20-30 band members and the 20-30 cheerleaders. You could probably make a case for near 200 kids being affected.
Usually a merged program, especially with a rival, never results in positive things. Both sides must learn to get along, go to different schools, but strive for the same goal; the Title. yet if it was only in certain sports, and most of these kids did other sports, they would be back to opponnents in other seasons. That’s never fun to see your “teammate” from football racing against you in track or on the other bench on the basketball court.
And to say it be mediocre team in AA would be kinda impulsive yet not coherent. Both teams have talent, and combined ON PAPER would look so dominant. But as I just said, to get everyone on the same page, you might have an East Ramapo Merged Team (What would colors/logos/nickname be since both are totally different anyway???) that would finish 0-6 1-7 as opposed to the logic even with the average talent of 6-1
While there are goods to having it done, more often than not the bad outweighs the good by a landslide.
East Ramapo Titans is already the name of merged teams in the district-wrestling, softball, baseball just to name a few and they have Orange and Green as team colors, one color from each school. The getting along would be the easiest part of the transition these kids don’t hate each other and there is no real rivalry b/c they don’t play during the year. The problem would be who would be in charge and what happens to the staffs! These teams are coached by fairly new people, Zotter has done his time at the Varsity level but only 3 as a head coach. Delva his second year, the assistants have no real experience except one or two guys. The lack of leadership could hurt this team if it merged. It wouldn’t be an instant championship but not impossible. SV and Ramapo would cover about the same territory as North Rockland. The Rockland league is weak now and winning a league title means nothing ask Ramapo about that they won in 2007 and lost first round and SV can’t beat Nyack! Before a merger they need to work these programs into shape individually b/c I still feel they are nowhere they should be! I mean BOTH schools and I’m a graduate of SV in the early 90’s
This is happening in Corning next year. Corning East and West are merging. Two Class A teams and strong rivals will be merging to form a AA team in football.
The rest of their sports teams are merging as well due to budget constraints.
If this does happen with SV and Ramapo it will be a shame. SV under Dilva is bound to be a quality A program. The talent is there, coaching and leadership have been lacking.
Before Ramapo and SV split, it was always a great rivalry between Nyack and SV. Some great games in the mid to late 60’s. I can remember going to the Nyack/SV games when they were packed. People lining all around the SV field 5-10 deep in 1968. Fans at MacCalman standing on the steps in front of the high school and by the little league field in 67.