The question appeared to catch Dana Ott off guard.
Why doesn’t Gloucester County have a tournament for field hockey?
“I don’t know if this is new,” the Kingsway High field hockey head coach said. “I don’t know why we don’t have one in our area.”
Many squads in the northern part of the state are completing county tournaments as a way to tune up for the sectional tournaments which begin next week. But once one dips below Mercer County on the west side of the state, county championships are absent. Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Salem and Cumberland do not hold county tournaments.
“There are a lot of teams that are focusing on traveling to play different teams throughout the year,” Ott said. “Maybe they are just too jammed-packed with their schedule. I don’t know what it is. I know that a lot of the Jersey teams this year played at the National Field Hockey Invitational in Conshohocken (Pa.).
“It would be nice to have a local tournament, but I don’t know. I have never even given it a thought before. I never even thought about it being a possibility for our area.”
Logistically, it would be tough for a county as big as Gloucester. However, Mercer County has enough squads to fill out a 16-team bracket and has consolation games, so it is feasible.
“I think a lot of teams in Jersey are so talented that they are focusing on playing the type of competition that they see fit for their program,” Ott said. “In doing so, they do naturally already have to keep in mind the amount of games we have in a season.
“With conference games and those extra (county tournament) games, how can we jam-pack it so that we are playing competitive programs that prepare us for playoffs and everything? I don’t even know if that’s feasible given the 18-20 games a season that we have. I am not even sure how we could implement something like that. It’s a cool idea though.”
However, with a county as small as Salem and Cumberland, scheduling wouldn’t be a problem. Cumberland held a county tournament at the beginning of the season for two years, but it has halted it. Salem has never had one.
“I think I would be more interested in a conference tournament,” Woodstown head coach Susie Massara said. “But it is a good idea. If it was something that was proposed, I would be interested in it.”
With Woodstown and Schalick being the top programs in Salem and already in the same Tri-County Conference division, would there even be much interest in playing each other a third time ... a fourth time if one considers they are in the same section and group for the state tournament?
As Ott noted, some teams would probably not want to “waste” a game on a team of lesser competition. If there was a county tournament this season, the Dragons surely would be the No. 1 seed. What benefit do they get from playing a game against the lowest seed when they could spend that game playing Haddonfield, Cherokee, Moorestown or Eastern?
What is there gained by the No. 16 seed in playing Kingsway and getting crushed? One can bet Ott would not be pleased to have to give up one of the before-mentioned games in order to play a below-.500 squad.
“I think it all does come down to that, unfortunately,” Ott said. “It’s a really great opportunity; don’t get me wrong. I think it really has to come down to how many games do we have in our conference play and what teams we need to play to be the best that we can be. It’s just crazy with power points and the strength of your schedule. I don’t know if the teams in our area would want to do that.”