My Legacy At Ramapo High School....
Background:
I am originally from Wyckoff, NJ where we have a regional high school district. Students can choose from Ramapo or Indian Hills High Schools. I choose Ramapo High School because of its program in Communications and proximity to my home. While at Ramapo I managed to leave my mark, my legacy on Ramapo Forever. I started the Women's Lacrosse Teams in the Ramapo Indian Hills Regional High School District.
Title IX and Ramapo High School:
Under Title IX all schools must provide equal amounts of athletic opportunities and funding for men as for women. My first attempt at obtaining a Women's Lacrosse team was to argue under this piece of legislation. The only sports at Ramapo that did not offer the sport to both men and women was Women's Volleyball, Men's Lacrosse, and Men's Football. This left Men's Lacrosse with out a female athletic opportunity counterpart. However, unfortunatly according to our Rampo's Athletic Director, Women's Cheerleading counted as a "sport" and stated that he was safe as far as Title IX was concered. This red tape set be back to the beginning and I would need to figure out a new approach, a new logic in order to obtain a women's team.
The Whole Process:
I was told that in order for the sport to become an official athletic entity at Ramapo I would need to first prove that there was enough interest amoung the female population at Ramapo High School. From there I would need to follow a set procedure of creating a written proposal along with other forms of paper work to eventualy obtain "sports club" status which could be tentatively turned into "varsity" status after demonstrating one year of success as a club.
Lots of Paper Work and Red Tape:
To satisfy the Athletic Director I started the circulation of a petition in favor of the creation of a women's lacrosse team and obtained just around a hundred names of girls interested or in support of the team. From there the process began to pick up speed. I eventually pitched the idea to the Athletic Director siting the numbers of girls interested, other new teams starting up all across Northern New Jersey, the ability for our team to flourish with out harming prexisting teams, and the ulitmate benefit of the sport to the school's reputation and most importantly to the student athletes themselves. He in turn pitched the idea to the Board of Education who granted us permission to become a "sports club" with a promise to go varsity if it was deamed a popular area of interest.
The Lax Shop
7 West Ridgewood Ave.
Ridgewood, NJ 07450
Click the above logo to check out the Lax Shop
Finding a Coach:
My next job was to get a coach willing to work for a less than average salary for the first year with the promise of a Head Coach position for the Varsity team to follow. I found Coach Pat Jackson of Top Shott Lacrosse and after little persuation he was signed on to be one of our club coaches. Coach Jackson is still Head Coach at Ramapo along with being apart of Ridgewood's Lax Shop and running Top Shott Lacrosse, Basketball, and Soccer Camps.
Playing As A Club:
After one year at the club level; enduring poor practice field situations, initial lack of enthusiasm on the parts of some of the leser involved girls, poor funding and poor weather, we managed to pull together and create a following for the sport. We gathered a lot of support from the student athletes themselves, the partents, and the younger middle school community lacrosse program that began to grow as the younger girls saw that they too could now play at the high school level. In the end we were approved to become a Varsity Team the following spring.
Varsity Status:
Our first year as an official team we suffered changing practice times due to the whim's of the men's lacrosse team and a few off remarks by some students who were disblieving in our ability to play competative lacrosse so early on in our program's conception. Through this first year I continued working with athletic director, arranging buses, posting practice times, informing the girls about important information reguarding the team and writing game reports. Despite whatever setbacks encountered we managed to pull off a successful season for a first year program and had a positive outlook for the year ahead.
Senior Year, Captain:
My Senior year, the team's second year with varsity status I was one of three captains along with Steph Rogalski and Anna Scanlan. Together with the team we managed to pull out a winning season and even progress through the second round of the state play offs, which is nearly unheard of for such a new and unexperienced program. I continued to do much of the paper work and organization and was excited to help lead the team on the field as well. The team as a whole did amazingly well and ended the year with a winning season. We managed to advance to the second round of the NJ State Play Offs, an impresseive accomplishment for such a new and relatively unexperienced program.
The Team at Caitlin Clark's house for a post play off win celebration.
Steph, Anna, and I before a big game. As captains we did a lot together.....
Steph, Anna and I after our AP English Exam the day of our big game against Wayne Hills
Steph, Anna, and I together again for our Senior Prom
Important People to Thank for Their Help in the Creation of the Team:
Debbie Wiley, Mrs.Clark, Mrs. McBride, Pat Jackson, Mrs. Malkin, Mrs. Becker, Todd Meyer, The RIH Board of Education, Mr. Thomas Madigan, the entire group of girls who stuck it out over that first club year, and many many more.
This page was created by Carolyn Ann Wiley and last updated on March 1, 2005