While Mercer County public and non-public high school football teams prepare for their opening weekend Oct 2, it’s a different story for most of the county’s prep schools.

The Mid-Atlantic Prep League (MAPL) announced on Aug. 25 there would be no interscholastic competition, although schools were permitted (but not encouraged) to go out of state for games.

Lawrenceville, Peddie and Pennington cancelled their fall seasons, including football, but Hun is attempting to salvage some competition this autumn. Football hopes to play at least five games, while the remaining teams are looking to play six or seven. Everything is tentative, of course, depending on week-to-week health concerns.

“We’re taking the approach that we’re trying to play any games that we can,” Hun Athletic Director Bill Quirk said. “Having gone through the spring and seeing what it did to the kids mentally, we took the approach coming back to try to play some games, follow the state regulations and hopefully our first football game will be after October 1.”

In making the schedule, head coach Todd Smith got each opponent to commit to coming to the Raiders’ Princeton campus. Teams scheduled are Kiski Area High School from Western Pennsylvania, Wyoming Seminary, Chester Academy, Paramus Catholic and, tentatively, the Brunswick School from Connecticut. There may also be a rematch with Wyoming Seminary.

Lawrenceville was the first Mercer prep team to drop fall sports on July 31 after a summer’s worth of discussions between administrators and board members.

“The school looked at every possible way we could have pulled off a season this fall, and ultimately decided we couldn’t do it,” head coach Harry Flaherty said. “The school has had significant challenges to

weigh, including bringing in students from all over the country and all over the world, and we have slowly been filtering different groups onto campus over the past several weeks.

“I sent a letter to the team, letting them know how sorry I was about their missed opportunities. I was especially sorry for the senior class. I followed up with each senior over the phone to let them know how sorry I was for them. I know they were excited. We have had subsequent Zoom calls as a team since then, transitioning from talking about what we were missing to what we will be doing this fall.”

The Big Red will continue to hold practices and Flaherty said they will concentrate on the positives, such as focusing on the individual development of each player. There will also be added time in the weight room for players to increase their strength and conditioning.

“It is tough to miss any season,” Flaherty said. “It’s never happened to me before – as a player or coach. We felt really good about our group this year, with a senior quarterback, lots of young guys who got significant playing time last year, and a strong group of post-graduates coming in. We always talk to our team about focusing on the things we can control and blocking out the things we can’t control. This was the ultimate test of that.”

Speaking of tests, new Peddie AD Thad Lepcio inherited a heck of a challenge when he arrived in Hightstown. After 14 yeas as AD at the Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tenn., Lepcio took over in mid-March for Jason Baseden, who took a similar job at Phillips Exeter Academy.

Upon his arrival, Covid 19 hit, forcing the cancellation of spring sports. Less than a month later, Lepcio had to find a new football coach when Chris Malleo stepped down after five successful years, including an 8-0 record in 2019 for the Falcons first undefeated season since 1988. Pat Loughlin was promoted from assistant to head coach, but will only be running practices in his first year.

“Ultimately, it was a decision made by the school’s Planning Team,” Lepcio said. “Whether the 2019 team was 8-0 or 0-8 made no bearing on our decision. As much as I love watching young student-athletes compete we felt that it was the safest decision for the Peddie community.

“It was a really hard decision. I believe so much in the importance of interscholastic sports and interscholastic competition. We developed safety programs and protocols which included student testing, mandatory face coverings and social distancing. But when you add a layer of having a boarding school and a full residential community, there is additional risk of viral spread. When you then add the close contact and physicality of football, it became harder for us to justify the risk.”

Along with shutting down the MAPL season, the league also decided to disallow postgraduate football players this season. Thus, Lawrenceville dropped out of the league for football and was going to play its associate schools in New England.

“We will be able to bring in more postgraduates, like our counterparts in New England, and we have eight of them on campus for the fall,” Flaherty said. “We were still scheduled to play The Hill School and a couple of schools from the Inter-Ac in Philadelphia. Other than that, all of our opponents were in New England.”

Hun will also maintain PGs, but will not use them in MAPL games.

“We’d already talked to some of the teams in New England,” Quirk said. “We knew they had post-grads, we wanted to keep our schedule competitive. We told our (MAPL) group we would continue to have up to four PGs and when we played them we will not use them.”

The ruling does not affect Pennington, which did not use PGs. Peddie has dropped post grads, but Lepcio speculated that “it would not surprise me to see the MAPL revisit the football PG conversation, as I believe

there will be considerable interest from student-athletes who will not play this fall.”

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