‘Couldn’t be a better ending than this’: Jackson Memorial wins state playoff game in likely its final home game in program history

JACKSON – In what was likely the final game at Joe Perry Gymnasium in the 60-plus years of Jackson Memorial basketball, the Jaguars delivered an emotional win for the home team on Wednesday night.

Veteran girls basketball head coach Rachel Goodale wiped away tears and her players celebrated with hugs after they closed out a 63-53 victory over ninth-seeded Northern Burlington in the first round of the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group 3 playoffs. The eighth-seeded Jaguars (14-11) will be on the road in the next round on Saturday at top-seeded Westampton Tech after sophomore guard Cali Brown poured in a game-high 23 points to lead the way on Wednesday night.

“There really couldn’t be a better ending than this. Having our last game in the state tournament on our home court, we got the dub and it feels great to go out that way,” said junior center Isabella Finer, who had 9 points and 7 rebounds in the win.

The bittersweet victory came one week after the Jackson Board of Education voted to approve a plan to merge Jackson Memorial and Jackson Liberty High Schools for budgetary reasons starting in the 2025-26 school year. The new high school will be housed in the Jackson Liberty building, while Jackson Memorial will become a middle school.

Joe Perry Gymnasium, which has been the site of championship basketball squads and some of the Shore Conference’s legendary wrestling teams since the 1960s, will be the home of the district’s middle school teams next winter.

The Jackson Memorial boys basketball team also reached the state playoffs, but lost to Lawrence on the road on Wednesday night. The win by the girls is likely their last on their home floor unless they can stun Westampton Tech and have upsets occur in the other part of the bracket.

“It’s very hard to leave here,” Goodale said. “I would lie if I said it didn’t break my heart.”

No one bleeds red and black like Goodale, who passed the 400-win mark earlier this season in her 25^th year as head coach. She is a 1993 Jackson Memorial graduate who scored 1,306 points during her scholastic playing career. Goodale went on to star at Monmouth University and was inducted into the Jackson Memorial Athletic Hall of Fame in 2008.

“To me, this place is the most special place,” she said. “It’s hard to come in here and win here. The environment’s always awesome, the heat’s cranked up to 72, and it’s just a little bit of a hostile crowd in a first-round game (on Wednesday night), I would say. It’s just special in every way, and I can’t even imagine not playing here.”

Jaguars for life 

The roots run deep at Jackson Memorial, which includes many of the current girls basketball players.

“My grandpa was in the first graduating class here,” Finer said. “Everybody that grew up in this town in my family all graduated here. Multiple of their names are up on the wall (in the gym). It’s just a sad thing.”

“My parents graduated from here, and all of my uncles and aunts, they all graduated here from the start of 1990,” said junior guard Kaylee Ambos, who had 12 points in the win. “I was supposed to be the last generation to graduate from here, so it’s definitely a tough thing to adjust to because you grow up with these expectations and you come here and you feel like everything’s set. You have that legacy to live off of, and it’s kind of just a big setback.”

Finer and Ambos both spoke at the Board of Education meeting in defense of keeping Jackson Memorial as the consolidated high school instead of Jackson Liberty, which is a newer building that opened in 2006.

“Me and Bella started making our speeches to go talk at the Board of Ed. We were going to fight, but things just happened and that’s just life,” Ambos said. “You have to adjust to different things and grow as a person.”

Goodale is also embracing the possibilities of a merged team of Jackson Memorial and Jackson Liberty players.

“I love the fact that we’re merging,” she said. “I think it’s awesome for the town because it’s been so divided, so now we’re bringing it back to when I grew up here – one town, one team.”

However, Goodale acknowledged that it’s “disappointing” that the school will be in the Jackson Liberty building.

“This is 60-something years here and everybody knows this place,” she said. “The fact that they can’t finish their careers here is tough. I know everybody has their traditions, but it’s just a little bit different and that hurts a little bit. But we’re going to move on. We accept the merge, and we’re excited about it, meeting new kids and embracing them to a Jackson mentality.”

Into the unknown

It’s unclear at this point what the team name, logo and colors of the new consolidated high school will be. It’s possible that this state playoff run is the last as the Jackson Memorial Jaguars.

“I’m hoping they at least give us that because the whole town is Jaguars,” Goodale said, while noting Jaguars is the name of the town’s youth teams. “It makes sense to continue that at least, but we don’t know where it’s going. I’m going to focus on making sure my kids are OK, making sure they’re coming with me and they’re OK with the merge and everything like that, and just keep it positive.”

The most likely process for determining the head coaches in each sport at the merged high school will be an open interview process. Goodale is hoping to be the girls basketball coach for the new school next winter. She has been Memorial’s coach longer than Liberty has been in existence and led the Jaguars to multiple NJSIAA sectional titles and the overall Group 4 title in 2012.

“I would hope with the resume I have,” she said about continuing to be the head coach. “I would hope I am, but we don’t know. There will be an interview process. Regardless, I’ll speak with the Liberty coach, and we’ll make sure the kids, the camaraderie is good, and we welcome both and we’ll just go from there.”

The young Jackson Memorial team, almost all of which is returning next season, is rolling with the punches.

“For me, this is home, this is tradition, but if things need to change, as long as I’m with these girls and they all come back, I’m fine because at least I still have my family and everyone’s still in Jackson Township,” Ambos said.

“When you think of Jackson, not to exclude Liberty, a lot of people think Jackson Memorial because we’ve been here so long,” Finer said. “It’s just such a legacy. There will be definitely be a big adjustment that needs to be made, but we always can adjust, and we’ll figure it out.”

The moment of closure overwhelmed Goodale when the final buzzer sounded in the win over Northern Burlington, which Jackson Memorial led for the entire game.

“After the game I got super emotional in the huddle and I broke down –  that’s how I am,” Goodale said. “A few of (the players) are cut from this cloth where they had parents who went through the schools here, and they’re super emotional about it. But kids are resilient. They’re going to go somewhere else. They’ll be fine.”

Finishing on a high note

The Jaguars also take pride in the fact that they won this season’s Shore Conference Coaches Cup, the tournament for the teams that did not qualify for the Shore Conference Tournament. They beat Manchester 65-57 on their home court to bring home the trophy.

“We finish with a championship of some sort, and we finish our last game (with a) win, so yeah, to win here, there’s no better way,” Goodale said.

If they had to say goodbye, they were able to do it with pride.

“It was just a gigantic accomplishment to win that here in the last year of the school being open,” Ambos said about the Coaches Cup.

“The one thing we said tonight was that we just have to play our hearts out and get this one,” Finer said. “It’s something we’ll remember.”

Scott Stump is a freelance reporter, newsletter writer and editor who first started covering Shore Conference football in 1999 and has covered basketball, wrestling, baseball and seemingly every other Shore Conference sport at some point. 

You can contact him at [email protected]