Making their sales pitch: The reality for Shore Conference football coaches in the transfer era

The New Jersey high school football season is over, but there is no rest for the Shore Conference’s head coaches.

In the age of the one-time, penalty-free transfer, open recruiting of youth players and splashy social media, a coach is not just a coach anymore.

Beyond handling the X’s and O’s, offseason weightlifting and college recruiting, he now must be a middle school recruiting coordinator, social media manager and steward of the roster so players don’t transfer. Colleges have large staffs to handle all those duties. Shore Conference high schools do not.

“It’s the world we live in right now,” Manalapan head coach Dom Lepore said. “Everybody’s always looking for the next-best thing.”

“It’s a full-time job,” Red Bank Catholic head coach Mike Lange said. “It’s 150% the state of New Jersey’s fault. They opened this up. The expectations for a coach are that you’ve got to recruit middle school kids and then you have to protect them from not only local schools but protect them from the big (non-public) schools up north.”

All the changes and issues that college football is dealing with have made their way to the high school ranks.

Elite recruits are even being offered money just to attend high school. The Athletic reported that high school basketball star A.J. Dybantsa, the potential No. 1 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, was offered $600,000 by a prep school in Utah, and The Salt Lake Tribune reported that Florida powerhouse Montverde Academy offered Dybantsa $1 million to play for them.

“This whole high school stuff is becoming a business,” St. John Vianney head coach Bob Acosta said. “We just finished the season, and I feel like I’m in another season. To stay with the Bergen Catholics, the RBCs, we have to outwork each other every single minute.”

Re-recruiting your own team

Now that players are entitled to one penalty-free transfer in their first six semesters of high school, that puts a particular spotlight on players who show major promise as freshmen and sophomores. They can transfer without having to sit out any games at their new school. Transferring after their junior season means players have to sit the first 22 days of their senior season or one-third of the games, whichever comes first, according to the NJSIAA rule. Also, if a player transfers a second time, he must sit 30 days the next season.

The NJSIAA membership overwhelmingly voted to institute the new transfer rule last year. Executive director Colleen Maguire told NJ Advance Media that the change “brings equality to both our public and non-public members. It treats every student athlete the same.”

A prime example of the type of player who becomes a focus in the transfer era, whether he wants to be or not, is St. John Vianney running back/safety Abdul Turay. He blossomed into an all-state performer as a sophomore this past fall, leading New Jersey in rushing with 2,517 yards rushing and 37 touchdowns on his way to earning Shore Sports Insider Most Valuable Player honors.

That type of season has N.J. football observers wondering if he will be the next Najee Calhoun, who transferred after a sparkling sophomore season at Donovan Catholic to become the starting tailback for the state’s No. 1 team, Bergen Catholic, this fall. Or the next Lamar Best, who starred for two seasons at Willingboro and then transferred after his sophomore year to become the St. Joe’s-Montvale quarterback this past season.

It’s not even the players who spark the rumors at this point, it’s just an assumption that they are being enticed to go elsewhere because that’s the state of the football landscape.

“We have to re-recruit our own kids daily with the new transfer rules,” Acosta said. “The biggest thing with this job is I needed to be in the building, so I can interact with college coaches and be around our players.

“With Abdul, he is family. I really invested in him as a family member. Yes, the schools up north contact him, and he tells them he has a close relationship with Coach Acosta. You’ve got to make them part of your life.”

Relationship-building has become crucial.

“There’s no more loyalty in college football with kids jumping all over the place, and I think it’s trickling down to the high schools,” Lepore said. “Once the season is over, I’m in constant interaction with our players because I want to maintain those relationships.”

There’s nothing more frustrating for a coach than feeling like he’s helped a player elevate his game, only to watch him go be a star for another team.

“That’s one of the things I’m more shocked about is when kids transfer after having that breakout season,” said Brick Memorial head coach Walt Currie, who has retained stellar sophomore and junior classes for the Mustangs. “They’ve already gotten the playing time or the touches.”

The currency of the realm is college offers. Players and their parents will leave for a higher-profile program because they think it will lead to either more or better scholarship offers.

“A big part of a reason to transfer is exposure to a college, but with technology and as thorough as these recruiting coordinators are, if you’re good enough, somebody’s going to find you,” Currie said. “In 2016, we were 2-8 and (offensive lineman) Justin Szuba got a full scholarship to Monmouth University. I don’t really understand leaving after you had that breakout season. What do you think is going to happen for you?”

The transfer era makes another factor huge in retaining players: winning. Programs like Rumson-Fair Haven and Toms River North, which both went undefeated and won Group titles this season, have not lost a significant amount of players to non-public schools during their run of success.

“We’re lucky because we’ve been successful,” Rumson coach Jeremy Schulte said. “We run a good program, and we’re also a very, very good school (academically). We don’t necessarily worry about it too much.”

Under head coach Dave Oizerowitz, the Mariners have also produced FBS talents to go with the championships. Senior offensive lineman Jaelyne Matthews has signed with Rutgers, one year after star quarterback Micah Ford committed to Stanford, where he was an impact player as a true freshman tailback this fall.

Conversely, in the dog-eat-dog world of New Jersey non-public football, one rough season could mean having to work overtime to avoid your roster disintegrating from transfers.

Scouring for middle school talent

The NJSIAA has spelled out that its definition of “recruitment” of athletes only applies to ones already in high school, so it’s open season on youth players. That has given immense influence to top American Youth Football and Pop Warner coaches and intermediaries who have become like brokers for youth players.

Many of the state’s top programs also have football open houses and camps where they can evaluate players as early as possible. Public school programs have also emphasized camps to build relationships with the youth stars in their sending district.

When Matthews committed to Rutgers, he said head coach Greg Schiano had been recruiting him since sixth grade. When public and non-public coaches are done with their games on a Friday night, they’re often at a youth football game on a Saturday morning to get face time in front of sixth-, seventh- and eighth graders.

“Especially these last five or six years, you see how many youth camps we do in the offseason during the winter and spring,” Lepore said. “That was my No. 1 priority, to make sure we bridge that gap and get our coaching staff in front of these kids as much as possible.”

Lepore considered it a win when the relationship he built with sophomore running back Nick Palmieri when he was in middle school resulted in him playing at Manalapan. Palmieri’s older brother, Mike Palmieri, played at RBC. Nick Palmieri was a running back/linebacker for the Braves who was a third-team All-Shore selection by SSI this season.

“Nicky Palmieri by the time he leaves here, he’s going to be one of the best,” Lepore said. “He wanted to come to Manalapan with his friends. I had to develop that relationship with Nicky from the time he was a kid to where he felt comfortable going to Manalapan.”

On the non-public front, Red Bank Catholic head coach Mike Lange took a step that almost no other non-public school in the state has taken: building his own feeder system. St. James, the preschool through eighth grade school that has been RBC’s sister school since RBC’s inception, started a football program this fall.

The Royals feature some of the top eighth-grade talent in the state and recently won the Pop Warner 14u national title in Florida in their first year of existence. Their 11u team also won Shore Conference and state titles. Lange had St. James players get an up-close look at RBC’s program by giving them sideline passes for games this season.

This is why you come here!
Player development. Team first. Coaching staffs that speak for themselves. @CoachLangeRBC @CipotJohn pic.twitter.com/v3YgBAjoVv

— Saint James (@StJamesfball) December 14, 2024

Go to any non-public high school game and you’ll most likely see youth players on the sidelines. It’s no different than high school recruits standing on the sideline at a college game.

The St. James stars are also getting recruited by North Jersey non-publics, but Lange has a built-in relationship with them because of the connection between St. James and RBC.

The local non-public programs – RBC, St. John Vianney and Donovan Catholic – are in an arms race with North Jersey non-publics like Bergen Catholic, St. Joseph’s-Montvale, Don Bosco Prep and DePaul. And those North Jersey programs are in fierce competition with each other while also trying to raise their profile to become national programs like IMG Academy, Mater Dei (Calif.) or Bishop Gorman (Nev.).

Acosta knows what a national-level program entails because he is a former head coach at IMG Academy, where he coached Minnesota Vikings rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy. He also coached at multiple schools at the collegiate level, including Syracuse.

“I’m using my recruiting template I’ve used in college for eighth graders,” Acosta said. “We home visit them, invite them to camps on Sundays and ultimately look at whether they can be a great fit for us.”

The NJSIAA’s recruiting rules forbid schools from offering athletic scholarships or tuition directly or indirectly through a third party for athletic advantage. It’s also considered recruiting if a program offers housing for a player through the school or a third party like a member of the booster club.

Enforcement of those rules, however, is rare. Agreements are made verbally with no paper trail, or coaches are unwilling to speak on the record about it to the NJSIAA without concrete proof.

It becomes a question of what non-public schools are willing to do to keep up in the race for talent. Free apartments? Free tuition? A ride to school every day from 50 miles away? Or in the case of superstar talents like the basketball star A.J. Dybantsa, a straight-up payday?

“It’s the Wild West,” Lange said. “I don’t know what the end game is, I really don’t. Where does this stop?”

A star from a Shore Conference town like Jackson’s Savon Huggins (St. Peter’s Prep/Rutgers) going up north has not been uncommon over the years, but the exodus has picked up in recent seasons.

Research by one local non-public program found that 33 Shore Conference players were on the rosters of North Jersey non-public schools this fall despite often living 50 or 60 miles from the schools. Calhoun starred for Bergen Catholic, whose Minnesota-bound star cornerback, Naiim Parrish, is from Freehold. Pope John XXIII’s 2,000-yard rusher, senior Tylik Hill, is from Asbury Park, and Don Bosco Prep’s senior quarterback, Deven Sisler, is a transfer from Central.

And that’s just North Jersey. Emmanuel Gerena, a Barnegat resident, was Holy Spirit’s second-leading receiver this season after transferring to the South Jersey power from Donovan Catholic. Schools are going all out to get players, and the Shore is fertile ground.

Much like college, the fight for talent can also put extra emphasis on a single game during the season. Manalapan’s 35-34 overtime win against St. John Vianney this season was not only a win over a Top 10 team in the Shore for the Braves, it was ammunition for Lepore’s sales pitch to youth players.

“That win was huge,” Lepore said. “It was homecoming, it was an overtime game, and it let us say, ‘This is the reason why you stay home, because you want to play in these games with your friends. You don’t have to go to a Catholic school to get that whole experience.”

Same thing goes for St. John Vianney’s state playoff victory over rival Red Bank Catholic, Donovan Catholic’s win over Toms River North in 2023 or RBC’s wins over DePaul in the Non-Public B finals in the last four seasons.

Always online

The sales pitch also extends to a program’s online presence in an age where eighth graders announce their high school commitments with splashy Instagram posts just like high school seniors committing to a college.

Manalapan and Raritan were some of the programs that used Instagram to promote why players should stay home. Raritan had a “Why I Stayed” series of former players, including former NFL safety Bennett Jackson, explaining why prospective players should stick with the Rockets.

 

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“We obviously wanted to show what you can achieve here,” Raritan head coach Anthony Petruzzi said. “The social media component is something that parents and players ask for. It’s just kind of what you have to do now.”

Many head coaches, particularly among the non-public schools, have online presences to promote the program and make it easy for them to be contacted. But it’s also not just making their own posts, it’s liking the posts of top youth players and following their online activity.

Inspect the Instagram likes on nearly any post by a top seventh- or eighth-grade player and you will see some familiar names.

“That’s how we communicate with the middle schoolers,” Acosta said. “They’re posting their highlights, and I’m watching highlight tapes of eighth graders.”

“You feel like you’ve got to keep up with Joneses,” Lepore said. “If you’re not posting stuff about the kid, the kid feels slighted and sees this other coach is posting stuff about his team. It’s all trickled down from college.”

 

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“It’s a big part of what the kids like to do,” Currie said. “They like to see that instant feedback, they like to see the likes, and it’s understandable. They work hard 365 days a year to play 12 or 14 games, so to get that recognition (online) is a positive for them.”

It all adds up to a full plate for Shore Conference football coaches across multiple areas.

The season is over. The work has just begun.

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

You can contact Scott at [email protected]