The Camden High School boys’ basketball team captured their 13th state title on Saturday, beating Arts, of Newark, in the Group 2 final at Rutgers University Saturday afternoon, the Courier Post reported.
Video from Jersey Sports Zone shows members of the Manasquan High School boys’ basketball team in the stands applauding as Camden celebrated their victory.
The moment occurred a day after a New Jersey Court denied Manasquan’s appeal over a wrongly overturned call in their game against Camden that cost them a trip to the state final.
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The state appellate division ruled late Friday that it would not grant Manasquan school officials' petition stemming from their loss to Camden.
“Judges should generally ‘refrain from interfering with the internal matters of sports associations,’” the court said, citing a legal precedent. It added that courts generally “do not sit as referees of football any more than (they) sit as the ‘umpires’ of baseball or the ‘super-scorer(s)’ for stock car racing.”
The decision allowed Saturday’s state title game between Camden and Arts to go forward.
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Manasquan initially was declared the winner over Camden in Tuesday night’s Group 2 semifinal game. However the call was overturned when the referees discussed the shot and concluded it came after the buzzer, giving Camden a 46-45 win.
A review of multiple videos of the final seconds clearly showed the shot was in the air and was going into the basket when the final buzzer sounded, meaning it should have counted. The controversy quickly became a topic of conversation on national news programs and sports radio and television shows.
The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA), which oversees scholastic sports, acknowledged Wednesday that the referees made the wrong call but said it would not overturn Camden’s victory.
In a statement, the agency said it understands Manasquan’s frustration but “the rules are clear — once game officials leave the ‘visual confines of the playing court,’ the game is concluded, and the score is official.” The agency does not use instant replay.
Manasquan school officials had asked acting education commissioner Kevin Dehmer to delay the state game while it appealed in court, arguing that it should be in the final. But Dehmer ruled Friday that Manasquan's claims were “not reviewable,” citing the guidelines of the NJSIAA.
Manasquan filed an appeal in New Jersey state appellate court. An order signed by Judge Joseph Marcyzk denied the school's petition to consider the matter.
Manasquan Schools Superintendent Frank Kaysan called the appeal “really the last step in this process. We could go to the New Jersey Supreme Court, but we're not going to do that.”
Manasquan had earlier asked a state superior court judge to put the upcoming state title game on hold. The judge denied the motion Thursday, ruling the court does not have jurisdiction to stop the game until the state education department and a state appellate court weigh in on the matter.
School district attorney Michael Gross said Thursday that “the district and the students in the district are deserved of getting the right outcome to this incident. So we are taking all these necessary steps to try to right the wrong that was done.”
Lou Cappelli Jr., an attorney representing the Camden school district, painted Manasquan's legal battle as sour grapes and a waste of taxpayer money and the court's time.
“Are we going to go back and look at all 32 minutes of the game and come to the judge and say ‘judge, this wasn’t a foul.’ It’s ridiculous,” Cappelli told the Asbury Park Press.
Kaysan, though, called the matter “a learning situation, a learning environment” for students.
“We want to teach the students at Manasquan that there is a process and procedure when you are on the right side of something to obtain equity, and what we did here is use the process and the procedure the State of New Jersey put into effect — everyone knows we won the game, but we want to do so using the avenue the state has given us to do it properly," Kaysan said.
