Projected Days to the NJ Boys High School Volleyball Opening Day!!!

Observations and reflections on 2020 Boys NJ High School Volleyball…

Our high school season has been lost due to COVID-19.

There are numerous ways to give feedback and ideas on the site. Through comments, our home page feedback form, by email at njpowerranking@gmail.com, or through social media venues (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc…). We encourage feedback and any constructive criticisms toward the site, its content, or blog posts. We totally value and appreciate that. What we do not appreciate and will not tolerate is any form of bashing or bullying on any of our content. Hurtful, demeaning, or bullying comments will be deleted and those fans will be blocked from further comments with no exception. Please take note of this. Especially during these current times, NJP will always be a safe place that players and fans can come to have some fun and follow the game they love.

We are launching a new project at this link: https://njpowerranking.com/instagram/ Players can submit “clips” of their big plays from games and will post on instagram as well as select an “NJP Clip of the Year”. Can’t wait to see some of NJ’s best stuff!!

We have refined our main menu by category to ease navigation of the website. The site is always best when viewed on a desktop as some features do not translate on mobile. It’s a major challenge as 81% of our fans use mobile first. We continue to strive to make your mobile experience a great one. If you use left top menu’s on mobile it will show you the last 10 posts as well as a summary menu by category rather than the full menu of items.

We have expanded our player interview focus of our blogs to include college players from NJ, NJ High School Coaches, College Coaches from NJ Colleges, NJ Volleyball Officials, Professional players from NJ, and other volleyball VIP’s. Watch the “News and Post” page for updates.

Team Freedom, NJ’s professional volleyball club playing in the NVA has partnered with NJP to present “Tips from the Pro’s”. Many thanks to these great players for helping to give advice to our high school level players in the community. Link here: https://njpowerranking.com/tips-from-the-pros/

Polls have been added in the footer widget and will appear on all pages. The polls are presented randomly so if you hit refresh, you can see additional polls to enter your votes or jut change your page (especially on mobile) to access a new poll.

For some inspiration… check out our Game Day Video. There are a couple of hundred current and former players that appear in the 9-minute tribute. Are you in there??? Link here: https://njpowerranking.com/njp-game-day-video/

All Club Team rosters with associated high schools have been updated as of 2-28-2020. Check them out here for the latest info. If you can provide any missing information, please email us at njpowerranking@gmail.com. Thank you! https://njpowerranking.com/2019-2020-club-team-rosters/

From Brian Deakyne at NJ Advanced Media: Committee clashes on spring Opening Day dates: The second reading for the Opening Day in four spring sports — baseball, softball, boys tennis and boys volleyball — to be pushed back from April 1 to April 8 received considerable pushback from the committee and did not pass with 19 votes opposing, seven votes supporting it and one abstention. NJSIAA Assistant Directors Kim Cole and Jack DuBois both publicly went against the motion before the vote. “You’re losing a week of the season,” DuBois said. “You’re limiting the abilities of coaches and ADs to schedule games.”

College Rankings now added to our College Info page for easy access. Most recent link to NCAA Division l/Division ll, NCAA Division lll, and NAIA colleges are available at this link: https://njpowerranking.com/college-info/ and on the main menu.

Over 30 NJ High School Volleyball Player Interviews posted thus far over the past 4 weeks. Hoping to keep up the pace through our top 75 before the season starts.

2-5-2020 We updated our Club Team Roster page for any recent updates as well as high school references for all club players. If you see any discrepant info or missing info that you may know, please reach out. Many thanks!

NJP Interns: As the season approaches, we will entertain any juniors or seniors who may want to blog or get experience providing content for a sports website. A page with more information will be launching soon for those interested.

For NJ Club Players… please send us the tournament grids when you receive them from your coaches so we can report on them to the NJP volleyball community. You can email njpowerranking@gmail.com.

College Commitment page now has many updates for 2019 as well as 2020. Link here: https://njpowerranking.com/home/news-posts-2/college-commitments/

We have implemented a news and posts page for our community to see relevant updates and player interviews. The link is on the main menu and is also available at https://njpowerranking.com/news-and-posts/

Feedback asked: What’s working? What isn’t? Feel free to email us and share your thoughts!

We have now added and updated a section on NJP TV to include games for the 2020 NCAA Mens Volleyball season underway… Check them out at https://njpowerranking.com/njp-tv-2/

Thanks to all of the players who have been interviewed for participating. It’s been fun to get to know each of you as well as provide the community with some details about you and your teams. FYI-We have a specific list that we are following regarding invites to be interviewed. With 150 teams and a database of 4,000 players, it has been quite a large initiative. So we are taking it one day at a time and segmenting the lists so if you are a top player and have not received an invite, don’t worry. We have struggled to find some of you on social, so don’t be offended if your teammates asks you to contact us. 🙂

Many thanks to all of the volleyball players who continue to contribute toward the sites content. We continue to reach out to many of you on social media and appreciate your support. NJP is a community website and thrives when we have solid interaction from players, coaches, officials, and fans. Your feedback is always welcome and appreciated through social channels or at njpowerranking@yahoo.com, njpowerranking@gmail.com, or njpowerranking@usa.com.

Atlantic City Tournament info and schedule for ALL age groups here: https://njpowerranking.com/2020-atlantic-city-invitational-tournament-information/

There is the 2020 AAU Super Regional Invitational Volleyball tournament in Atlantic City this coming weekend 1/10/2020 through 1/12/2020. More info at this link: https://www.jbj-events.com/ac2020/ Why not head down the shore and support our NJ Boys! AAU National bid on the line…

We continue to add curated youtube links to our NJP TV page. We now have educational materials for players, coaching resources, player highlight videos, inspirational videos, and game footage from high school and college for 2019 and 2020 (coming soon).

We have set up some tools on the website for social sharing. We would so appreciate you taking two minutes to share our website in your social channels. NJP is and will always be a free service for the NJ Volleyball community so we really appreciate your support. Check our social posts daily too.

We continue to add more preseason high school reports for NJ boys teams. Recent additions include North Bergen, Central Regional and Barnegat. We plan to have all teams complete by March.

We continue to gather club team roster for all NJ club teams. This has been a tedious task to develop a cross reference system with our high school preseason reports. Once the club rosters are finalized and we identify high schools for each rostered club member, we will update the preseason reports and rankings for each high school team. This will occur prior to the beginning of the season.

Moravian 18U “Kick-off in the Valley” Tourney details for 12-8-19

Maxfit Tourney in Glassboro 12-1-19 info:

NY Impact Black takes the Maxfit tourney going undefeated and edging SJVBC Red in the finals. NY Impact 18 White took third place.

NJP is requesting Boys JV roster information from the Spring 2019 High School season last year. We would like to expand our database to include those players trying to make the move up to varsity and include in our preseason reports. Please include player names and grad years as well as the high school team. Your support is greatly appreciated and the info can be sent to njpowerranking@yahoo.com. Many thanks.

Southern Friendship 18U Tourney Results:

11/10 Kean Tourney Results:

Looking to play volleyball for a D1 or D2 College or University? Visit our college info page for some important data to help guide your decision. Link here: https://njpowerranking.com/college-info/

Last weekend on 10-27-19. Kean University hosted a High School volleyball tournament. Numerous NJ HS teams participated as well as some club teams. Here is a list of participants: Old Bridge, Fair Lawn, Southern, Passaic, Kearny, Bayonne, Elizabeth, Harrison, CBA and club teams from Warren Six Pack, SJVBC, and Boro. Fair Lawn faced Southern in the Championship game and edged the Rams 25-23. Of the close to 50 matches from the 15 teams, we have a handful of scores on some of the matchups. We will share if we get some additional corroborated info from participants.

We spent almost a decade covering NJ High School and Travel hockey. So many players (and parents) would get caught up in what we called alphabet hockey. Who made AAA and AA, and A, and B and I am not playing if Johnny made AA and I made A. Especially at Pee Wee and Bantam levels which were kids between 10 and 13. We see some of this again in Volleyball. Who makes the 16-1 vs 16-2 vs 16-3 is something your coaches decide to better prepare you for success. Those that might not be ready this year can continue to develop their skills and be ready for larger challenges in the future. It’s tough to hear sometimes but don’t be discouraged. Increase your effort and good things will happen. We look at it this way… if you tried out for Warren 6 pack and you made a 2nd or 3rd team… relish that success. That’s the equivalent of being named second-team all-state and being disappointed. It should never happen… So keep your perspective, and play the game you love to play. Come High School season you will be glad you did.

Atlantic Valley Volleyball Club 18-1 roster is posted here: https://njpowerranking.com/2019-2020-club-team-rosters/ Congrats to all of these players!

Side-Out Sports SOS has posted rosters for boys club teams, Link here: https://www.sosvolleyball.com/page/show/1926432-teams Congrats to all of these players! https://njpowerranking.com/2019-2020-club-team-rosters/

CJVA (Central Jersey Volleyball Association) has posted rosters for boys club teams, Link here: https://www.cjva.org/page/show/5352048-eh-boys-teams?subseason=648531 Congrats to all of these players! https://njpowerranking.com/2019-2020-club-team-rosters/

We are starting to add reports for teams outside of the NJP 2020 Top 50. Watch for these daily… recent additions Hudson Catholic, Bayonne, Colts Neck, South Brunswick, Elizabeth, North Brunswick and WWPN.

We continue to collect data to add to our database on NJ boys high school volleyball players. Most of our focus lately has been on amassing our club info so we can correlate and cross-reference to the high school rosters. Our preseason reports include club info from 2018-2019 as well as new info from 2019-2020 as it evolves after tryouts. We now have roster info from the following club teams from 2018-2019: Warren6Pack (18-1, 17-1, 17-2, 16-1, 16-2, 15-1), Atlantic Valley (18-1, 18-2, 16-1), CJVA (16-1, 17-1, 18-1, 18-2), SideOut Sports (18-1, 18-2, 17-1), PowerZone Denville (17-1), Core (18-1, 15-1), and NY Impact (18-1). We are missing a number of club rosters from last season and would welcome the opportunity for our NJP community to provide them to us. Missing teams from the above clubs as well as GSE teams, Extreme teams, GS Attack, and others.

For 2019-2020, we have received just a few thus far but will be building this information as it becomes available at the end of September.

We have posted draft pre-season reports for the NJP 2020 Top 50 teams. Our pre-season ratings and rankings are based on a math formula which takes into consideration last years ending team ratings, points and statistics that are returning to the team, % lost to graduation, and other factors.

Here are some deep-dive stats by class year for you based on the 2019 season: The breakdown of players who made statistical contributions to their teams during the 2019 high school boys season is as follows… Seniors represented 43% of players with stats and juniors represented 36%. 17% of players were sophomores and just 4% were freshman. There were 1,742 players statewide with some measure of stats.

As far as these players contributions, more than half of all stats come from seniors in most categories. Seniors represented 51% of the 11,985 aces, 56% of the 57,198 kills, 54% of the 14,161 blocks, 53% of the 68,473 digs, and 46% of the 51,386 assists.

NJP analyzed statistical percentage increases on average by class year and it was interesting to note the progression each year from freshman to senior on average. Let’s start with kills. Kills from freshman to sophomore year players increased 32% on average, sophomore to junior increased 84% and junior to senior increased 39%. Let’s use an example from the past… if we look at former Harrison standout and current D1 NJIT player Piotr Namiotko’s stats from his high school days, Piotr had 80 kills as a freshman (pretty impressive). His Junior year, he increased his kill count by 150% to 200. He increased his kill count by 50% to 300 his junior year, and increased his kills 75% to 525 his senior year. So Piotr was obviously better than the average increases as he almost doubled the average increases in his last two years. Obviously, there are numerous factors that will need to be taken into consideration when projecting potential future stats from current players. Let’s follow the path of NJ’s last two years players of the year. Elan Dorkhman from Old Bridge, the 2018 player of the year, finished with 392 kills his senior year which was 26% better than his junior year kills of 310. Elan had the same amount of kills as a sophomore as he had as a junior at 310. Andrew Zaleck the 2019 player of the year, also from Old Bridge, had 457 kills his senior year, 241% better than his junior year total. Obviously this had a lot to do with Dorkhman’s presence while Andrew was a junior and then he exploded his senior year as the go-to leader of the team. Both individuals had amazing sophomore years and similar junior years with no increases in kills as juniors. The better the player, the more likely they will exceed average increase numbers. Here is a table of average increases by class grad year by stat:

14 of the 150 NJ boys high school squads have virtually no information available for rosters, stats, and team info. They are Edison, Garfield, West Side, Hoboken, Central Jersey Charter, Kennedy, Abundant, Camden, Dwight Morrow, Salem Tech, Passaic Charter, Wilberforce, LEAP, and Hoboken Charter. Any relevant and verifiable information that can be provided by the NJP community on these squads would be greatly appreciated.

We calculate only two teams that did not lose a senior to graduation in 2019. Indian Hills (0-18) was one and will be a much stronger squad in 2020. Our PSR has them at #71, up from their #119 final season rank in 2019. The other is Montclair Immaculate (16-7). We expect Immaculate to break into the top 50 for 2020.

Teams returning over 90% of their statistical points on average other than Indian Hills and Montclair Immaculate are Eagle Academy, Golda Och, Newark Tech, Manchester Township, and Northern Burlington. All of these squads are expected to have a significant rise in the rankings compared to 2019.

There are 8 teams that lose more than 90% of their statistical points to graduation. These schools will be hard-pressed to rejuvenate their squads with JV players and are expected to regress substantially in 2020. They are Toms River East, Hopewell Valley, Belleville, West Essex, South Brunswick, Summit, Bayonne, and Hunterdon Central.

Fair Lawn returns 85% of their statistical points and is a clear #1 in NJ for 2020. The return of Mark Berry, Jack Centeno, Alex Work, Dennis Narteh, and Gil Zyndorf will present near insurmountable challenges to any opponent. There is a huge margin between the #1 and #2 team with a differential of 3.184 rating points. It is interesting to note that the largest differential between #1 and #2 over 10 rankings throughout the 2019 season was 0.970. Our rating system is based on how many points away each team is from the top team in the state so Fair Lawn’s strength will drive down other NJ team ratings, especially when comparing to last season. The number one team will always have a 25.00 rating and the rating system is designed to show what the score would be in head to head play in a set against the top team in the state. Keep this in mind when evaluating rating points year to year.

NJP does not keep statistics on JV squads. Some teams have immense depth with JV and freshman teams refueling varsity talent each year. Other teams only field a varsity level squad. Perennial leaders like Southern, St. Joe’s, Old Bridge, and Fair Lawn have plenty of depth waiting in the wings for their opportunity to play with the big club. In most situations, roster size is large enough to ensure that returning juniors and sophomores will be featured players the next season. From our analysis, the chances of an incoming freshman having significant contributions to a team are very few and far between. Our rating algorithm will be flawed in situations where there are extreme talent levels at JV levels.

The Big North, in addition to top-seeded Fair Lawn, is projected to have several top contenders. Wayne Valley jumps into the top 10 in pre-season rankings returning 86% of their statistical points. We expect senior Anthony DePalma to record over 350 kills for the Indians. Passaic and Teaneck are projected to be top 25 teams with Passaic at #19 and Teaneck at #22. Eastside Paterson and PCTI are expected to be in the top 40.

The GMC will be super solid again in 2020. Old Bridge loses 84% of their statistical points to graduation but we do expect them to remain in the top 10. NJP is projecting solid improvement from both St. Joe’s Metuchen and Colonia ranking them both at #2 and #3 respectively. Colonia loses very little to graduation after posting a 23-8 record in 2019. St. Joe’s has an abundance of talent and may be best suited to test Fair Lawn. East Brunswick and JP Stevens will have solid teams and we project EB to be a top 25 team and JPS to be top 40. South Brunswick has the biggest impact from graduation and we expect the #19th ranked Vikings to regress out of the top 50.

Hudson County is projected to have a few high profile teams. St. Peter’s Prep pulls in the #7 pre-season ranking returning senior Chris Larkin and a high achieving group of sophomores from last seasons 19-5 team. The Marauders finished #6 in the 2019 final rankings and may be even better in 2020. Kearny is expected to rise from #31 in the 2019 final ranking to #14 in the PSR. The all around play of junior Santiago Lopez will power this teams success along with the return of senior Douglas Ferrari. Also watch out for Synder to improve after going 17-5 last season as they return 88% of their statistical points. We expect Hudson Catholic to also be much improved and could beak into the top 50. Bayonne is expected to regress after losing 91% of their statistical points to graduation and is not in the NJP Top 50 pre-season ranks. Harrison is expected to be a top 25 team and will always be ready come County Tournament time.

Northwest Jersey is expected to have Jefferson as a lone top 50 squad. Jefferson is projected to be #34 in NJ. We expect Chatham to improve and both Pope John and Vernon to regress.

The Skyland Conference, despite only having 5 teams, always has some of the states top talent. Although all 5 teams are expected to be in the top 30, we expect some movement and regression of some perennial top 10 squads. Hunterdon Central and Hillsborough were top teams but both lose a substantial amount of talent to graduation. Watchung Hills who finished 5th in the Skylands in 2019 has a 87% positive impact score and could break into the top 25 this season. Bridgewater Raritan is expected to be a top 5 team powered by 6’8″ Senior Griffin Fieseler. And Ridge is expected to remain in the top 20 despite losing their Head Coach and some top level seniors.

When you talk about NJ Boys Volleyball, Southern is the perennial state champions that first come to mind. NJP expects Southern to have a top 5 squad again this season. But the shore conference is getting better and better each year and may not be an easy ride. Kean, Healy and Deakyne will lead the Rams. We project that 6 shore conference teams will be in the top 25. CBA will be improved this season but we are projecting them at #29. We expect major improvements from Manchester, St. John Vianney, and Jackson Liberty. But the biggest improvement is expected from Jackson Memorial who is our pre-season #4, one slot ahead of Southern. We expect regression from Howell, Colts Neck and Marlboro. Wall is projected to remain a top 25 team.

Essex County looks rather wide open with just two teams in the top 20 and 4 teams in the top 40. Livingston is NJP’s #13 ranked team for the pre-season. West Caldwell Tech comes in at #17. Bloomfield and Payne Tech are projected at #31 and #35 respectively. West Essex lost almost their entire squad to graduation and could slip out of the top 100.

The Farmers of Union lead by senior setter Justin Novoa are the only Union County team in the NJP top 20 at #20. We expect every other squad in the county to regress including SPF who finished in the top 20 for 2019.

In the Olympic, there will be several top teams projected to be in the top 20 mix. Clearview earns the #10 pre-season ranking after a 22-4 season last year and retaining half of their scoring. Washington Township is #18 in the PSR. You can never count out Kingsway from making a run but we have them at #44 currently. We do expect Gloucester Tech to be much improved and break into the top 40.

Burlington County will be super competitive this season. 6 teams are expected to be in the top 50. Rancocas Valley appears to be the most improved and the team to beat. NJP projects the Red Devils at #28 in NJ. Atlantic Tech, Sterling, Northern Burlington, Moorestown, and WWPN are projected to be in the top 50.