The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association’s (NJSIAA) Executive Committee met Wednesday for its final in-person meeting of the year. While the biggest action was around changes to wrestling and football, this final meeting featured an unusually high volume of smaller changes. Soccer gets a mercy rule The executive committee approved the adoption of a mercy rule for boys and girls soccer. The new rule will bring an end to any game where the goal differential is at least six after the 20-minute mark of the second half. If a team is leading by at least six goals at the 60-minute mark of the game, it will end. If a team is ahead by five goals and scores to stretch its lead to six in the final 20 minutes of play, the game will end. The rule applies to all regular season, conference tournament and state tournament games except for the state finals. Basketball prepares for rare co-ops Co-ops in swimming and ice hockey are common, but seeing them on the court is not. The executive committee approved the formation of two girls basketball co-ops. The first brings together Parsippany and Parsippany Hills. The other combines Camden Eastside and Camden. These aren’t the first teams to co-op, as Hasbrouck Heights and Bogota teamed up during the 2022-23 season. By comparison, there were 50 co-op or tri-op ice hockey teams during the 2024-25 season, 22 for boys swimming, 17 for girls swimming, 10 for boys lacrosse, four in field hockey and three in girls soccer. While co-ops are skyrocketing on the ice, a trend doesn’t seem to be starting on the court. “I don’t expect to see a ton more because you only need seven or eight girls,” NJSIAA Executive Director Colleen Maguire said. “However, the girls participation numbers in basketball continue to decline every year. For some of our smaller schools, they may feel that they just can’t even safely host a team. Time will tell.” Bowling match play gets standardized Under the current procedure, team rankings for the state tournament are calculated with PowerPoints that account for the top four individual scores in each match. The NJSIAA approved the proposed match format that will extend the system to calculate all five bowlers’ scores. All matches will be contested with five bowlers as well. This brings uniformity across the board, as some conferences participate with anywhere between four and six bowlers per match. Gymnastics tournament restructured To promote greater efficiency of the gymnastics state tournament, the NJSIAA approved a few changes starting with the 2025-26 season. The top 32 teams statewide will qualify for the tournament and be split into four sectional brackets. Each sectional champion and the next four squads with the highest team scores across all four sections will advance to the team championships, forming eight total participants. Individual championship procedures will also be tweaked. The top 35 individual scores will qualify for each event, regardless of section. In the past, the 35 spots were filled from a qualifying number from one meet. Now, gymnasts will have an entire season to post one of the top 35 scores in each event. Those gymnasts will then qualify for the state tournament. The team championships and individual championships will also not be held concurrently. They will be separate. Hockey history for Hudson County A total of 20 applications for co-op and tri-op teams were approved on Wednesday. That included five in ice hockey. The Brick and Mount Olive-Hoptatcong-Hackettstown boys hockey teams extended their current arrangements. Monroe became the latest single-school team to move into the Public Co-Op bracket after joining the existing South Brunswick-North Brunswick co-op. Then there was significant news on the girls side. Hudson County will get its first girls hockey team, as the Hoboken-Weehawken-Secaucus tri-op was approved. Chatham-Millburn, an existing co-op, will also welcome Livingston, which will be involved in girls hockey for the first time. Winter practice dates updated Changes are coming for when ice hockey, swimming and bowling teams will be able to start practice in preparation for the 2025-26 season. The executive committee approved a proposal that moved practice start dates up a week. Instead of beginning practices on November 24, teams will be able to start on November 17. This gives teams more time to reach the six-practice minimum before playing in their first official game. According to Tony Maselli, the NJSIAA heard complaints from participants in swimming, bowling and ice hockey - three sports that utilize third-party sites - that they couldn’t get enough practices in before the competition start date. The NJSIAA feels adding a week will alleviate those concerns. Changes for disqualifications push forward A growing number of incidents during scrimmages, according to NJSIAA Executive Director Colleen Maguire, has pushed the organization closer to extending disqualification rules to any preseason games. “This year in particular, we saw a couple preseason brawls and real aggressive calls from officials saying this one got out of control,” Maguire said. “I’m sure it’s been there, but this year it seems like there were a few bigger instances that occurred.” Scrimmages currently are not considered under the disqualification rule but that could change. This proposal would enforce a suspension of one regular-season game for football or two in all other sports for any player or coach who is issued a disqualification in a scrimmage. This would not, however, count towards a team’s disqualification maximum but would count towards an individual player’s maximum. The motion passed, meaning it will be put to a final vote in June for approval for the 2025-26 school year. Tennis, bowling, gymnastics could soon follow 50% rule The NJSIAA moved closer to adding tennis, bowling and gymnastics to the list of sports that abide by the 50% rule. Ice hockey, soccer and swimming are a few of the sports that currently abide the rule that a player must participate in at least 50% of his or her team’s games before the state tournament cutoff to be eligible, except under extraordinary circumstances. Extraordinary circumstances include injuries or medical reasons, or a return from academic ineligibility. This ruling will be submitted for final approval at the next meeting in June. Brian Bobal may be reached at bbobal@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X at @BrianBobal. The N.J. High School Sports newsletter now appears in mailboxes 5 days a week. Sign up now! Follow us on social: Facebook | Instagram | X (formerly Twitter)