Athletic Director: More Character, Less Competition

Montville Township High School's new Athletic Director, Paul Pignatello, introduced himself and outlined his strategies for the current school year at the MTHS Mustangs Association meeting last week.

According to Pignatello, one of his biggest priorities for the fall sports season is to focus on high school athletics as character building over competitive sport, a focus that he believes is being lost.

"Winning on the high school level should be a pleasant byproduct of developing young people," he said at the meeting on Sept. 14.

Pignatello pointed to increased coverage of high school sports in media over the last few years as a sign of a shift from student development to competition and statistics.

"People seem to forget that we're here to develop character in the students we're here to coach," he said.

Pignatello said he intends to institute an award, given out at the end of each season, based less on on-field achievement and more on how student-athletes carry themselves in regard to character and respect.

"If I were a player, that would mean so much more to me than an MVP award," he said. "This award would be about who behaves admirable on and off the field. I feel like that has been thrown to the side. Winning is the only thing."

Pignatello also addressed the need for more freshmen teams, an issue he described as one of the district's "greatest needs." He cited an example with this year's girls soccer turnout.

"We had 24, 25 new girls come out and we needed to cut some freshmen," he said. "We can't expect two coaches to watch 50 girls. Somehow, someway, we need to find a way."

Despite the greater demand, Pignatello said he was against no-cut policies.

"I've seen places with no-cut policies and it doesn't work," he said. "There are too many kids on a team. How can you watch them all? You can only play so many kids at a time, and then it becomes a supervision issue."

Though no concrete plan was implemented, Pignatello stressed the township's need for more teams, while acknowledging that with budget constraints, the issue would not have an easy answer.

"Our opening day cost the district roughly $2,200, and that was just one day," he said. "We have to figure something out without putting a burden on our coaches."

Many of the high school's coaches attended the meeting to be introduced to the association along with Pignatello, including coaches from both boys and girls soccer teams, as well as football, cross country, volleyball and cheerleading.

Several of the coaches, including boys soccer coach Jonathan Lopuski were graduates of Montville High School, a trait that pleased Mustang Association Co-President Cheryl Meytrott.

"Its great to see so many who grew up here in Montville come back and coach in Montville," she said.